EP 22: Best of Season 1: What Extracurricular Activities Look Best On College Applications?
In this special "Best of" episode of the Admittedly Podcast, host Natasha presents some of the most memorable clips from Season One.
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In this special "Best of" episode of the Admittedly Podcast, host Natasha presents some of the most memorable clips from Season One.
Join Thomas, an expert in college admissions, as he shares valuable insights on extracurricular activities and summer planning. Thomas offers guidance on standing out, the value of work experience, sports considerations, the importance of depth in activities, and making the most of summer vacations.
JOIN our mailing list for important updates and special bonus features. Tune in to the full episodes to gain valuable insights into extracurricular activities, summer planning, and strategies for making your college application shine. Remember, it's about meaningful engagement, personal growth, and showcasing your unique journey to universities.
Key Highlights
Episode 4- Finding the Right Activities to Stand Out: Thomas acknowledges the stress surrounding the quest for the best extracurricular activities. He emphasizes the need to avoid blindly following trends and seeking out superficial uniqueness. Instead, he encourages students to focus on personal growth and meaningful engagement.
Episode 4- Balancing Work and Extracurriculars: Thomas highlights the importance of understanding individual circumstances when it comes to balancing work and extracurricular activities. He explains how universities now recognize the value of work experience and how it can shape an applicant's character and development.
Episode 4- Sports Considerations for College Admissions: Thomas delves into the hard truth about high school sports and their impact on college admissions. He urges students to critically evaluate their athletic abilities and potential for recruitment. While sports teach valuable life lessons, he encourages students to consider other activities that can truly set them apart in a competitive applicant pool.
Episode 4- Depth vs. Breadth in Activities: Thomas discusses the significance of depth in activities when building an admission strategy. He advises students to align their activities with their intended majors or areas of interest. Rather than engaging in a wide range of activities, students should seek depth and meaning in their chosen pursuits.
Episode 6- Making the Most of Summer Breaks: Thomas stresses the importance of using summer breaks effectively. He cautions against simply indulging in leisure or taking lavish vacations without meaningful engagement. Instead, students should consider activities that foster personal growth, align with their academic goals, and provide valuable experiences.
Episode 6- Choosing Academic Summer Programs: Thomas provides insights into choosing academic summer programs. He advises students to carefully examine the offerings and distinguish between third-party programs and those directly offered by universities. Students should consider the relevance of courses to their academic interests and motivations behind selecting specific programs.
Episode 8- Live Coaching Session: Identifying Passions and Pursuits: In a live coaching session with Maui, a high school freshman, Thomas helps him explore his current activities and passions. They discuss swimming, music, language learning, and part-time work. Thomas guides Maui in evaluating his abilities and interests to identify activities with potential for further development.
Episode 9- Developing Depth and Consistency in Activities: Thomas emphasizes the importance of developing depth and consistency in chosen activities throughout high school. He explains how demonstrating progress and dedication over time helps students stand out as interesting and unique applicants.
Episode 9- Avoiding Last-Minute Superficial Activities: Thomas cautions against the temptation to hastily engage in activities without genuine passion or commitment. He highlights the significance of demonstrating a genuine and authentic interest in a pursuit, rather than resorting to shallow experiences.
About Thomas
Thomas is a parent and alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania. After earning his MBA at the Wharton School in 2003, he moved to Silicon Valley. For three years, he was director of admissions and financial aid at Wharton School. He worked closely with admissions professionals, students, alumni, and professors to create the best possible MBA class.
Thomas has been an entrepreneur his entire life in the fields of finance, agriculture, wellness, and sporting goods. As the founder of Global Education Opportunities, he works with diverse and underserved communities to help them become successful college students. Thomas started the podcast Admittedly because he is passionate about demystifying the application process for parents and applicants.
