What kind of extracurriculars should I pursue to get accepted to selective colleges?
As you’ve probably already heard from many people including your friends and education professionals like us, extracurriculars and essays are what will ultimately help you get that acceptance letter to your dream college.
Since that is the reality of college admissions today, one of the questions we get asked the most is “what kind of extracurricular activities do I need to do to get into colleges?” There is no simple, one-size-fits-all way to answer this question because the point is to be very distinctive and intriguing to colleges.
Colleges are no longer looking for students who fit a generic ideal of “well-rounded, all-around good student” who volunteers at the soup kitchen, plays 2.5 sports, tutors younger students, and works at a glitzy summer internship. If we gave you a list of general activities that “look good” for college, that would actually be counterproductive and hurt your chances because all of you would end up looking similar to colleges.
Instead, what we can advise you to do is to follow your strengths and interests, as long as they are in the realm of activities that would be respectable for colleges. For example, even though many students love video games, writing down “playing video games” as an extracurricular activity would not seem that impressive to colleges because of the stigma attached to video games (which we don’t think is always accurate nowadays anyway). However, if you wrote that you designed an actual video game, preferably with a purpose past just plain entertainment, got a significant number of people playing it, and accepted donations to buy the game, which you then donated to a charitable cause, that would turn colleges’s heads.
That brings us to our next point: for colleges, it’s not necessarily what extracurricular activity you do that matters but how deep you go, how talented you are, how you’ve shown leadership, and how you’ve made an impact on others. You could be doing something seemingly as random as designing shoes and purses, but if you can prove that you care about other people, you’re a leader and innovator, and you’re passionate, you’ll impress them. Talent doesn’t even always matter for all extracurriculars. For example, if you’re someone who feels strongly about a cause, you don’t need to be talented at a sport or art form. Instead, maybe you are driven to advocate for this cause and are actually quite talented at educating and organizing your community to fight for it with you.
Here are some examples of activities our students have pursued which helped them get into their top choice colleges:
She loved fashion and sewing but also felt strongly about sustainability. Designed clothes and purses out of recycled materials only and organized community fashion shows with other teen designers at her school and church. Sold tickets to the fashion shows and donated the proceeds to organization supporting sustainability education. Started a club at her school to clean the local park and beach on weekends and to educate her school community about concrete ways to fight climate change.
He felt strongly about Asian-American rights. Started a safe space at school to address Asian hate crimes. Used his position as the Asian Cultures club president to organize a Japanese movie festival at school plus Asian cooking classes run by volunteer parents at their homes. Donated the proceeds to an organization supporting increased Asian representation in Western media.
Very interested in computer science. Taught himself two different coding languages and noticed that while he had access to computer science classes and state-of-the-art equipment at his private high school, the local public middle schools did not. Started a weekend program where he and his group taught coding to middle schoolers at that middle school. Also attended hackathons regularly and volunteered to be the teacher’s assistant in the tech lab at school.
The above activities are less “traditional” but show creativity, drive, initiative, and concern for others. However, if you are a student who is very good at one of the more “traditional” extracurricular activities like sports and music, that is not a problem. In those areas, just participating won’t earn you many points in college admissions. Aim to go for depth in those areas. If you’re at the level where you’re competing nationally, you’ll probably be in pretty deep already. Since most of us are not at that level, think about how to make your involvement even more meaningful, extensive, and help others. For example, one of our students enlisted members of his basketball team to provide assistance to seniors in need of escorts to and from the subway stations in New York City. Another student created a club with her orchestra friends to provide free music lessons to elementary school students at a local school that did not have a music program.
One of the other key lessons for you to take away from this post is that you shouldn’t wait until end of junior year to start developing your extracurricular profile. Getting in deep isn’t possible by that time, and colleges will think you’re trying to pad your resume just in time for applications. It’s a great idea to cast a wide net of activities during freshman year to figure out what excites you most and really explore those areas from then on!