What I’ll cover in this blog:
-Why extracurriculars? When?
-Strategizing the selection of extracurricular activities for future college admissions
-Do some schools value certain extracurriculars more?
-Do I need to excel in the extracurricular?
-How Goal Admit can help
Why extracurriculars? When?
Extracurriculars are an important part of childhood growth. They add dimension to your life, develop new parts of your brain, and expose you to valuable team and social interactions. And yes, future college admissions committees look for extracurriculars to see what else you have to showcase other than academics. Extracurriculars tell college admission committees what you’re passionate about, what you chose to spend hours and years of your time on, what skills you have acquired from the activities that could help you in college, and what accolades it brought you, if any.
As I’ve mentioned in my middle school blog,
https://www.goaladmit.com/middle-school-college-prep/
quality is better than quantity when it comes to extracurriculars. So it’s better to focus on a few for a large number of years instead of trying many every year. Of course when you’re a child your parents would have picked the extracurricular activities for you – likely based on their preferences. If, by middle school, you have not acquired an interest in any of your parent-chosen activities, it is better to switch before the lack of interest seeps through in the lack of skills and achievements.
Try to select your extracurricular activities by the end of 9th grade for sure, so you would have at least two years of skills and accomplishments to showcase for the college applications.
Strategizing the selection of extracurricular activities for future college admissions.
The best extracurricular is the one you are truly interested in, since the interest will shine through as passion and excellence. But it is a fact that there are some cliches – all Asian kids learn a musical instrument – mostly the piano. All Asian kids who want to apply to STEM fields join robotics or first lego leagues, play chess, or take part in Math competitions. There’s really nothing new to be mined in essays if you fit this profile, and it smacks more of predictability than interest even if you have done the activity for years.
What if you really like playing the piano? Or if your parents feel it is essential for developing left brain skills (we certainly thought so for our two sons who both learned the piano). Then do something else in addition to that which could be more unique.
Some niche sports to excel in which are not typical for Asian profiles – golf, fencing, football, basketball, tennis, weightlifting, dancing. Some unusual extracurriculars to try – debate, Model UN, astronomy, creative writing, puppetry, magic.
Of course it is very important to showcase achievements or at least register progress in the activity over the years, so if you try something a few months and have not acquired any interest or skills in it, try something else. Middle school and the 9th grade are perfect for these trials so you should select your extracurricular activities by 10th grade.
Both my sons learned the piano, went to Tae Kwon Do classes, and culture classes, starting from when they were 6 years old. Apart from this they both gravitated to academic competitions like History Bee/Bowl and Quiz Bowl, achieving National level recognition. My younger son, the CS kid, did the cliched Robotics because he enjoyed it. My older Biology kid did Neuroscience competitions like the Stanford Brain Bee and HOSA.
In the end, strategizing can only take you so far – find what you love to do and do it consistently and well.
Do some schools value certain extracurriculars more?
It is an easily researched fact that some colleges have certain extracurricular biases. Colleges with active sports teams will look for the basketball/football/baseball stars. The sports quotas are very large and very generous in these schools. MIT has a fondness for students who have excelled in Olympiads – Computer Science Olympiad, Math Olympiad, Biology Olympiad. The University of Chicago looks for top national debaters. Colleges with active Quiz Bowl teams, like UC Berkeley, UT Austin, UW – all favor the high school Quiz Bowl captains. So if you have a dream college, do the research in middle school – it takes years to acquire the excellence expected at the time of applying. Be careful to make sure that the school you pick also has the field of study you would be interested in.
Do I need to excel in the extracurricular?
It is more important to show passion and progression. Of course racking up achievements, especially at the National level, will help fill out the awards and achievements section of the application. But there are limits to the benefits of these. My older son had acquired so many accolades that we ran out of entries in the application form and had to deprioritize some of them. Achievements and accolades are just one aspect of where the extracurriculars feature in your college application. The other two are core skills and soft skills. Core skills are like becoming a third degree black belt, or reaching level 10 of the Certificate of Music. Soft skills are teamwork, leadership, and sportsmanship. All of these need to reflect in your essays, in the vivid picture that you would be painting of your years of extracurricular involvement.
So even if you did not get Branch Honors every year, or become captain of your team, if you can showcase self-growth – how you became a better person through your involvement in the extracurricular activity, you can project yourself as a winner even without the tangible accolades.
How Goal Admit can help
It helps to bounce off ideas – we’d ask you questions to find out your interests and suggest suitable extracurricular activities for you. As well as offer suggestions on local places that offer it, with an objective comparison. We can help you showcase and highlight your extracurriculars in the most flattering way in your college application and your essays. Because our main objective is to help you in your goal of getting admitted to the college of your choice.