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  Get Into College—ECAs
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   ECAsFinancial Aid
- Need-based vs need-blind
- What you want is not always what you get
- Building your aid package
- Where to learn more
What Happens Next?
- Awaiting admissions decision
- Waitlisted
- Time to reflect
Transfers
Taking a Year Off
International Students
List of all USA Colleges
 Join the Admissions Guide Advisor forums to share your experiences and questions about how to get into college!
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Your Extra-Curricular Activities (ECAs)
Knowing that the overwhelming majority of applicants to highly selective colleges, ADCOMs need something else to distinguish the students. They almost always look at extra-curricular activities; or ECAs for short. Visit any school and you will see that community activities, social events and political involvement make up the bloodline of a college.
Evaluating your ECAs serve two purposes: first, they provide an additional tool for ADCOMs to select qualified applicants. Secondly, ECAs are used as a gauge to see how a particular candidate will be able to contribute to the campus community, and his or her leadership capabilities.
ECAs vary from school to school, and from country to country. Different places have different opportunities, so it is hard to list every possible activity.
Activities can be divided into several broad categories:
Government and Political
At all leading universities, politics and government play an important role in shaping undergraduate students’ lives. When you are in high school, you will want to commit yourself to governmental positions such as President, because schools are grooming leaders for tomorrow. It’s not enough to be presidents of five clubs; you must be able to show depth as well as breadth. Showing passion and commitment in one presidential position is always better than having 5 different presidencies and doing little.
The Great Debate
Debate enthusiasts are considered to have important speaking and presentation skills that will translate well in college. That is why ADCOMs look highly at applicants who have won acclaims in the debate area. Some universities offer scholarships to national caliber debaters. The University of Michigan, USC, Emory and Northwestern offer scholarship to academically outstanding students in addition to public speaking and debating talents.
Entrepreneurship
Budding business-minded applicants are highly sought after at colleges. Those who started their own business ventures to finance their families. Students who work during the term to contribute to their families’ incomes are given tremendous amount of respect in the admissions offices. They are the hardworking types who are seen as being able to contribute to the campus community when their term time financial burden is reduced.
Community Service
Service is the norm rather than the exception at high schools today. It doesn't matter what you do, it’s how often and how committed you are in doing it. It can be tutoring fellow peers during summers, washing cars for the neighborhood or joining a charity club in school. It’s not that community service is such an important criteria; it’s just that the lack of it implies self-centeredness that colleges simply does not want students who do not care for others, despite some of them being national scholars.
Athletics
You must always remember that no matter what your ECA is, you must be able to show passion in whatever you do. Colleges love to see students who are passionate, not students who join a list of activities just to pad their application. Passion can be seen in letters of recommendations, through interview and from the description of the activity itself.
Passions
Results, depth, recommendations, and creativity also indicate passion. For instance, a student who uses their summer to do unpaid research in a subject that they're interested in shows passion, particularly since such research is not easy to arrange. A student who takes a class at a local college because the subject isn't offered at their high school demonstrates passion. A student whose teacher recommendation says that the student went far above what was required for a routine research paper has demonstrated passion.
Passions aren't something that can be faked because those who try to fake it may, for instance, look enthusiastic, but what they say will be very vague.
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First Steps
