Reply to What are the most common/unremarkable ECs?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote] you are assuming that there is always a stark line between activities students are passionate about, on one hand, and activities required to get into a selective college, on the other.

but this is not the case. a lot of kids are not particularly passionate about any of their activities, even ones they excel at. meanwhile, it's not quite clear what colleges are looking for, either. it makes sense that people are trying to figure that out..[/quote]

If your kids are doing things just to check a box perhaps that's part of the problem and you should encourage them to look beyond "what do I need to do to get into X school" and just do things they enjoy. Maybe this line of thought is the problem. If your kids aren't passionate about their ECs I'd say they should find other ECs they are passionate about. [/quote]

there are no EC they are "passionate" about. it's a stupid word. they will still kick ass out of your "passionate" kids and write excellent essays about it[/quote]

Some people think you have to be passionate about something to be good at it.
About 20 years ago, I was seated next to a well regarded violin instructor at an event.
We talked about passion and music and how passion is an indispensable trait in a musician.
At some point, the demographics of his students started to change and he started getting a bunch of students that he got very excited about only to watch them drop music and go to medical school or law school.
They were literally using music to get into college and then turning music into a hobby.
His disappointment in some of his former student picking medicine/finance/law over music was palpable.
He said the world needed that kid to be a musician more than it needed another investment banker.
The problem is that the NY philharmonic might pay $400K and is a really tough gig to get.
Meanwhile there are thousands of doctors, lawyers and bankers that make more than that with much less effort.

IOW, it doesn't necessarily take passion to get good at playing the violin; it takes passion to dedicate your life to becoming a violinist but even an expert cannot tell which kids have that passion and which kids are just good at music.  How the heck is some 30 year old admissions officer supposed to know.[/quote]

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