What Extracurricular Activities Should You Do in High School

hi my name is Emma and today I'm partnering with talk my school to share the extracurriculars that I participated in throughout High School to get into the University of Pennsylvania I applied and was accepted to pen in the early decision round of the 2022 2023 school year and I've also received over $127,000 in scholarship for my first two years of school and like I mentioned before today I'm sharing my extracurriculars that I participated in in high school so I'll talk about all of the clubs that I was continuously involved in as well as miscellaneous other competitions that I participated in that were kind of resume builders and supplements to my main extracurriculars one other thing to note is that I was a freshman in high school whenever covid first became a really big issue the end of my freshman year of high school was cut off and my sophore year of high school no clubs were happening at all it was just Sports all of the other extra curric that I would have been involved in completely shut down so I'm not going to do this video in order of school year for that reason because things got really all out of whack so I'm just going to go through each um extracurricular that I was involved in and discuss what I did each year and when I was involved and I'll be referencing my old high school resume so the first thing that I want to talk about was probably my most significant of my high school extracurriculars at least it was for me personally this is actually what I wrote my common app essay about as well I was a Lincoln Douglas debater I started debating in middle school and whenever I got to high school I switched over to Lincoln Douglas I from my freshman year as a novice Lincoln Douglas debater I championed one tournament and then co- championed another so both of those I technically came in first place although one of them I tied in and then I was also the highest ranking quarterfinalist for two more tournaments one of them was my first ever tournament and then the other one was the state championship tournament for first and second year debaters so I was going up against novice and junior varsity mostly but occasionally a varsity debater as well and I came in fifth technically in both of those tournaments and then at the state championships I was also the Seventh Place speaker so that was what debate looked like my freshman year of high school and then like I said uh sophomore year everything was completely shut down and then my coach left our school my junior year and the team essentially fell apart we were mostly student run it was a very very hectic time trying to find a new coach I was at this time a varsity debater I debated in one virtual tournament but there was very little supervision very little guidance so my senior year although I was technically still a varsity debate member I did not compete and instead I turned my eyes to the novice Lincoln Douglas Debaters that were coming into High School looking to get involved in debate who needed guidance we switched to another teacher sponsor but this time we completely embraced having students as the coaches and I became the novice Lincoln Douglas debate coach so instead of competing myself I trained up a new generation of novice Lincoln Douglas Debaters um so that was pretty much what debate looked like for me and like I said this was a super important um extracurricular for me in high school I talked about it a lot in my interview and I wrote my essay about the way that debate shaped who I was uh that was definitely my biggest involvement and then after that going down the line um I volunteered at the local food bank here in Columbus feeding the valley um I started volunteering with them as in Middle School actually and I volunteered with them as a freshman and then once again uh was not able to volunteer with them as a sophomore due to covid they had some liability issues that caused them to no longer allow miners to volunteer but I did start volunteering with them again as a junior and continued as a senior um and I would still like to continue volunteering with them over the Summers while I'm back in town and then building right off of that because I wasn't able to volunteer at feeding the valley anymore and all of our clubs were shut down the second I turned 16 I desperately wanted a job because I needed something to do with my time so I started working at Baskin Robbins as a crew member serving ice cream um I started that the second that I turned 16 so right after my sophomore year ended and I continued working with them for a little over 2 years I was promoted to shift leader 2 months into my time there and then was a shift leader for exactly 2 years before I moved away to college um so I worked almost full-time over the summer and about 20ish hours a week during the school year uh so that was the second half of my school year that was another really big thing that I was doing even though it's not technically an extracurricular that you do for school it's just something that took up a lot of my time that I got to put on my resume um after that I am politically involved I'm still politically involved in college as well um but starting my freshman year I joined the high school's young Republicans chapter and I was a member of that as a freshman and a junior and a senior as well once meeting started back up and then Senior Year I was also the co-president of that club and I organized a nonpartisan voter registration drive on campus um as part of young Republicans but like I said it was nonpartisan um moving down the line another one of the big things that I did was piano I was pretty involved in the Arts in general throughout all high school and I still like to be very involved with that I've played piano for around 12 years now and obviously that would have spanned through all of my high school time I also did a few auditions a year which were just kind of like judged not really competitions but you would go and you would play a couple pieces by memory and you would have a judge there who would score you so I did a couple of those every year and then I also had semiannual recitals where I performed for a larger audience and one of the auditions that I did was for wrote the state and the national piano Guild and I was a member of each of those throughout high school and as I said I was very involved with the Arts another thing that I did that wasn't really an extracurricular in the typical sense but was an extra supplement for my resume uh for the Arts was the PTSA Reflections contest I entered in both Visual Arts and photography for several years throughout middle and high school I don't remember exactly what year I placed what but what I can tell you is that between six between 7th grade and my senior year of high school I won first place in the district visual arts division four times and first place in the district photography division two times I also won second place at the state level for visual arts once and third place at the state level for visual arts twice um so that was my PTSA Reflections contest rap sheet and then uh another thing that I did with the Arts was something called the Columbus State University Art Throwdown uh basically what this is is each school that participates from around the state of Georgia selects 12 exceptional art students to compete in a variety of different art categories these categories change every year but they have some that St the same and how it works is you typically choose a category that you haven't heard of before they're not like typical things like painting usually they're very Niche a lot of times uh students go to a 30 minute workshop with a couple of