Many applicants to the most selective university programs share high grades, high test scores, solid recommendations and generous doses of community service and volunteer activities. Yet, if they want to set themselves apart from the pool of exceptional students, a significant research experience in STEM or the social sciences helps.
The UC admissions readers need a well-wrought set of activities to appraise your application.
A candidate can submit 20 activities with up to 500 characters to describe each. An activity list can possibly reach a maximum of 10,000 characters, around 1,600 words or 3.5 pages. Now imagine being a UCLA admissions reader at 2am on a Saturday morning coming upon her 1007th description of an ASB council member heading up a beach cleanup? Yes, it’s part of the job description, but show a little mercy.
The 2,600 four-year colleges in the United States are a mish mash of public, private, religious, and secular schools with their own unique, independent admissions requirements. Consequently, distilling a list of factors that might provide uniformity across their admissions practices is not easy, nor uniformly accurate. Regardless, the NACAC (National Association of College Admissions Counselors) periodically performs such a survey across this vast collegiate universe and posits the most important factors into a list called the ‘Factors in the Admission Decision.”
According to a 2005 NACAC (National Association of College Academic Counselors) survey on factors that are given "considerable importance" in the admissions process, 'Grades in college prep courses/along with strength of curriculum' were most important, with just under 75% of schools surveyed citing this factor; admissions test scores were second, with 60%; then came class rank (which to me is just another way of asking for grades) with 30%; next, the essay with 23%, and then extracurricular activities with 8%. ("Dramatic Challenge to SAT and ACT" by Scott Jaschik, www.insidehighered.com.--Yes, the schools surveyed were allowed to select multiple factors.) Naturally, the one area that tends to consume many students and most parents is extracurricular, the least important factor according to the schools. Further, among the extracurricular activities, the elusive internship always seems the most difficult to discover and arrange.
Few aspects of the admissions process tend to fray the nerves like pulling together an activity list in your senior year and reviewing your extracurricular pursuits. Almost no one feels they compare well with their peers. This feeling is only compounded by articles about other applicants taking an 8-week jaunt to Bolivia and doing ground breaking research on some strange virus, or playing with the New York Symphony in Beijing before hiking up the face of K2. These applicants do, probably, exist. But, they shouldn't deter you from taking pride in whatever it is you enjoy and excel in.
