Since 1975, US colleges have asked about high school applicants’ extracurriculars through the “activity” section of the Common App. The “activity” section allows high school students to list ten activities they pursue outside of the classroom, such as clubs, internships, occupations, or hobbies. This component of the application has inadvertently harmed club culture in American high schools.
For many students, this section of the application is crucial; we should be proud of our extracurricular accomplishments and feel confident highlighting them in our applications. Applications are all about representing yourself in the way you see fit, and for many, extracurriculars are a core part of people’s lives, more so than academics or test scores. However, this section of the Common App has caused unintended consequences on club culture in high schools. Students no longer view clubs as an activity to bring them joy or purpose. Instead, they see them as a chore and just another bullet point on their resume.
This issue is not entirely the individual student’s fault but rather the desire to stick out in the increasingly competitive application cycles. The amount of college applications has increased by more than one-third during the last five years alone. Yet, the available spaces have remained constant. With this in mind, however, we as students can still try our best to restore clubs to their original purpose and culture without limiting our college applications.
The purpose of clubs should be to organize groups of students with a common interest, whether it is a social issue, an identity-based student union, or just a leisurely activity, like chess or ping pong. Lately, it’s felt like many people involved in these activities are not in it for the shared interest or community aspects, but rather to build their college resume and fill the activities section.
Many club interest meetings at the beginning of the school year would incentivize students to join their club by saying “You can put [the club] on college applications!” People aren’t interested in the club unless there is some sort of incentive surrounding college applications to do so.
But, where is the problem? Even if the intentions behind joining the club are somewhat flawed, people are still getting involved, and this shouldn’t be an issue, right?
The willingness to join a club may be high, but for many, the effort they put into the club is incredibly low. With students trying to add as many extracurricular accomplishments as possible on the Common App, many also do the least amount of work possible in every activity so they have time to fulfill the deranged amount of other commitments they have made. This ends up with clubs that attract more than fifty members in the first week seeing drops in attendance to low numbers within a month of the school year starting.
The dynamics of student-led clubs and organizations amidst college applications is an incredibly difficult topic to discuss. It is not our fault as students that this competitive culture exists, but rather the system of high-stress and cutthroat dynamics of college applications in the US. While we cannot exactly fix the system, we can try our best not to feed into it. There’s nothing wrong with only having a few extracurriculars, so long as you are dedicated and passionate about them, and if you have ten activities you can commit to, then great!
Clubs at Jackson-Reed spend too much time attempting to increase membership and leadership positions through the incentive of college applications when they should be focusing on creating a committed group of members dedicated to the club’s principles.