Pros from the Columbus State University Art Department who give you a little workshop on all of the tools and techniques of the category and then after that you're turned loose either by yourself or in a small group depending on your division with 2 hours to create a final piece that will then be judged so my Junior and my senior year I competed in the metal working category um in this competition I was taught how to weld how to use a plasma cutter and a variety of different Saws and other interesting things like that I also had a CAD plasma cutter where you can design a shape on Cad and then have a plasma cutter cut it out for you out of sheet metal and we did utilize that my first year doing that tournament so I got to do that for a couple of years I won first place my junior year and then third place my senior year and that was the main stuff that I did with art in high school um after that I had a couple of things that I did my junior year one of them was I was a Home Room Senator which is kind of like an extension of student council or whatever your student government is the way it works is your home room teacher selects a senator for each home room and you go to like all of the kind of student council like information sessions and you're put in charge of a couple of like school spirit type activities for your home room like maybe you'll be put in charge of Distributing information or teaching people chance for a pep rally things like that um so I did that my junior year and then I was also on the real life for Life team junior year my high school had the most active real life for Life team in the state and I believe one of the best uh contributors to the real life for Life Fund in the nation if I'm not mistaken um I was part of that my junior year and then my Junior and Senior year I was on the Powderpuff football team um the way our Powderpuff worked was that all of the proceeds from the game went directly to real life or life so I was on the real life or life team but I also worked for getting donations for real life life by participating in Powderpuff my Junior and senior years and then oh probably my second biggest thing that I did in high school here is the Georgia Governor's honors program I was selected as a finalist for that the summer after my junior year and to give you a rundown of Governor's honors program it's a highly selective 4-week program hosted at a Georgia College you go through several rounds of applications you write essays and then if you're selected as a semi-finalist you go to the event and you do an interview and a performance assessment uh the students that are selected represent the top 0.25% of eligible students in the state um I applied in chemistry my year only 28 students from the entire state of Georgia were selected for chemistry and this followed the semi-finalist event where we were given a performance task they gave you 20 minutes and four sets of raw data you select the one that most relates to the concentration of science that you are applying for and then you have to analyze that data and determine what it means and then create an experimental design which you will then present to a panel of three content Specialists and field experts um as part of your interview and then there's also an interview that a companies and a few rounds of essays before that um so I was selected to participate in the program in chemistry and while I was there I took classes for 4 hours 6 days a week in chemistry and a variety of other interdisiplinary science categories and at the end of it you participate in an inter interdisciplinary scientific research project uh I did mine on herbicide uptake levels in unspread Lima liab bead seeds so I did agricultural chemistry for that um after your research project is over you present your findings at a symposium with all of the other attendees and some content experts and your paper that you write about it is also published in the GHP Journal at Barry College or whatever college is hosting it so I was very fortunate and able to participate in the Georgia Governor honors program as a chemistry major I also got to do a minor and dance which was super fun it was a very rewarding experience and I think it looked great on college applications so I did that between my Junior and senior years and then on my Junior and Senior year I was also in Beta Club so I think I did about 20 hours of volunteer work per year for that um and then of course had to keep up with my grades and everything else and my Junior and Senior year I was also a member of National Honor Society National English Honor Society and National Spanish Honor Society and then my senior year only I was also a member of mu aeta the national math Honor Society and roaa the national social studies Honor Society um and then going into my senior year I was a journalist for my high school newspaper the Blue Streak which was not very active as journalism was no longer being offered as a class it was solely an extracurricular but I did write an article or two for that um and I was an openhouse volunteer so I mentioned before that debate was super important to me and I was selected to be the representative for the debate team at our openhouse I went to a full magnet public high school so we were publicly funded but nobody was zoned for our school you had to test in and as a result of that we had a really big openhouse where we tried to Showcase everything that we had going on extracurriculars and academics everything like that to convince people to you know take the test apply and and get them excited about coming to this Magnet High School that was a lot of rigorous um AP exams or AP classes and stuff like that um so we had open house every year to try to get people excited for that I was the representative for debate and English opportunities so I performed in a little skit to Showcase all of our different opportunities and then afterwards I spent a few hours a couple of nights talking to people about debate trying to get them excited and give them a rundown of what other English opportunities we offered at the high school more broadly and the last thing that I did my senior year was my job shut down for renovations for about a month and I had a month off so in that time I got an automatic certification to teach SAT prep for a company called Schoolhouse world the sister company of Con Academy and I hosted a free 4-week sat verbal boot camp for that company so I reached I believe 12 students across the US and gave them free sat uh evidence-based reading and writing help uh leading up to their SATs that was what I was involved in as um a high school student I still keep up with a lot of the same things that I did in high school now I'm still an SAT tutor um and I'm still a journalist I also still do some debate I'm still politically involved and I play keyboard for a pop rock band on campus now so I kept up with a lot of the same things and I was able to talk about a lot of these different events and competitions and things like that in my high school or not in my high school in my college interviews um before I got accepted to pen so I definitely recommend getting involved in some of the niche things like this so definitely try to get involved as much as you can but don't feel pressured to have as many different things on the resume as I do I got really bored whenever the world shut down for Co so I always kicked it into overdrive Drive whenever I was able to do things because I don't know what to do with a minute to myself like I said before I really hope that this has been a helpful resource for all of you who are on your college application Journey wherever you are in that I wish you the best of luck thank you [Music]