Extracurricular Activities: How to choose the best ones for you and what colleges hope to see by them
A guide on how to find extracurricular activities outside of school that you will enjoy
Your grades in high school are pretty important for getting you into college; in fact, many admissions officers say that they are the most important part of your college application. Also important is your SAT or ACT score; this test is looked at by college admissions officers as a benchmark for students across the country, and thus indicative of your performance in college.
However, your college application hinges on many other, more subjective factors. One of the most important of these is the extracurriculars you do.
In this guide, we will visit why extracurriculars are so important to colleges, misconceptions about extracurriculars, and how to find extracurricular activities that will not only help your application, but that you will love as well.
Why are extracurricular activities so important? Colleges hope to see by them that you have more to offer them than just book knowledge.
This is a good place to start off. To understand how to choose extracurriculars, it is important to first understand what colleges hope to see by them.
Colleges want people who will, in essence, be successful. There are many ways they could do this; invent something new, conduct groundbreaking research, or change the field they participate in.
To find students like these, colleges look for two qualities: intelligence, and initiative. Intelligence can be measured through SAT tests and grades. If you have good grades and high test scores, then colleges can conclude that you have what it takes to succeed at their college, and later on in the workforce.
But colleges aren’t looking for book-smart drones who will spend all their time at college studying by themselves. Rather, they want students who, in addition to excelling at their coursework, will contribute to the college community, by being leaders, or inspiring change, or contributing to the college culture by joining clubs.
This is where extracurriculars come in. By looking at the effects you have had on your community, colleges try to predict how you will contribute to their campus. That’s why extracurriculars are so important; they show to colleges that you have more to offer them than just letters on a transcript or a 4 digit score, that if admitted, you will have a positive impact on their campus, and improve their reputation when you go out into the workforce.
Misconceptions about extracurricular activities and what NOT to do.
A lot of what I have just said you may have heard before. Indeed, I remember that when I was entering college, I was also being told about the importance of extracurriculars, and that I needed to “pad up” my resume to have a shot of getting into a good college. But looking back, a lot of the advice I got was blatantly wrong. So before we get into how to choose the best extracurriculars for you, let’s review what NOT to do.
Don’t try to “pad up” your resume
This is a big one. A lot of students learn that extracurriculars are important and immediately try to stack as many as they can onto their plate. It’s not enough to join history club; no, to have a good resume, they need to join chess club, math club, science club, french club, and underwater basket-weaving club as well (I may have made the last one up). At the end of the day, they have membership in a dozen different clubs, and yet are so spread out that they can’t spend too much time on a single club.
Well, the problem is that colleges can see right through this scheme. They aren’t interested in students who are in a lot of clubs; rather, they are looking for students who make a DIFFERENCE in whatever club they are in.
Rather than joining 15 different clubs, it’s better to dedicate your time to a few chosen ones, where you are actively contributing.
In the end, more than membership, colleges want to see what kind of impact you had on the clubs you joined; perhaps you inspired changes, or served in a leadership role, or maybe even founded your own club. That’s what you should be aiming for: quality instead of quantity.
In the end, more than membership, colleges want to see what kind of impact you had on the clubs you joined.
Don’t do activities because they “look good”. Find something you like.
This is another biggie. I’m sure a lot of you clicked on this article hoping for a list of activities that will wow colleges, or perhaps some sort of game plan to create the perfect resume; just join X club, participate in Y organization, and do Z activity, and you are guaranteed to get into the college of your dreams!
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. There aren’t activities that are inherently “better” than others; an admissions officer isn’t going to have a list of activities he wants to see on your resume. Rather, as I’ve said before, they want to see impact. It doesn’t matter what you do, just that whatever you do, you do something extraordinary in.
That’s why I recommend finding something you like, and striving to do it at a high level. For example: Say you like art. Maybe you join art club at your school. But rather than just be a member, you start organizing for art shows, and gain a leadership position. Then, you start putting yourself out there, and maybe even get your artwork sold, or displayed, or featured. Maybe you could even learn digital design, and do internships with magazine or graphic design companies? The point is, whatever your interest is, try to go in depth with it. That’s what colleges want to see. Don’t do something just because you think admission officers will like to see it on your resume; trust me, they won’t.
Don’t do activities just because everyone else is doing them
This might overlap with the previous misconception, but I’ve noticed a lot of reasoning that goes along the lines of, “all my friends are doing X club, so I have to do it too or colleges will not like it”. Well, that reasoning is all kinds of flawed. Remember, for entry into the top tier of colleges (such as the Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, etc), you need to stand out; doing what everyone else is doing is, well, the exact opposite of that. And for mid or lower tier colleges, which is probably what most of the people reading this are aiming for, leadership and impact is still what they are looking for. Do you think it will be easy to stand out as a leader if you are doing something everyone else is doing, and that you personally have no love for? Or is it better to focus on something that you love, and that you will easily stand out in, because of your obvious passion? Hint: it’s the latter.
So how do I find activities that I love?
So now you know that you want to find something you love, and do something extraordinary in that field. But now, I can tell that a lot of you are panicking. “But Vedic”, you say, “I don’t know what I like!”. You’ve undoubtedly heard stories of young prodigies following their passions, and ending up on the news, but for you, it seems impossible. Well, it is possible to become extraordinary; you just need to start small.
First, you need to do some soul searching to find what you like to do.
Maybe you like video games; well, how can you turn that into an extracurricular activity? There are many ways. Perhaps you can learn programming, and develop a passion for coding. Perhaps you can look at the graphics/art design on your games, and start working in fields like that. Perhaps you can create a blog reviewing games, and giving advice.
With all of these options, you can go to a high level; who knows, perhaps you could even reach out to the company that creates your games, and land an internship. Now, I’m not saying you need to do something so big or impactful that you end up on the news; but you should always think big.
You know the quote; aim for the moon, because even if you miss you’ll land among the stars.
Final Thoughts
To take your passions and big ambitions, and convert it into something extraordinary, you need something more important than any other trait: dedication.
You will have to find time to put to your activity, even on your most busy days. Even when you have 3 tests and a project due, you will still have to go to that soccer practice. Even when your fingers ache and you are tired, you will still have to commit yourself to practicing the piano for an hour before you sleep.
Dedication can take your passions and big ambitions, and convert it into something extraordinary.
Reaching excellence isn’t easy, and even if you love the activities you are participating in, you will sometimes want a break.
I had a passion for robotics in high school, but on some days, after staying up until 2 AM and spending hours trying to fix a problem with the robot, I wanted to just give up and go home. That’s where dedication comes in.
The good news is, if you do manage to stick to it, you will gain something far more important than any college acceptance letter or scholarship offer: a sense of discipline, which will help you for the rest of your life.
Originally published at http://collegecareerscholarship.com on May 29, 2020.
