The Evergreen Extracurricular Advice for College Admissions:-

Students need to know the best way to pick activities in normal times before tailoring the advice to the pandemic, where some activities need to be tweaked.

1. It doesn’t matter what extracurricular activity teenagers select :

The important thing is that, what teenagers do with the activities they pick.

For example, Teenagers who play a musical instrument, can start an after-school music class at a local school, and launch a fundraiser to buy instruments for kids who can’t afford them or think of another activity linked to music.

2. Low-threshold extracurricular activities aren’t impressive :

If an activity is easy to join and explain, it’s considered to below-threshold activity.

“Let’s take the typical student who wants to go for well-rounded,” “Science quiz bowl, model UN, decathlon, track team, five AP course. All of these are very easy to explain”.

3. High-threshold extracurriculars will impress colleges :

Focus on the high-threshold extracurricular, which are by nature hard to explain.

“If I told you that there is a student who started a statewide network of art kit distribution to cancer centers,”. This is HIGH THRESHOLD activity which the student has completed/started outside the classroom. Our student who is a Guitar enthusiast started giving Guitar lessons on youtube and created his own website with lessons then further went on making his own band along with a couple of his friends (this is an example of High threshold activity –and a very good example of leadership quality)

One of our students started Home

Other started teaching kids online free and also started many other Quizzes to engage juniors in a knowledge-based and knowledge sharing activities.

Time is very precious for teenagers, for which it gets very difficult for creating space for extracurricular activities. For this, we suggest to cut out fluff activities and focusing on just a couple which is meaningful to the student.

4. Use the application to amplify the activities :

There is always a room for briefly including the list of activities in the Common Application, but the quality always trumps over quantity. Students can use their additional comments section of college applications to share their thoughts and ideas they did and that reflects their character, values, and qualities.

The Extracurricular Ideas During the Pandemic:-

Even with this pandemic, the foundations for college admissions, especially extracurricular activities, are unchanged

“Just as before the COVID-19 outbreak, colleges want to make sure that students are achieving a lot of depth with their extracurricular rather than trying to become a jack of all trades and trying to do everything.”

So things like commitment, achievements, depth, the impact still matters in all situations. Luckily, it is possible for the students to pursue some of their interests today, among which most of it will be virtual.

Some of the Pandemic Ideas are:-

1) Instead of continuing to volunteer as a tutor for the children in an after school program, explore doing it virtually.

2) Startup or join a fruit and/or vegetable swap. I got this idea after reading in the San Diego newspaper about a community fruit swap. Homeowners with the excess harvest from their trees – oranges, grapefruit, guavas, figs, lemons, kumquats, avocados, to name a few – drop off their unwanted fruit, and people who need food come by and pick up a bag of fruit.

3) Create raised beds for vegetables and herbs for senior citizens and others in your community who would like fresh produce but don’t have the ability to start their own gardens.

4) Make bag lunches for people who need food. (As a volunteer in Vermont, my son, who is a tremendous cook, is doing this three times a week for dozens of needy people.)

5) Doing internships virtually. They are available on a paid basis and volunteering too

6) Find a place in social media. Start a blog. Create fascinating knowledge sharing videos. Use Pinterest to show off and deepen your creativity. Consider starting your own YouTube channel.

7) Students who are interested in politics, will have many opportunities to get involved. Campaigning, idea for getting maximum votes, sharing case studies. Etc.

Students can take a deep dive and learn or do something that they never had time for before. Some ideas…

· Jewelry making

· Photography

· Quilting

· Woodworking

· Learning Latin

· Composing music

· Robotics

· Coding

· Chess

· Writing comedy and performing online

Conclusion: Universities would check upon” How you have used your potential” and “How well you have tried to reach to the expertise level” for that particular hobby etc. and finally” how you tried to share that knowledge which is your actual earning”. Now please check out with what you have been doing.

We cover profile building activities advices in EduQuest https://eduquest.org.in/undergraduate-admission/