Related Links
Apply to be a guest: www.thomascaleel.com/apply-for-podcast
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Instagram: @admittedlypodcast
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Thomas: Hello, and welcome to the admittedly podcast. My name is Thomas Caleel. I'm the former director of MBA admissions and financial aid from my alma mater, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In this podcast, I don't promise easy answers or quick fixes, but I will use my decades of experience to help you achieve your education goals. Now, let's get started.
Natasha: Hi, I'm Natasha, the producer of the admittedly podcast. In this special best-of episode, I pulled out some of the most memorable clips from season one, where Thomas talks about what extracurricular activities are best when thinking of college admissions. He also discusses how to structure summer activities, and other important factors you need to think about as you progress through high school. Let's jump right in. In this first clip from episode four, Thomas is answering a very common question, What can my child do to stand out? Let's listen.
Thomas: I'm always asked by students and parents, what is the best activity, it's very stressful. Everybody's trying to game the system. And I wish there was an algorithm, I wish that there was a formula that I could give you that if you did activity X, Y, and Z, you are guaranteed admission to a certain university. But what we really want to do is not just follow the herd not just go along with what everybody else is doing. And not in a way a lot of people hear that they hear courage they hear don't follow the crowd, and they think, Oh, I just need to find something different. And if I just find something different, if I take beekeeping, for example, then I'm totally guaranteed to get into Harvard. And that is, again, not the case, necessarily. I'm sure there have been a few beekeepers that have been admitted to Harvard over the years.
But it doesn't guarantee that that is going to be the eventual outcome. So when we think about what the best activities or, and can be, we need to differentiate a few things.
Natasha: In this next clip, from episode four, Thomas is talking about how activities can look different for those who need to work during high school, and how to incorporate this into your college application.
Thomas: Everybody has a different set of opportunities, privileges, and conditions that they find themselves in. And so we're gonna differentiate here, there are some students that we work with who have to work, you know, they don't have the luxury of being on Student Council and joining five or six clubs, they have to work to support help support the family, they have to work to help pay for their education, maybe pay for their car, all of those things. And that is, okay, that's totally fine. Universities have gotten much more aware of this.
In fact, this year there are a set of questions that many schools are using, about things that you do that are not listed in the activity section, you know, do you spend a considerable amount of time helping your family help others in religious practice, cleaning up the house, things like that, they really want to see what your life is like, outside of school, and what that means to you as a human being and as an applicant, if you are working, okay, if you're working, and by working, I'm really looking at something where you're generating income, that is a very, very valuable part of, of who you are, quite frankly, and how you are growing and developing as a person and an applicant.
So what I would say there is that there's no right answer, and you'll hear this from me a lot. There is no one right answer, I would say, choose the employment that works best for you. What's convenient for your home, where can you get the best financial reward for your time? Where can you go that gives you the flexibility as a student to adjust your hours to you know, honor family commitments and other things that you might need to do? Because obviously, you know, school family these things come first. And you know, we need to balance that we don't want to get lost in a cycle where you're working just to be able to afford school, but work is keeping you from school and then we have a lose-lose situation across the board.
Natasha: In this next clip from episode four, Tom gives a hard truth about high school sports and how this fits into your overall strategy.
Thomas: The question, I think that we need to ask, though, is, are you a star? How good are you at what you are doing? And I'm not asking this to be critical or downplay your accomplishments in any sense of the word. But I often get approached by parents. And they'll say, Oh, my, my child is so fantastic. And she's a two, you know, two sport Captain three-sport varsity athlete. And she's just great at that. And I said, Well, that's really wonderful. Is she good enough to be recruited? And there's a little bit of hemming and hawing. And the answer comes back, well, not really. And there's nothing wrong with that sports teach us so much about teamwork and leadership, and winning and losing and, and coming back from adversity. And that's all great.
