Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion What colleges look for in extracurriculars

This might be of interest to those of you whose children are in middle or high school.

Cognito Mentoring spoke with admissions officers at Harvard, Yale, University of Chicago, Columbia, Stanford, MIT, Duke, University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth, Williams, Johns Hopkins, Swarthmore, Brown, Northwestern and Caltech, about how they evaluate student participation in extracurricular activities, for 15 colleges total.

• Colleges generally don’t prefer some extracurricular activities over others: Seven of the colleges indicated that the nature of the extracurriculars doesn’t matter, as long as the student shows passion. Two of the colleges indicated that they have a preference for students who are involved in at least some activities with other people. Beyond this, no colleges indicated a preference for some extracurricular activities over others. In general, the colleges indicated that they define “extracurricular activities” very broadly, as anything outside of coursework, which could include work, sports, participation in online communities, etc.
• Colleges generally prefer depth of involvement over breadth: Six of the colleges indicated that they have no preference for whether students engage in lots of activities or a few activities, as long as they show serious involvement in their activities. Seven of the colleges said that depth matters more than breadth. None expressed a preference for many activities.
• Commitment can be important: Six of the colleges indicated that continuity of involvement and commitment matters. None said that these things don’t matter.
• Achievement level can make a difference, but appears to be less important: Five of the colleges indicated that achievement level doesn’t matter as much as depth of involvement. Two of the colleges indicated that higher achievement helps.

Cross-posted from the Cognito Mentoring blog

Thanks for relaying what the admissions officers told you, but I don't believe them. Do you think colleges care just as much about recruiting classical musicians as basketball and football players? Below is some evidence that they don't regard all extracurriculars equally. I also think that people should not be confident in their ability to judge "passion" from someone's (perhaps heavily assisted) college essays.

http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/07/how_diversity_punishes_asians.html
JULY 12, 2010
How Diversity Punishes Asians, Poor Whites and Lots of Others
by Russell K. Nieli

...

Besides the bias against lower-class whites, the private colleges in the Espenshade/Radford study seem to display what might be called an urban/Blue State bias against rural and Red State occupations and values. This is most clearly shown in a little remarked statistic in the study's treatment of the admissions advantage of participation in various high school extra-curricular activities. In the competitive private schools surveyed participation in many types of extra-curricular activities -- including community service activities, performing arts activities, and "cultural diversity" activities -- conferred a substantial improvement in an applicant's chances of admission. The admissions advantage was usually greatest for those who held leadership positions or who received awards or honors associated with their activities. No surprise here -- every student applying to competitive colleges knows about the importance of extracurriculars.

But what Espenshade and Radford found in regard to what they call "career-oriented activities" was truly shocking even to this hardened veteran of the campus ideological and cultural wars. Participation in such Red State activities as high school ROTC, 4-H clubs, or the Future Farmers of America was found to reduce very substantially a student's chances of gaining admission to the competitive private colleges in the NSCE database on an all-other-things-considered basis. The admissions disadvantage was greatest for those in leadership positions in these activities or those winning honors and awards. "Being an officer or winning awards" for such career-oriented activities as junior ROTC, 4-H, or Future Farmers of America, say Espenshade and Radford, "has a significantly negative association with admission outcomes at highly selective institutions." Excelling in these activities "is associated with 60 or 65 percent lower odds of admission."

Probably because these are activities of the working classes rather than the aristocracy.

Which means that they are unlikely to ascend to greater glory in their professional careers.

They are on the wrong side of history and their time has long since passed.

Or something like that.

Yep, I'm another one who doesn't believe what the admissions officers said. There was an NYT article last summer from an "application reader" at Berkeley which was very revealing about how they rank applicants. There are lots of hidden rules. Another piece of fact is that, at the level of the Ivy schools, there are plenty of applicants who have amazing depth AND breadth.

And even on the application forms of private middle and high schools the student needs to elaborate how their skills can contribute to the school. I'm sure the nature of the activities matters to the colleges.

