Exotic Extracurriculars Every Student Needs To Have
Since we've already established that extracurriculars matter, which extracurriculars should a student have? Should they be an athlete? Should they become their class president? Should they start their own club? Or maybe they should do all of the above?
In this post, we're going to break down the different categories of extracurricular activities that colleges and universities look for when assessing whether or not a student will be a good fit at that university and on that campus.
In our last post, we established the importance of extracurriculars and in this post, and we believe that these are the list of extracurriculars every student should strive for.
A student's ability to complete this list will of course depend on what they find personally fulfilling, how much time they have to commit to the extracurricular activity and their skills in the given extracurricular activity. But, in an ideal world, at least one extracurricular would be chosen form each category and completed.
To truly stand out from other students when applying to a dream school, the best thing a student could to is pick one extracurricular from each of these categories and try to find a way to excel in it.
Community Work & Leader
Student Teaching
Environmental Cleanup
Mission Trips
Volunteering (Within Community, Overseas, etc.)
Working (A job or a business)
These are important for a student to have for a number of reason. First of which, it helps them grow as a person and encourages leadership skills and other important social skills like cooperation, creativity, teamwork, and social intelligence. These extracurriculars help foster personal growth in any and all students who participate in them and emerge better because of it.
Colleges choose students who have done these extracurriculars for those very reasons. Students who have been on mission trips, done student teaching, worked a job or started a business are often much more personable, adaptable, and have more to offer than student who haven't. For this reason, we recommend that a student have done, or is actively doing, at least one extracurricular activity from this list. It helps show their ability to work with others and aspects of their personality which are difficult to reveal in an essay or an interview.
School Leader
Sports Leader (Captain, Co-Captain, etc.)
Class Officer (Class President, Vice President, etc.)
Peer Leader
Club Leader (Club President, Vice President, etc.)
Colleges and Universities want to create leaders of the future. This can be made much easier if the student being accepted is already a leader and now only has to adapt thier leadership style to the new environment.
Just as with extracurriculars demonstrating a student's ability for teamwork and social intelligence, clubs like these demonstrate a student's leadership ability in no uncertain terms. A college can look at a student and see "captain of the succor team" and get a firm understanding of something about that student.
Sports (At least 2 years of participation in a sport)
For the most part, colleges and universities are looking for fairly well rounded students. A student who can play sports and excels academically is almost always a better catch than one who does not.
STEM, Humanities and / or Social Sciences academic related club (At least 2 years of participation in a club)
Most elite schools want to see that a student went beyond the classroom and explored their interests in a club in one way or another. If a student simply stayed in the classroom and studied all the once they went home, what do they truly bring and offer that's new to the campus they wish to attend? Colleges and Universities want to see that a student put themselves out there and experimented with different topics they found interesting as well as pursued things they were passionate about. In this case, there is a clear value being brought to the campus by choosing to accept them. As well as a clear loss by not doing so.
The Perfect Extracurricular Resume
The perfect extracurricular resume is where a student has participated in one club involving community work for at least two years and secured some sort of leadership role in it; one club involving school based activities (sports, academic, or otherwise) and secure a leadership position there as well. This will be the perfect balance between academic excellence, leadership, and athletic excellence that the vast majority of colleges and universities are looking for.
The ideal number of extracurricular activities we believe each student should participate in during their time in high-school is no less than 3 per year and no more than 7 per year.
This will depend on the student, but we believe that somewhere between 3 and 7 clubs is the sweet-spot in which students have the time to do all the clubs well while being able to participate in a wide array of things to help them catch the eye of admission officers once they end up applying to college.
In Conclusion
As we mentioned in the last post, extracurriculars on their own do not help a student get into a particular university or college. What they do is buy a student time to get a second look and proceed to the next round so that they have much better odds of making it into that particular school.
The way extracurriculars help a student make it into the next round are ones where the student participates in the extracurricular for an extensive amount of time (2 years or more) and obtains a leadership position in those clubs.
We recommend that a student selects 3 to 7 clubs from the following two categories so that they have the best odds of getting into the college of their dreams:
Community Work & Leader
Student Teaching
Environmental Cleanup
Mission Trips
Volunteering (Within Community, Overseas, etc.)
Working (A job or a business)
School Leader
Sports Leader (Captain, Co-Captain, etc.)
Class Officer (Class President, Vice President, etc.)
Peer Leader
Club Leader (Club President, Vice President, etc.)
Next Post: The Different Student Types ->
Closing Words
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We're glad you've stuck with us this far and look forward to continuing this journey with you when we release our next post in the newsletter.
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