But we want to understand and be very honest with ourselves that if we're not good enough to continue that at a collegiate level, and by collegiate level, I mean, a competitive level, right, you can always play club-level sports in college. And that's great. And I think it's a great way to meet people and, and continue your love of a sport. But if you're not going to be recruited, if you're not going to play at that level, and let's be honest, most of us are not at that level, then we need to think about other activities as well, where we can stand out and differentiate ourselves because there will be 10s of 1000s of applicants who are very good at high school sports, right. And so that story does not necessarily differentiate, you know, if you're being recruited, if you're a recruited athlete, or you're being recruited as a musician, or an artist or an actor, that's a very different conversation to have.
Natasha: In this next clip, from episode four, Thomas is discussing the importance of breadth versus depth of activities for your overall admission strategy.
Thomas: Because the other thing that's very important is, whatever you do needs to make sense in your overall strategy. So if you present yourself, for example, to a university as a journalism major, but you spent all of your extracurricular time, let's say, Yes, you write for the school paper, or maybe you're an editor at the school paper, but then you're also doing sports, and you're involved in the homecoming dance, and you're doing all of these other things. That makes you an interesting evolved person, absolutely, and a leader on campus.
But how does it differentiate you in the applicant pool of journalists? How have you created an opportunity for yourself to deepen and develop your voice as a journalist to deepen your experience? And when you're looking at highly competitive admissions pools, that's what's going to set you apart. It's not the breadth of activities, it's the depth of activities. It's how are you engaging in a meaningful way, with things that matter to you?
Natasha: In this next clip, from Episode Six, Thomas warns about summer vacations, and how at one point, students need to start taking ownership of their own summer plans and choose activities that will bring them closer to their future academic goals.
Thomas: I want to stress that summer should be a time both for connection and relaxation, but also to help us grow as a human and prepare better as potential applicants. So what I want to start talking about today is using our time wisely. So what we see a lot of times with students, especially students from let's say, more affluent families is that they take these amazing trips during the summer, and they come to us maybe junior year. And we realize, wow, there's a huge gap. There's this huge hole in your progression in your development and your growth. Because you can't really talk about the trip you took to Paris or the safari you took in South Africa.
But what we want to avoid is a situation where your summers are not spent doing meaningful things. And what do we mean by meaningful, right? Because we don't want to over-strategize it. We really don't want to be that person who is only focused on their applications and really loses sight of life and loses sight of enjoying themselves and doing what they love.
Natasha: In this next clip from Episode Six, Thomas discusses the different types of academic summer programs and what ones he recommends, if you want to go that route.
Thomas: A lot of parents will also say to me, Well, what about academic programs? Right, my son or daughter wants to go to Stanford and so should they go to a Stanford academic program? And if you haven't figured it out by now, my favorite answer is it depends. Because there is really no right answer. What I would caution you to do, first of all, is look at the academic offering because many schools will simply lease space to third-party providers. And if you're taking a third-party provider course, even at a top campus, it's very, very different than courses that are offered, for example, for credit, by that university's faculty, it's going to be viewed very, very differently, because one is basically an exercise of privilege.
Do you have the ability to pay for this course? And if so, I mean, great. But those kinds of programs have been deeply discounted by admissions officers because they realize that it is very segregated, and there are high barriers to entry that not everybody can clear.
And so they view them with a skeptical eye. A better program would be one that's offered by the actual university and has scholarship opportunities that are competitive and requires an intensive application process. And so those are treated more as academic processes. And that's great. But again, don't just go and take courses at the Harvard Summer Institute, because it's Harvard. Really, the question is, why are you taking these you know, even if it's a course that's not directly related to what you say you want to study? Why did you choose that course? What was it about that subject that interested you?
Natasha: In this next clip from episode eight, we're jumping into a live coaching session with high school freshmen Maui, where they explore his current activities and passions,
Thomas: you know, Maui and putting you on the spot. What are some of the things that you like to do? And what are some of the things you do inside and outside of school right now, if you don't mind sharing some of that?
Maui: So like, both for and outside of school, I swim although right now, outside of school, I kind of stopped for a little while, because my son was swimming competitively and ready to swim for one team at a time. Sport and play drums if you can't see it, this jumps off.