My stand is that I will let my kids do the extracurriculars that will help them become who they want to be. How the colleges look at it is simply something that I don't care. Hopefully the kids will get into a college where they can thrive, but if not the Ivy, who cares?

This thread is making me think about NIH program officers. As in, they email you and say, "Your project idea fits with our mission. I encourage you to submit a grant application. Let's talk next week." So you get all charged up.

Then you call. You realize very quickly that the program officer either never read that one-page summary he asked you to write and that you labored over, or he's forgotten it completely and didn't bother to re-read it. So you summarize your idea and he doesn't sound so enthusiastic anymore. But you keep talking, because you really have no choice.

At some point, you bring up something about your preliminary data, and he gets all perky again. He cheerfully tells you that "this program doesn't require preliminary data, because we're trying to fund risky research. We're looking for groundbreaking ideas that aren't fully developed yet." So you ask about success rates for applications without preliminary data and he starts to answer sideways.

By the end of your phone call, you glumly understand that your much-anticipated conversation with this program officer has essentially been an attempt at extracting important information from someone who doesn't care about your tiny project. And you realize that he hasn't told you anything that you couldn't have read for yourself in the NIH's promotional materials (aka requests for applications and program descriptions). And then you start to realize that a lot of NIH's requests for applications seem to be rather narrowly written. And then you look at funded projects in the NIH's public database, and a lot of them are in the same general areas. So you quite reasonably start to wonder if the NIH is looking for a certain kind of "hot" project. And honey, yours isn't it.

It's not all the program manager's fault. This is what happens when success rates are around 10% (or less!), and the number of grant applications keeps climbing because there are too many people in research. It's also, IMO, it's what happens when you put the wrong kinds of people in charge of things like this.

The upshot here is that you can substitute "college admissions officer" for "NIH program officer" / "study section" and "extracurricular activity" for "project" here, and the story would be the same. Sadly, the reality is very different from what they tell you.

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2014/03/a_british_persp.html
A British Perspective on American Signaling
by Bryan Caplan
Econlog blog
MARCH 28, 2014

Fun footnote from Gregory Clark's new The Son Also Rises:

SO TRUE!!

I was going to say this... Nope, lots of things are not required. This really just means that you are allowed to apply and or someone will read your application (more or less). It's a different story when it comes to who is accepted.

@ Bostonian — I took it as a given that recruited athletes are in a separate category. Thanks for the article - it was also linked by gwern on Less Wrong. The reason that this issue had eluded me is that our advisees to date haven't been involved with the activities described. As for other things, the general view that the nature of the extracurricular activity doesn't matter has been expressed by people other than admissions officers, for example by Cal Newport.

@playandlearn -

(1) What criteria do you think they use?
(2) I don't know how sensitive colleges are to this, but there are always greater levels of depth, and sufficiently deep involvement in something consumes all of one's time, regardless of how impressive one is.
(3) We list some considerations in favor of going to an elite college at our page College selection: factors to consider.

@ Val — What criteria do you think they use?

1) My honest answer to your question, after reading this NYT articles "confessions of an application reader" (Aug. 1st, 2013), is: I don't know. I think I have a good idea of the minimum requirements, but beyond that, I can't articulate any. There are lots of college acceptance stats online, which will give people some ideas, but I haven't studied those much since my older one is still in middle school.

2) Yes, there can always be more depth. But college admissions likely will only compare an applicant against other applicants, instead of an objective standard.

3) I agree. I wouldn't stop my kids if they can get in an elite college. My view, though, is that an elite college is neither sufficient nor necessary for career success or personal happiness. For a lot of students, though, it could help.

In other words, I want my kids to focus on building skills and mentality to become who they want to be. If these get them into elite colleges, that's wonderful. But I wouldn't let them choose activities just because they might look like on college applications.

That does sort of presuppose that "college" here is synonymous with "elite institution of higher ed, preferably HYPS or at least Ivy."

Which I think a fair number of parent on THIS forum, even those of us with PG children who are in or heading into college have rejected as a myth.

This thread, in fact, discusses that very thing in some detail.


The Right College is a bit more complicated than looking for the right brand name-- even in this cohort.