 Universities, especially the ones in the United States, love to see extracurriculars on your application. Especially now that more universities are going test optional, extracurriculars are becoming the way to evaluate students outside of their grades. Why do universities care so much about what you do after school? Everybody has to go to school. Everybody's going to take more or less the same courses. Extracurricular activities are one of the few things that you actually get to choose, so they say a lot more about you than your schoolwork. Now, the typical advice is to get into lots of activities, right? More is better. While it's true that universities do look for diversity in activities, more is not necessarily better. Diversity doesn't mean that you just do more activities. It means that you do more kinds of activities. So many robots and so many activities! A person who plays four sports is certainly very talented, but a person who plays a sport and an instrument and speaks another language and volunteers in their free time is a lot more interesting. So what kinds of activities should you do? At score, we focus on four distinct areas. I'm interrupting my own video to share some particularly tragic news with you. Lola, frequent appearer on this channel, is no longer here. She left me. There's only one logical explanation. My cat's the kind of cat that's attracted to success, and when she saw that we're just not reaching one billion subs fast enough, I'm sure that's why she left. Would you please consider subscribing so that my cat comes back? Four distinct areas or types of activities. Try to have one athletic activity, a healthy body, healthy mind and all that. Throw in an artistic activity that will help show off your creative side. Then look for an academic activity that shows that you're committed to learning and not just learning what school forced you to. Activities like Model United Nations or participating in academic competitions like Math Olympics are perfect for this. Finally, look for one activity that shows community engagement. Volunteering, starting an NGO or even just raising funds for a local cause that you support are all good examples of community engagement. While I was interviewing admissions officers for university episodes, I noticed that they almost all unanimously agreed that community engagement activities were some of the most important ones that they looked for. Don't leave that out. But diversity is not the only thing that universities are looking for when they check out your CV and get to that extracurricular activities section. They also want to see dedication and commitment. How do you show that? If you just cram four or five activities into your senior year of high school, it's going to be pretty obvious that you were just trying to fatten up your CV for your application. I think it needs a little padding. Universities want you to show genuine interest in these activities, not just doing them because you have to. Obviously, the easiest way to show that interest is to just enjoy doing the activity and do it for a long time. So if you're in high school right now, that means you should be looking for activities that you can see yourself doing for a while. Don't think it's too late to start something new. Even if you're in your junior or senior year, you can get into a new activity if you really believe that you're going to continue to do it. Now, universities typically look at what you've done in the last four years or basically everything since ninth grade. Although, if you started an activity before that, maybe in middle school and you continue to do it, make sure they know that. It might help to visualize what a good profile looks like, so I made this little chart. On the bottom here, we have the diversity, the number of the different kinds of activities that you have. On the other axis, we're looking at how long you've spent doing those activities in years. You definitely don't want to end up over here where you only have one or two activities that you've spent a significant amount of time on. Likewise, you don't want to be anywhere near the bottom of this chart where you might have a lot of activities but very little investment in them. The sweet spot is around here with four different kinds of activities and at least a couple of years invested in each. But there's something else you can do to make your extracurricular activities even stronger. The icing on the extracurricular cake is leadership. If you can show that you are a leader in the activity, that's going to make your profile even more attractive. Were you the captain of your team? Did you organize a concert? Did you start your own NGO so that you could engage with the community? If you can show leadership in even just one of your activities, that's going to be a huge plus for admissions. Now, we recommend that even after you graduate high school, you continue to do these activities. You may get asked by universities to explain what you've been doing in the time between your graduation and your admission. Sometimes students get put on a wait list and then they're asked to explain what they've been doing in these last few months. If you stop doing your extracurriculars altogether, you're not going to have much to say. And that same mentality should apply to your search for universities also. These activities, if they really are important to you, should be something that you're looking for when you apply to universities. So when you do start applying, you're going to want to target universities that have a similar profile. If you've got a very athletic profile, then look for universities with good sports programs and great sports facilities. If performing arts is more your thing, find one that has a modern recently built theater. When your interests match the things that the university offers, they're more likely to see you as a good fit because you are. If you need help finding extracurricular activities or you just want to build up the best profile possible, hit us up with prepwithscore.com and ask us about our high school counseling system. We're trying to help high schoolers to have the best chance as possible. In the United States, people start preparing their applications for university from the time they walk into high school. I remember in ninth grade, my counselor coming to my classroom and telling me all these things that I was going to need to do. I ignored him completely. I shouldn't have done that. As an international student, you may not have that same support system around you. So it's important to get one. And in the meantime, start looking at universities that have the same interests as you do. If you're interested in science and art, check out the video we did on Rochester Institute of Technology. If you're more into community engagement and sports, you'll love the University of Pittsburgh. Feels good to be back in the usual location. We're going to be back next week with more content like how to study in a country that a lot of people have requested. So I will see you next week.