Thomas: I can see a little bow on the corner there. That's pretty cool.
Maui: When I played piano for the complete six years. As it says, years of the Japanese school in terms of outside is huge.
Thomas: Are you still in the Japanese school?
Maui: I started receiving the news.
Thomas: Okay, great. And anything else that you do?
Maui: Okay. I'm in a cooking class for school. It's pretty fun. Here Yeah. I work on the weekends for a local pizza place.
Thomas: Very nice. What do you do there?
Maui: Oh, yeah, I'll do the opening and closing. Do customer service, a photo, or feel talking? make pizzas have come up with some advice that is pretty basic stuff for physicals.
Thomas: so, there's a lot here. And you know, you'd sound like a very, very interesting young man, quite frankly. So let's start at the top with the swimming. When you say you're swimming competitively, is that? You know, I always ask people, and this is a hard question to answer, like, how good are you now?
Maui: In terms of a scale of one through 10, probably, like, four and a half. I'm not going to drown or anything, but not an Olympic athlete, so it's probably similar.
Thomas: And that's fair enough. And you know, everybody is kind of smiling and chuckling a little bit with that question. But really, you know, as you're thinking about progress and process, and one of the reasons it's good to kind of think about this freshman year is we do get approached by families who have what I would say our competitive level athletes.
Natasha: In this next clip from Episode Nine, Thomas is now helping Maui dial in what activities to pursue, based on his passions and future goals.
Thomas: So I think of all these things that we've talked about, right? What It Is there anything that particularly stands out for you anything that particularly the, you say, Hey, this is, you know, this is really something that I would like to pursue further. I really want to kind of dig in on this a little bit. Are we still lots of different things going on?
Maui: So I mean, when I can I definitely want to go through life by turning very materialistic and owing us money need to, especially up to everyone has pools, it's always gonna be a useful skill to have on hand.
Thomas: This is why we start having this conference. Session around ninth grade. Right? So I think you know, this summer we have an interesting summer planned, you sound pretty busy, right? And generally, between freshman and sophomore year, you get a bit of a pass, right, you can kind of explore a little bit, see what it is that you want to do, right? But as we move forward through our high school career or through our high school career, it starts to get important for you to develop a little bit more depth, right?
And the reason is, when we go back to, your initial kind of breakdown of what you think a school might look for, use the term interesting and unique, right? So I would look for somebody that kind of goes past the standard stuff and look for somebody who's interesting and unique. And one of the ways you demonstrate interestingness or uniqueness, right, I don't think interestingness, is a word but anyway, we're gonna go with it is looking for proof, consistent performance, and progression over time.
Natasha: In his last clip, from Episode Nine, Thomas gives a real-life example that shows how doing too little too late can affect your college application when it comes to extracurricular activities.
Thomas: Because if you think even if you think about this from just real life, common sense perspective, if you meet somebody, and they say, you know, for example, if you're a cooking teacher walked in and said, I love cooking, you say, great, you know, tell me like, how did you develop your love of cooking? Where'd you learn how to cook? And you said, I don't know what if you TikTok videos and thought it'd be a good idea? Right? You might not take that as seriously as somebody like your teacher who comes in and says, Well, I owned a big catering business. I've been cooking professionally for 25 years and, you know, went to the CIA and did all the Culinary Institute of America. I don't know, maybe at the CIA, they also train you how to cook has a good cover story, but we're talking about the Culinary Institute of America here. And, you know, or something similar.
And so what schools are really looking at is when you get to senior year, and you're telling them, okay, I'm Maui, this is who I am. This is what matters to me. This is what I want to do. They're going to look for evidence of that. Right? And this is the trap that most students get into they start trying to put that evidence together late junior year or early senior year at that point is a little bit too late.
Thank you for joining us today. Please take a moment to subscribe to my admittedly podcast and download this episode. I welcome you to share your thoughts and questions with me. You can find us on social media at admittedly podcast. I look forward to continuing our journey together.
