How to Select Extracurricular Activities

August 11, 2015 khm Comments Off on How to Select Extracurricular Activities

Whether your passion is with charity work, hobbies or a sports, your personality as a candidate gets a strong boost if you show an active involvement in your community outside of the classroom and it demonstrates your leadership skills and desire to engage in and improve the world around you.

We find that most Chinese students we run across, engage in many extracurricular activities and have a hard time choosing which ones to focus on and which ones to develop further. We would advise that is is best to pick 1-3 activities which you enjoy the most and which are relevant to the discipline you plan to pursue in a top tier institution and to stick with it. It is much more impressive to an admissions officer if you show committment and achievement in 1-3 hobbies, rather than 10 hobbies which you dabble in. If you have too many activities, the admissions officer may wonder how you manage to maintain your grades and whether you have the capacity to focus on a project and truly excel at it. In this respect, having leadership positions and specific achievements related to an activity is much more meaningful and powerful on your application than listing 10 activities or organizations in which you occasionally participate or are a passive member of.

The kinds of activities which best suit your application to a particular ivy league institution should be carefully selected. They should complement the subject(s) you plan to pursue in college but they should also showcase the types of personal traits which have shaped you as a unique candidate who will excel at that institution. At Ivy Bridges, we take time to really understand who you are so we can advise you on which activities you should showcase in each application and how to best do so.

Categories: extracurricular activities

Tags: hobbies, leadership, sports