Extracurricular Activities: Should Colleges Care About Them?

Brian Liao
7 min readMar 26, 2018

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When most people think about American education, college comes to mind. It is the goal for many high schoolers across the nation to pursue this higher level of education. For a lot of students, getting into college has been the only long-term goal that they have set for themselves in their short lives, and will do anything to earn admittance into some of the world’s top universities. Of course, most people are familiar with the college application process, and many know that schools heavily consider how well a student does academically through their grade point average or their scores on tests such as the SAT and ACT. However, almost no college in America looks just at academic success, rather, universities also consider other activities that applicants do outside of the classroom. These extracurricular activities may include school clubs and sports teams, as well as other volunteer services outside of school. Students use this fact to their advantage, participating and working hard in a wide variety of outside activities in order to boost their chances of getting into their dream school. But should this possible advantage be offered by universities to their applicants?

First, consider why colleges consider their applicants’ activities. According to the College Board, “the things you do in your free time reveal a lot about you — in ways that grades and test scores can’t.” In other words, outside activities are a way for colleges to determine what kind of person you are and your interests, they also allow students to show off their leadership skills, commitment, and resilience to their desired schools. It seems that without knowledge of a student’s extracurricular activities, colleges will have no way of knowing this information. As Gary Clark Jr., the Director of Undergraduate Admissions at the University of California: Los Angeles (UCLA), puts it: “If all we cared about were GPA and SAT scores, we could fill our class with a [Microsoft] Excel spreadsheet in an hour…but that’s not the kind of process that our faculty wants us to run. They are interested in looking for students that are going to come to UCLA and continue to make this place special, and we cannot figure that out by just looking at a couple of numbers.” For Clark and many other admissions counselors across the nation to determine whether a student will continue to make their college special, they need insight into a student’s personality: Does this student have motivation in their passions? Will this student come to our university and give it his/her all? Will this student also help his/her peers succeed? These smaller questions about personality all help to answer the overarching question “Will this student make our university special?” and extracurricular activities are a great way to answer these smaller questions. Leadership and relentlessness can be demonstrated by a student participating in an outside activity, qualities that colleges believe can answer the overarching question.

Yet, there are other alternatives that colleges can use to assess the value of an applicant, for example, the college essay. According to Prepscholar.com, “the essay contextualizes your application and shows what kind of person you are outside of your grades and test scores.” In addition, the personal essay may be the only way certain admissions counselors can hear your “voice” through your writing, which is a significant factor in determining one’s personality. In addition, college interviews are an even better way to hear an applicant’s voice, as a representative from the college is now engaging in interpersonal communication with the hopeful student. College interviews also allow colleges to learn about the student as a person, rather than a list of numbers.

From a student’s standpoint, extracurricular activities are seen by most college hopefuls as a way to better market themselves to colleges as the student that will “continue to make [the university] special.” The more selective a university is, the more “special” the student must be, and a club president and sports captain with good grades is certainly more appealing than someone with just good grades, and thus, success at an extracurricular activity can be the be the difference between an acceptance letter or a rejection letter for a lot of students. However, one cannot just ride extracurricular activities into college. In a 2013 National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) survey, just 10% of surveyed universities stated that extracurricular activities were “highly important” to a student’s application, whereas approximately 41% of universities stated that extracurriculars were of “moderate importance” while 34% of colleges stated that they were of “limit importance.” After all, academics are still the first consideration of every university across the nation. Without good grades or good test scores, the chances of you getting into a good college are slim. Extracurriculars merely serve as a little boost to strengthen an already strong application, not something that will drastically alter a student’s chances, which is a plus for students as selectivity becomes tighter.

On the other hand, this increased competition pressures students into participating in clubs and sports in order to increase their chances by the slightest bit. This brings up a couple of problems: how will extracurriculars influence a student’s already tight schedule? While there may be evidence that extracurriculars can lead to a decrease in a student’s academic success due to a loss of study time and sleep, I see the time crunch brought on by extracurricular activities as a positive. In fact, my most productive time of the year is during my school volleyball season in the spring, where I have practices or games for at least two hours a day. During this time, I am forced to prioritize whether I should watch a Family Guy episode or if I should read the next section in my textbook for Bio. To me, extracurriculars are a disciplinary force that regulates how I should be spending my time, not as the root of all of my daily stress. Volleyball actually allows me to escape the stress that school has brought upon me for two or three hours a day, and I find it quite enjoyable. Even college representatives, such as Jeffrey Brenzel, a former Dean of Admissions at Yale University, advise that students “simply do things that you truly enjoy in high school.”

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Another complication that colleges’ consideration of extracurriculars brings is the availability of outside programs to students. Take for example this scenario: two students with similar grades, class rigor, SAT and ACT scores apply to Stanford University. The first student was brought up in a wealthy family in a prosperous town, where he had the opportunity to explore different activities and develop interests in them through clubs offered at his high school. The second student, however, grew up in poverty, in a bad neighborhood. This student could not participate in any activities as his school did not offer many clubs and his parents had to work long hours and could not give him rides to and from outside activities. Would it be fair to take the first student over the second student in a college admissions decision when the second student didn’t even have the opportunities to explore his interests?

Well no, it is not fair to reject the second student in this scenario, and some colleges across the nation are beginning to address this possible issue. For example, the Turning the Tide proposal in 2016 aimed to reform some aspects of the college admissions process, such as lessening the competitive stress of admissions and improve the process for economically disadvantaged students, who are often on a lower playing field as I mentioned earlier. But the plan has not really taken off, since, as one college representative puts it: “report hadn’t changed anything because all of the colleges were already doing a holistic admission,” in other words, the proposal raises awareness of holistic admission rather than a call to take action to improve the admissions process.

Currently, no college in America requires that an applicant must send in a list of extracurricular activities that they did in high school. But with a growing demand for a higher level of education, one would practically be killing their chances at admittance without mentioning their extracurricular activities. Knowing this, some students play the transcript game, where they participate in extracurricular activities just so that their desired colleges can see that they did something in high school. This is clearly a false representation of a student, as the student is usually not invested in their activity. Fortunately, there is a way that colleges can tell whether a student is playing the transcript game based on their skill level. Most colleges consider how invested or successful a student is at an activity, not just whether a student participates in an activity. Thus, a transcript participant who is not invested will usually not be successful at a particular activity while someone who is genuinely passionate about the activity will have the allocates to prove it, such as captainship or state/national-level recognition. With this consideration, transcript students will be deterred from participating in activities in order to boost their college image as their tactic for doing so will be noticed by the university that they are applying to.

In order to answer the question of whether colleges should allow this selective advantage, we must go back to the idea of “special” students. By considering extracurriculars, colleges incentivize students to become more than just a numbers machine mindlessly working for a high GPA or SAT, even if that means avoiding all the academics involved in a grade. Extracurriculars allow colleges to see their applicants more a people with passions and desires to do something. These kinds of people are the ones who will keep their university special. From a student’s standpoint, extracurriculars are a way to escape the stresses brought on by school and other daily happenings, motivate students to be more productive, and allow students to be competitive in the college admissions process. Consideration of extracurricular activities in admissions is mutually beneficial to both universities and students, and thus the consideration should continue to be an integral part of the admissions process in the future.

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