Colleges Can See Right Through All Those Extracurricular Activities We Think They Like So Much

Universities are looking for a lot of different qualities in the students they admit every school year, but being a try-hard isn’t one of them. In fact, when it comes to extracurriculars, a less-is-more approach may be more likely to get teens into college, according to new research. 

“Some people might think that if participating in one extracurricular activity is good, then participating in many must be better. But that is not what we found,” James Tompsett, lead author of the study and a PhD student in sociology at Ohio State, explained in a press release.

Tompsett and his team looked at data from the Educational Longitudinal Survey that included more than 10,000 high school students from nearly 700 schools. Their results revealed that students who participated in one school sport and one non-sport activity were likelier to go to more selective colleges and that any more activities than that did very little to help their cause. “It’s hard to do multiple activities well, and too many may pull you away from academics, which are also obviously very important for getting into college,” study co-author Chris Knoester speculated.

That said, the researchers concluded that socioeconomic status gave students the biggest competitive advantage in terms of getting into college. So if you insist on doing too much in the name of higher education, be sure to do it with money.