How Do Colleges View Extracurricular Activities?

From an admissions perspective, your student is better off making a meaningful contribution in 3 activities than surface-level involvement in ten.

What do you mean by “meaningful contribution”?

I’ll share an example. A past student of mine wrote in his college admissions essays that, as captain of the badminton team, he stayed after practice to coach younger students individually on their technique. When he was a freshman on the team, he’d had to learn these things on his own, so he wanted to help those who came after him.

In this story, the student identified a part of the experience of being on his school’s badminton team that could be improved, so he went ahead and improved it. He identified a need and then did something about it.

Most students attend club meetings and practices and then move on to the next thing. This student, however, decided to go above and beyond by bringing value to his team in a way that no one asked him to do.

This is an example of initiative. In college admissions, we sometimes see more extreme examples of initiative, such as students founding nonprofit organizations. However, students can show initiative in much smaller, more attainable ways, and they can do this in the activities they already have:

• A student who participates in Debate Team notices there is unsold merchandise from last year’s fundraiser, so she arranges a tabling event during her free period to sell the leftover merchandise and raises $200 for the club.
• A volunteer at a nursing home starts bringing his violin and playing for the elderly residents after learning they love classical music.
• A part-time worker at an ice cream shop suggests to his manager that the shop begin recycling materials, then personally collects those materials to recycle after his shifts.

Often, students are intimidated by the impressive ways other students have shown initiative, but any student can start by identifying a problem and coming up with their own solution. Colleges (and, as it turns out, employers) value a student who notices opportunities to bring value to those around them.

More importantly, this is a habit your student can bring with them into college and the workplace: instead of waiting to be told what to do, they learn to notice where they can contribute.