What makes a strong extracurricular activity?
Your activities outside of the classroom, ideally, should be well worth the time investment. But that valuable and important activity can look very different for individual people. In fact, there are many variable factors to consider when you are choosing how to spend your free time. Don’t waste your precious hours! Plan ahead.
To break this down, here are a few of the aspects you should keep in mind:
Overall, as you read, we hope this guidebook is able to provide insight and perspective from our counselors. We all want to help you succeed and enjoy the process. From starting out and expanding your horizons, to ultimately crafting an application “hook,” we’re here to walk you through it.
Empowerly's Guide to Overwhelming Extracurriculars
Extracurricular activities are one of the most critical ways to set your application apart from the pack. Still, now that many students are making an effort to build extracurricular profiles, it’s more challenging to stay unique.
This Guide will provide a boost your chances of standing out.
What is in the Guide:
The team at Empowerly has years of experience coaching students to college acceptance. Whether you’re starting in middle school or senior year, there are steps you should take to stay on track.
1. Activity Matrix
The Activity Matrix is a mental framework we use at Empowerly to help students and parents think through their extracurricular activities – both existing and new.
Empowerly's goal is for students to find activities that actually interest them instead of constructing a false story for college admissions.
2. Activity Thread
One exercise we do with students is listing all of their activities in each of the types and sub-categories in the Matrix above. Our goal is to find activities that align thematically across different types. This is what we call an activity thread.
The activity thread is a combination of 2 or 3 activities that link together across types. The thread forms the basis of the Common Application main essay and the thesis that a student writes about.
3. Prepare Effectively
Simply pursuing 10+ extracurricular activities and throwing them onto your college application won’t accomplish much (it might even hurt you). In this guide, we will cover some basic guidelines when assessing which extracurricular activities are worth getting into, because quality certainly matters more than quantity.
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