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Extracurricular Activities: What Admissions Officers Want To See in Your Applications
21/02/2025•11 minute read
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What Are Extracurriculars?
Why Extracurriculars Matter'
How to Build Outstanding ECLs
What Admissions Officers Want to See
What's the meaning of the word "extracurricular"? What does it mean for college applicants?
Extracurriculars make up about 30% of your college application's weight, so perfecting your activity list and extracurricular profile is important for top universities
In this blog, we'll explore 5 different ways to build outstanding extracurriculars. We'll also take a look at what admissions officers want to see in your extracurriculars
What Are Extracurricular Activities?
Let’s start with the simple definition of the word. An extracurricular is virtually any activity that isn’t required for high school credit. The word comes from “extracurriculum” — anything you do beyond the required academics.
Extracurricular experiences help convey who the applicant is beyond their academics. They help Admissions Officers determine the applicant’s fit and how the student will contribute to the university’s community.
There are so many examples for extracurriculars, but a few common ones include:
- Awards or student competitions
- Clubs or student organizations
- Paid work or internships
- Independent research
- Sports teams
Extracurriculars include activities completed during high school, at school, or outside of school. They can be online or in-person, and formal or informal.
Why Colleges Care About Extracurriculars?
When admissions officers read your university application, academics are the first thing they look at.
But while top grades and test scores can help your application get past admissions officers’ first glance, your personal brand (including your extracurriculars, leadership positions, and personal experiences) is what truly sets you apart from the crowd!
Extracurriculars make up 30% of your college application.
The chart below breaks down the typical weighting of different components in a U.S. college application:
5 Ways to Build Outstanding Extracurriculars
Talents and Interests
The simplest way to build outstanding extracurriculars is through your talents and interests.
You already need extracurriculars, so you might as well do something you're already good at and/or love! Your commitment to these activities will quickly and easily demonstrate your personal qualities and your dedication to excellence.
So, what talent or interest do you have passion for? Perhaps you're an athlete or a musician? Business owner or a Twitch streamer? Leverage what you already love doing to help tell a compelling story about yourself to admissions officers!
However, if your portfolio shows a limited range of extracurriculars, we recommend finding small ways to increase the variety of your activities to show other sides of yourself beyond that one talent or interest.
Community Service
The second way to build outstanding extracurriculars is through community service. Why? Well, community service is exactly as it sounds — how are you serving your community?
The trick here is making sure you're taking initiative and going above and beyond what is expected of you.
Ask yourself:
- Are you a demonstrated leader?
- Do your community members ask you to take on additional responsibilities?
- Have you helped expand the program or initiative you're involved in?
- How are you leaving this community better than you found it?
Admissions officers love to see community service in an application because it demonstrates two important qualities: impact and passion.
Capstone Projects
While this may sound intimidating, a capstone project is an independent project you can take on during your high school years. It showcases self-driven exploration of a topic or objective you’re interested in.
This is different from a regular activity you might take on once or twice a week, because these are larger, more intensive initiatives you take on for several months. This is a way to ‘dive deep’ into a topic, cause, or organization you’re passionate about, which further demonstrates to admissions officers your commitment to your field.
Capstone examples:
🎗 Organising a charitable event
💻 Building an app
📁 Building a business plan
🎯 Developing a product or service
Research & Competitions
Participation in research and/or competitions illustrates academic competence and an eagerness to learn outside the classroom.
Pursuing a research program or collaborating on a research project shows initiative and intellectual curiosity. In most cases, academic research opportunities within the high school curriculum are limited, so it is important to reach into an academic network outside of your community to see what’s possible!
It's also important to pair your research with competition. Competitions allow for you to further develop your research through practical application. Participating in competitions can demonstrate your ability to navigate healthy conflict, and also showcase resilience and ability to bring critical thinking within an academic field!
Internships
An internship is a job you can take on to learn more about the work industry you are interested in. Unlike community service or volunteerism, internships are focused on providing practical, workplace-related experience.
Completing an internship during high school can give you a competitive edge when applying for college or university programs, as it demonstrates your commitment and passion for a particular field.
For instance, if you’re considering a career in medicine, an internship at a hospital can help you stand out as a strong candidate and also allows you to gain a better understanding of the field and apply that knowledge to your studies.
Good places to find internship opportunities:
- Small businesses in your community
- Non-profits, social service industries, and charities
- Personal connections (family members, family friends, etc.)
- Online initiatives (blogs, social media, etc.)
- Dedicated high school internship programs
What Do Admissions Officers Want To See in Your Extracurriculars?
Leadership
Simply put, admissions officers are looking for leaders who are already making a significant impact in their field and communities.
Leadership shows that you went beyond passive involvement with an organization or project and took on a higher level of responsibility voluntarily.
Examples of Leadership Activities
| Institutional | Innovative | Independent |
|---|---|---|
| Student Government Organization Ambassador Club Leader Newspaper or Yearbook Editor | Startup Founder Organization Director Leading a campaign Starting an app Starting a competition | Starting a successful blog Research Internships Writing a novel Marathon fundraiser |
Impact
Beyond just having a leadership role or title, there’s also a question of what you did with that responsibility.
When talking about your activity, you only get 150 character descriptions. It’s very few characters to work with, so you’ll need to be concise.
Quantify your impact as much as you can. Did you increase membership? By what percent? Use numbers so admissions officers know exactly what you did in that activity.
Focus less on the organization and instead, talk about what you did. For example:
- Raising $5,000 for new library computers
- Leading a tutoring club with 30 tutors supporting 100 peers.
Include your most impactful activities first. The activity list is ranked by order of what's important; start with what's most impressive, what you want to show off first!
Authenticity
There are so many options for extracurriculars to include in your activity list. It could be obvious things like investment societies, model united nations, UNICEF and other volunteering activities, school clubs, etc.
These all make sense. These are the things people think of first when they think of activities that go on the common app.
But what goes on there can be unexpected. Family responsibilities can be included as activities, for example. Do you spend a large amount of your time caring for a family member at home? That counts as an activity!
What admissions officers want to know is how you spend your time outside of class – that’s what makes your extracurricular activities impactful. So, be sure to go to really look at how you spend all your time. Think about all the activities that you partake in that could go on your activity list.
Final Thoughts
Extracurriculars are a huge part of your application, make sure you perfect them!
Understand what extracurriculars are, why they matter, and how to maximize their impact on your college application. Knowing what admissions officers want to see is the best way to understand how to show them off.
If you're looking to submit the perfect application, our expert strategists are here to help. Students working with Crimson strategists are 7x times more likely to gain admission to their dream university.
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About the Contributor
Brice O'Connell
Brice has worked as a Strategist for over 7 years, helping hundreds of students gain admission to top universities such as MIT, UPenn, Yale, Brown, Cornell, Northwestern, UChicago, Duke, Stanford, UCLA, UC Berkeley, USC and many more! He holds a degree in Global Political Economics from the University of Wisconsin and lived in South Korea, Thailand, Myanmar and Shanghai all before settling in the US.
