| |
| Should I join a lot of school clubs? |
|
You may have heard from friends and family that
you should join as many clubs as possible to make your college
applications look good. This is true, but only to a certain extent.
You should not join every club, group, team, etc., because you
simply will not have the time. You are better off selecting those
clubs which interest you the most and putting some real effort into
your membership.
|
|
You are better off devoting a lot of time to a particular club
than showing up to half of the meetings for six clubs. Why? You want
to be able to tell a college what you did with the club. You want to
be able to say, "I spent two years in Drama Club where I helped
organize presentations at local senior centers. I acted in the
‘Seeing Shakespeare’ troupe, playing numerous roles in a montage of
the most famous scenes from Shakespeare. I not only participated in
the group, but I helped plan our funding campaigns by working with
local businesses and holding fundraisers within my school." |
| |
| What about clubs and groups outside
of school? |
| Outside groups are great.
Volunteer at your local library, hospital, or senior center.
Help rebuild a house with Habitat for Humanity. |
|
But avoid any ethnic, political, or religious
groups. |
| |
|
Why should I avoid ethnic, political, and religious groups? |
| No one is saying that you
can't be part of a church group, polka at the Polish festival,
or work for someone's political campaign. In fact, there
are times when being affiliated with these organizations will
help you get ahead in life. But to get into college,
you'll need to do other things as well, since you can't put this
stuff on your college application. |
| However, most colleges will
not let you put information about these sorts of things on your
application. Why? Because of reviewer bias. |
| You do not know who will
review your application. The vast majority of reviewers
try to be fair, but no one is perfect. When you mention
the volunteer work you have done through an ethnic organization,
church, or political party, you risk falling victim to a
reviewer's bias. |
| |
| How do I know if volunteer work is
"safe for college"? |
| Remember the "we do not
discriminate..." phrasing you see printed on so many things? |
| "We do not discriminate on
the basis of race, religion, national origin, color, sex, age,
sexual orientation, or disability." |
This is the sort of
statement that your future university is trying to live up to.
The college does not want to know what you are in terms of race,
religion, etc., for fear that the university might accidentally
discriminate against you because of whatever you are. If
you tell the college that you are active in your local Filipino
association, guess what...the university can be 99.9% certain
that you are a Filipino.
So if your volunteer work was with an
organization that has anything whatsoever to do with race,
religion, national origin, color, sex, age, or sexual
orientation, you are better off not mentioning it at all. |
| The only thing that is
trickier to explain is "disability." You might not want to
disclose that you yourself have a particular disability.
However, it is always 100% okay for anyone to put on a college
application that she or he worked with the disabled, volunteered
at the Special Olympics, etc. |
| |
| |
|
Main
Page |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
| |
