Activities

Many students make the mistake of just jotting down whichever extracurriculars they've done in the past 4 years. If your deadline is tomorrow then you probably don’t have much choice. However, if you have more time, it can be worth your while to plan out the activities you participate in throughout high school.

Peaks

Colleges are seeking out a diverse class, not necessarily a diverse student. Elite colleges, for example, are looking for x amount of violin players and x amount of rugby players, and doing a little bit of everything in high school is unfortunately not as appealing to them.

Having one or two key areas where most of your extracurricular activities are focused can go a long way in showing the admissions committee that you fit in a certain archetype. If you enter your activities into our Kollegio Activity Planner, you can see what your activity peaks look like according to our analysis. A peak is typically 3-4 activities that have some relation to one another, for example Sports, Humanities, or STEM.

It's usually good practice to have your largest peak, or at least one of your peaks centered around the subject you are applying for. For example, someone applying for engineering should have a substantial amount of STEM activities, and likewise, someone applying for political science should have a substantial amount of communication-related activities.

Breath

While building one or two major peaks is important, so is showing some element of breath in your activity profile. This means having one or two in-depth activities separate from your main peaks that highlight your intellectual curiosity. For example, someone whose profile is mainly focused around psychology could have a breath activity by through doing an internship in Marine Biology. Likewise, for someone whose activities are focused around STEM, they could join the school newspaper.

Community Service

As a general rule, doing at least a few community service activities can go a long way for your application. An application completely devoid of community service can be a red flag for some admissions counselors. Usually these activities don't need to be too complicated, anything such as volunteering at your local soup kitchen to organizing a bake sale can be counted towards community service. Some schools will have supplemental essay prompts related to community service, so it's also helpful to have something meaningful to write about if they should pop up.

Getting Ideas

One aspect many students get stuck on is what they should do for extracurricular activities. Getting started can be daunting, understandably so- nevertheless, the quicker you begin, the sooner you have an idea of what you are capable of.

One strategy can be talking to a guidance counselor or teachers at school about the different types of activities you can get involved in. Ask around in your community and look for interesting projects to get involved in. More ambitiously, are there problems that you see around you that you could begin to address? You would be surprised by how far starting small and helping a few people can go.

Additionally, you can think about what you want to study in college. Is there a way for you to get involved in activities that relate to that subject? What are your peers doing? Do you know anyone who went to the schools you're interested in? It may be worth reaching out to them. In the end, the most important piece of advice is to be determined. Build up your activity profile with extracurriculars you value and find fulfilling. Be committed and colleges will value that.