How to Stand Out with School Activities
While extra-curricular activities offered by high schools are easy to join, it is very hard for a high school student who only participates in high school extra-curricular activities to stand out or demonstrate uniqueness to admissions officers in their applications to highly selective colleges. Even student leaders who hold elected office in high school may not pass the bar to stand out. Why is that?
First of all, there are more than 27,000 public and private high schools in the country. Given that each of these schools will generate student leaders for their clubs and extra-curricular activities, it is inevitable that simply being a leader of a school club is not unique enough. Students who spend hundreds of hours as supervised volunteers or as active members of a school club are merely ordinary in this context.
An applicant to a highly selective college with a single digit acceptance rate is competing against not just the best in the country but also the best from around the world for admission. The hurdle is a high one to clear. For applicants to the highly selective colleges with double digit acceptance rates below 25%, the bar is still very high, but not as tough. The higher the acceptance rate, the less demanding the criteria that an applicant is expected to meet.
The highly selective colleges want applicants who went the extra mile and who went outside of their comfort zones in pursuing their high school extra-curricular activities. They want applicants who demonstrate initiative and drive in the execution of their student leadership. Alternatively, the colleges want to see the pursuit and achievement of excellence through an applicant’s extra-curricular activities.
Pursuit of Excellence
Winning awards and prizes or being specifically recognized for outstanding performance are the best ways to demonstrate excellence in a college application. The level at which these markers of excellence are achieved also matter a great deal. A school level award will not stack up against a state, regional or national award, an international one would be even better.
A student debater who leads her team to win state and national championships stands out as much as the three member team who wins the national robotics competition or a passionate chess player who through dedication and willingness to compete frequently achieves a Grandmaster rating in junior year in high school.
Students who possess specific talent or skills in oration, writing, music, science, mathematics and other disciplines are the ones best positioned to pursue excellence through a school activity to stand out.
Going the extra mile
A high school student is a passionate member of her school’s community club and she organizes a weekly collection by volunteers of unsold bakery items from local bakeries, restaurants and hotels which she arranges to have regularly donated to local homeless shelters. This student has gone the extra mile to make an impact on her community and demonstrated both leadership and compassion for others.
A high school student who immigrated to the US as a child organizes a team of his peers to provide assistance to first graders at the local elementary school struggling to learn English is going the extra mile to help others while demonstrating highly valued qualities like leadership, and empathy.
A member of her high school’s ski team volunteers herself as a ski instructor at the local ski resort to teach local kids from low income families how to ski. While her own skills as a skier are not competitive enough to win, she is a very competent skier who enjoys working with little kids. Her dedication as an instructor is strong, as she remains an instructor and familiar face on the slopes over three ski seasons, winning her commendation from the town’s mayor. Not only did this student go the extra mile, she also displayed leadership, and compassion beyond the ordinary.
For a student to go the extra mile through a school activity takes leadership, initiative and passion. Students who can do this demonstrate qualities that colleges want to see in their applicants greatly increasing their chances of admission.
Going outside your comfort zone
School organized activities are by definition activities that fall inside a student’s comfort zone. To step out of that comfort zone requires courage, passion and leadership, all qualities that college’s want to see in an applicant.
A high school student sees that the bread on lunch trays in the school cafeteria are left uneaten on a regular basis, something she finds very wasteful. She too sometimes does not finish her bread, because it is often either dry or stale. Using her initiative, she posts a little questionnaire on Snapchat asking why students are wasting their bread, and she asks for suggestions from students on what they would like to see done about the bread. She requests that people who see her Snap to share it with others. She is amazed at the huge number of responses she gets from students who, like her, find the bread either dry or stale and want a healthier, fresher option. She also talks to the catering supervisor in the cafeteria and she finds out that the bread is supplied by a third party supplier. This student compiles all the responses and writes a brief report of her findings and submits it to the school principal together with suggestions on how to improve the bread supply. As a result of the student’s initiative, the school was able to get the caterer to change its bread supplier and include additional choices of bread as well.
This student not only identified a problem, but took initiative to survey people for feedback and investigate the problem before finally submitting a report with solutions to the school administration. This student showed leadership, creativity and courage in how she approached a problem she saw, and was prepared to suggest solutions as well taking her well beyond the normal comfort zone of a high school student.
While what this student did was not activity related, it was still school related leadership.
Finding the opportunity to stand out with school activities
The pursuit of excellence through a school activity is a systematic and dedicated process that starts at the beginning of high school, and in some cases earlier. For those with the talent, skills and passion to pursue that excellence, it will be an enjoyable and rewarding process.
Finding ways to go the extra mile or go beyond your comfort zone is a much more opportunistic endeavor where the student has to pro-actively find ways to engage and contribute to the community in significant ways. To successfully to this requires leadership, passion and initiative, qualities that the highly selective colleges prize in their applicants.
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