Not (good) enough extracurriculars?Answered
I'm currently a junior at a boarding school with a 4.0 unweighted GPA and a decently strong SAT score.
When starting my account and filling the extracurriculars, I started to feel like I'm not doing enough. I go to a boarding school in a more rural area, so there are not a ton of options, but I feel like I'm doing what I can. I'm a part of three school organizations (one for school activities, one for the environment, and one for student wellness), I participate in two different forms of visual and performing arts, and I volunteer when I can. Unfortunately, at my school juniors can't really hold leadership positions, and I am not competitive enough in anything to win awards or have my own business, and, honestly, I haven't really done anything amazing.
I have high hopes for college, but everyone else just seems to be doing so much more. What else can I do?
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2 answers
Don't worry! First of all, the extracurriculars you mentioned are pretty strong. CollegeVine is does its best but no machine can tell you exactly how strong they are. Chancing is just an estimate. You might want to add the fact that aren't any specific opportunities for leadership in your programs and mention how you contributed even without a leadership position in your application if there is a section to talk about your activities (there almost always is). Also, admissions officers don't expect you to do everything. They know that students are busy and they can also tell when people add a bunch of activities they don't care about to make their application look better. The best thing to do is find activities that you're good at and work hard in what you already do so you can prove that you really do contribute (whether its awards or just examples of all the ways you help out).
- a student who was once as frustrated as you are
Sometimes it feels like everyone is president of the Student Council, created a Start-up, cured cancer and are getting into Sanford. Universities will look at your academic profile in the context of your school. However, you can check here on the "academic ranking" feature that most people that get into top 100 universities don't have that much going on. They have some extracurriculars, but not 10. Compare your situation with other students with the same GPA.
And also, you could explain a bit about your situation on the "additional information" section of the Common App. You have 650 characters to explain or add something that you think is relevant.
Good Luck!
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"how you contributed even without a leadership position" - I love this! It's so true. There are many ways to demonstrate leadership without actually holding a special title.