How important are ECs?

[Anonymous]

DS does not have many ECs to show for himself. He played sports, but nothing serious. He does not play an instrument, never had a job and is not involved in any clubs. He is a decent student (will probably land around 4.0W and ~1450 SAT). How much not having many ECs will hurt his college prospects? Are there particular schools that put less emphasis on ECs?

[Anonymous]

They shouldn't mean crap! It's way too easy to fake involvement in an EC. When I was in high school, my buddies and I joined the physics club every year. We'd show up for the first meeting where they took the yearbook picture. After that, we never did a damn thing! I suggest your kid do something similar if he doesn't have legitimate ECs. He could even list himself as the damn president of the club since we all know how erect admissions reps get over "leadership qualities " It's not like anyone is calling your kid's high school and verifying this crap!

[Anonymous]

Every college has a different equation, and you can check out the Common Data Set for each college (Google the college name and common satay set). In general, ECs matter much less. It’s grades, rigor, SAT/ACT, activities, essays, recommendations. My DC had crappy ECs until senior year this year. He jumped on it last summer and was able to get some passable activities to fill the common app. It worked fine for him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Every college has a different equation, and you can check out the Common Data Set for each college (Google the college name and common satay set). In general, ECs matter much less. It’s grades, rigor, SAT/ACT, activities, essays, recommendations. My DC had crappy ECs until senior year this year. He jumped on it last summer and was able to get some passable activities to fill the common app. It worked fine for him.

is EC not the same as activities?

[Anonymous]

Pretty important based on the competitiveness of the school.

[Anonymous]

Needs to at least have a job… that section on the Common app will look awfully thin with nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They shouldn't mean crap! It's way too easy to fake involvement in an EC. When I was in high school, my buddies and I joined the physics club every year. We'd show up for the first meeting where they took the yearbook picture. After that, we never did a damn thing! I suggest your kid do something similar if he doesn't have legitimate ECs. He could even list himself as the damn president of the club since we all know how erect admissions reps get over "leadership qualities " It's not like anyone is calling your kid's high school and verifying this crap!

Fake non-profits are another way to go if mom & dad , or college consultant, set the direction. Family member set up something that comes up immediately in a google search of their name. It's 100% bogus and totally a dead entity since college acceptance. But dang, it sure does sound like they a quite an impressive candidate.

[Anonymous]

Zero EC's looks bad (unless there is some insanely compeeling explanation, e.g., "I spent all of high school in a hospital bed, in traction").

But after that, EC's don't really matter unless your kid's hobby was winning the Nobel Prize, etc. Having EC mostly just shows that you are a decent community member.

Only caveat: if there is a huge discrepancy between ECs and essay, major etc., they may notice. E.g., "Essay says, "I have always been passionate about current events and political matters" and every EC is theater-related, it could look weird.

[Anonymous]

*compelling

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every college has a different equation, and you can check out the Common Data Set for each college (Google the college name and common satay set). In general, ECs matter much less. It’s grades, rigor, SAT/ACT, activities, essays, recommendations. My DC had crappy ECs until senior year this year. He jumped on it last summer and was able to get some passable activities to fill the common app. It worked fine for him.

is EC not the same as activities?

Yes, sorry, the same. You can sub EC where I wrote activities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They shouldn't mean crap! It's way too easy to fake involvement in an EC. When I was in high school, my buddies and I joined the physics club every year. We'd show up for the first meeting where they took the yearbook picture. After that, we never did a damn thing! I suggest your kid do something similar if he doesn't have legitimate ECs. He could even list himself as the damn president of the club since we all know how erect admissions reps get over "leadership qualities " It's not like anyone is calling your kid's high school and verifying this crap!

+ 1. OP. Do this. I'm going to do this for a kid with similar profile. Join a few clubs. Show up to meetings once in a while, claim 2-3 hours week of activity in the common app for 2-3 years. Done!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Zero EC's looks bad (unless there is some insanely compeeling explanation, e.g., "I spent all of high school in a hospital bed, in traction").

But after that, EC's don't really matter unless your kid's hobby was winning the Nobel Prize, etc. Having EC mostly just shows that you are a decent community member.

Only caveat: if there is a huge discrepancy between ECs and essay, major etc., they may notice. E.g., "Essay says, "I have always been passionate about current events and political matters" and every EC is theater-related, it could look weird.

I disagree. Nothing better than theater for someone who want to go into politics! You have to be comfortable on the public stage. That would make a great essay.

[Anonymous]

Read "Who gets in and why." ECs are about 1/5 of your application score. Your kid is giving away points. He's a 1/5 right now.

[Anonymous]

It will depend on the school. The more competitive the applicant pool, the more important ECs are for distinguishing yourself. But for most schools they don't matter that much.And you can list personal hobbies and other things in the application's activity list, not just organized school activities. My DS is not a joiner and just had one very light in-school activity. But he plays guitar on his own, golfs, runs, does some volunteer work at our church, and summer jobs. He had enough for an interesting list but it wasn't a Harvard-caliber list, which was fine.

He was mainly applying to big state Us and got in everywhere except UVA (which I knew he wasn't getting into just based on GPA).

[Anonymous]

Similar problem here. My introverted son is academically-minded but suffers from inattentive ADHD and very low processing speed (he has an IEP at school), so he spends all his time getting good grades in AP classes, and doesn't want to do anything outside of school.

We are foreigners and anywhere else in the world, colleges would only look at academics. But here, it works against him. I've never understood why US colleges have such murky and patently subjective ways to cherry-pick students, when all other universities want academically-strong students and understand that other activities are much harder to rank.