Extracurricular Activities

Extracurricular activities offer an invaluable opportunity for personal enrichment, the chance to develop interests, gain experience, and to make meaningful connections with others who share your enthusiasms. Happily, while your pursuit of non-academic interests and experiences is a factor in admission decisions, colleges do not have a preferred set of extracurricular activities. Thus, you are free to pursue any activity you find interesting or feel will contribute to your personal development. Bear in mind, however, that in their admissions considerations colleges find sustained and substantive engagement in an organization more compelling than superficial involvement in a great variety of clubs and activities. This is especially true if it appears that your involvement in multiple organizations exists in service of the college application process rather than through a genuine commitment to the groups in question.

In addition to intellectual and academic rigor, our colleges value engagement with the world beyond the classroom. Involvement with community services, with publications such as school newspapers or literary journals, with athletic teams, with drama, music, or dance, these are but a few of the interests we hope to see and to foster in our students. Furthermore, because selective colleges and universities admit such multifaceted and talented students, you can be assured that you will be able pursue enthusiastically your existing passions even as your exposure to new experiences leads you in unforeseen and rewarding directions.