Speaker 1: All right, we're doing this quick. Activities colleges want to see. Being captain of at least three varsity sports teams, doing a paid internship at Google the summer after freshman year, joining the National Society of High School Scholars. Activities colleges do not want to see. Volunteering at a hospital for less than 40 hours a week, forgetting to lean in for a kiss after your Yale interview, being poor. Everything I said earlier was just a joke, by the way. Hi there. Welcome to Lordrick's room. My name is Lordrick. Today we're going to talk about high school extracurricular activities and why when it comes to college admissions, it doesn't really matter what activities you do, or at least it doesn't matter as much as you think it would, as long as you're not an international applicant. I remember back when I was a wee lad in my high school days, I only focused on doing activities that I thought would look good for college admissions. You know, if there was something I thought wouldn't look good on my resume, I just wouldn't do it. And if there was something I thought would look good for my applications, I'd jump at every opportunity. But at the same time, this was also pre-senior year Lordrick who thought National Honor Society would make me competitive for Ivy League schools. So clearly I had no idea what was going on. I'm not really here to discuss which activities you should be doing or not doing specifically because that's another topic for another video, but my point is that ultimately there aren't all that many activities that are inherently good for college admissions. Of course, if you did something like cure cancer, that would probably get your foot in the door to most places, if not all places. But this is about basically all other activities out there that aren't going to be on the level of curing cancer. Like I was saying, early on in my high school career, I chased after so many things that I thought would look good. And this is something I only realized once I had actually started working on my actual college applications. But a lot of those activities that I thought would make me look good ended up not having a spot anywhere in my applications. And the things that did end up on my list of activities were mainly things that plenty of other people were doing. In my Stanford admissions file, my application readers said that the activities I had were mostly standard. So then how did I manage to get in? The answer, I think, came down to my essays. And this brings up the point of content versus execution. And this is where I stress the importance of having good execution. Because you can make up for bad content with good execution, but it's much harder to make up for bad execution with good content. Let me give you guys a bit of an example. So imagine that you are good at video games. Imagine that you're on an Overwatch team that regularly wins at all the major international competitions and you've made like over a million dollars in sponsorships. That's a really awesome activity and would definitely make for great content to help you stand out in your college applications. But then in your application, all you write is that you play Overwatch competitively. And suddenly it doesn't seem all that impressive like it did just a few moments ago. That's a bit of an extreme generalization but this shows how you can have the coolest, most impressive activities. But without that good execution, you just look like a loser who plays video games. But on the other hand, imagine that you're on student government, not even president or anything. You manage to just barely win class representative. Now on the surface, that seems very unimpressive, very unremarkable because there are probably thousands and thousands of other class representatives out there applying to colleges at the same time as you. But then in your application, you write about how you never wanted to be class rep in the first place but your friend encouraged you to run. And then in the process of running for class rep, you were able to start to get over your fear of public speaking. And then in your role as class representative, you were able to lead planning for one of the biggest fundraisers in your school's entire history. Now being a class representative is starting to look a lot more impressive. As you can see, having that good execution, whether it's in your essays or wherever else, can take an activity that's mediocre at best and really propel it to the next level. I'd even go as far as to argue that execution is more important than content. Of course, the sweet spot would be to have good content and good execution, but good execution on its own can definitely take you a long way. And because of that, the activity you do doesn't really matter all that much as long as you can present it in a compelling way. This means that you don't have to chase after activities that you think will look good for college admissions because you can take any activity and turn it into something that looks good. So if you're doing something that doesn't seem all that cool on the surface, you can write about it in such a way that shows that you are in fact doing something cool. I think that there are two major ways of achieving this. The first is through impact. As a great orator once said, it matters not what you've done, but what you do with what you've done for others. This means that by doing whatever activity it is you're doing, you are also having a positive impact on the people around you, whether it's directly or indirectly. Like, for example, if you're part of a national honor society, which is an activity that typically doesn't serve much purpose other than to pad resumes, you can generate impact by doing something for other students in your school. Like maybe starting an after school tutoring program where members of NHS tutor kids who are struggling in their classes. In that case, NHS is no longer just a resume padder, but an activity that has an actual positive impact on the surrounding community. And then the second way is to highlight the lessons you've learned through your activities. Taking the student government example from earlier, if you write about how being a part of student government has helped you to be more outgoing and willing to take on new challenges that push you past your comfort zone, you can show how your activity has helped you to grow as an individual. With that, you're able to really show that your activity has served some purpose other than for the sake of filling up a slot on your college applications. And by focusing on the impact that it's had on you, you're able to tell a more personal and unique story because it's unlikely that other people are going to have the same exact experiences as you. And since it's possible to turn a mediocre activity into an amazing one and also turn an amazing activity into a mediocre one, the specific activities you do do not matter. There is no checklist of activities that colleges want to see. And at the same time, there isn't a blacklist of activities that they don't want to see. This means that you really can do whatever you want without worrying if it'll look good or not. Do you want to join your local anime and manga club? Go for it. Do you want to join the JV soccer team even though you don't plan on winning any major awards or anything? No problem. Are you going to smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm? Please feel free to do so. Looking back, I definitely wish that I hadn't wasted my time with so many random activities that I didn't enjoy because I wanted to look good for admissions and instead devoted more time to the things that I did actually enjoy doing. You know, storytelling is a key component to college admissions. You know, you're telling the story of your high school experience essentially. And it is much easier to write stories about things that you enjoyed than it is about things that you didn't enjoy. It's a lot easier in that case to show impact or growth or both, which is what you should be doing anyway. So I guess what I want to say is that you shouldn't aim to do things just for the sake of college admissions. Realistically, your chances of admissions to top colleges is like one to two percent. As much as I hate to say it, you are very likely to not get into the school of your dreams. So between things that you enjoy doing and things that you don't enjoy doing, you might as well stick with the things you do enjoy, even if it doesn't seem all that impressive to begin with, especially since you can always highlight your growth and impact and so on to bring your activities up to the next level. So in short, there really is no such thing as useless extracurricular activities. It's what you make of them that'll really decide how far you go. Thanks for watching. Please subscribe if you'd like and I'll see you guys later. Bye.