Imagine two scrumptious oven-baked thin-crust pizzas one topped with only mozzarella cheese and the other loaded with cheese, olives, onions, basil, and bell peppers. Which one will most people pick? This is a rough analogy of how admission officers at top universities shortlist admission applications. Extracurricular activities are like those extra toppings that will add value to your stellar academics and make your application shine.  

Why extracurricular activities are so important? Maintaining strong grades while enthusiastically participating in extracurricular/co-curricular activities demonstrates your multitasking capability. It shows that you are able to efficiently plan a course of action, prioritise tasks, and execute them in a timely manner.

By participating in sports, seminars, workshops, debates, and social work, students develop extraordinary soft skills, which help the admission committee in evaluating their potential as a student at their university. Moreover, students with outstanding extracurricular activities stand a greater chance at receiving scholarships. 

Extracurricular activities can be divided into seven broad categories: 

1. Leadership activities: Holding a position of responsibility shows that you are respected by your classmates and teachers. For example, a student council member, house captain, class prefect, and so on. The skills gained include time and people management, planning and execution, communication, strategic thinking, persuasion, and influence. 
2. Sports: Excelling at a sport, whether team or individual, requires significant efforts, dedication, and commitment. Any sport played over a considerable amount of time will definitely help in differentiating your profile. For example, a black belt in Karate, part of the school basketball team, and a podium finish at national level tournaments. Some of the skills gained include teamwork, resilience, accountability, time management, pressure handling, and communication.
3. Fine arts: Preference is given to students with in-depth experience in poetry, music, drawing, photography, classical dance, drama, or any other form of fine art. You may showcase your talent by submitting your portfolio. For example, editor of the school magazine, bachelor’s degree in Kathak, diploma in Carnatic music, theory of music (Solfege), guitarist in school band, vocalist in school choir, and so on. The skills gained are creativity, perseverance, ability to self-reflect, on-stage confidence, and listening skills.  
4. Competitions and conferences: Participating in debates, technical competitions, coding contests, programming events helps students to explore their potential to the fullest. Competitions prepare students to win (or lose) gracefully and develop a sense of self-esteem. Some examples are Model United Nations, hackathons, robo wars, app designing contests, and university aptitude tests. The skills gained are public speaking, team spirit, analytical thinking, and problem-solving.
5. Community service: Universities are looking for students with a vision to help others and work towards the betterment of mother Earth. Examples for such activities are volunteering for NGO, starting a community outreach club in school, tutoring children for free, beach or river cleaning drives, conducting donation camps, recycling plastic. The skills gained through such activities are empathy, conflict resolution, cooperation, adaptability, emotional intelligence.
6. Co-curricular activities: Regular participation in co-curricular activities portrays your passion for your favourite subject and your willingness to dig deeper into your area of interest. National-level Olympiads, project presentations, webinars or workshops conducted by eminent faculty members, and college level research programmes are some of the examples. The skills gained are logical reasoning, research, literature survey, presentation, time management, and data analysis.
7. Hobbies: Any hobby or interest pursued for a substantial period can be counted as an extracurricular activity and should get mentioned in the application. The examples are proficiency in a foreign language, hiking enthusiast, avid reader, vlog creator, food blogger, horse riding, gardening, and so on. Skills gained through maintaining a hobby include personal growth, stressbuster, creativity, problem-solving, mental or physical strength.   

Now comes the final step where you need to describe your accomplishments in a captivating manner to the admission officer. In addition to admission essays, another more powerful way to share your experiences is through a visually appealing website. Showcase your extracurricular activities and achievements through vibrant pictures and lively videos. Start building your website as early as Grade X and keep editing and enhancing it as you move on.  

Some might argue that lockdown had a huge impact on their school life and hence, they were not able to pursue any extracurricular activities. Well, it’s true and the kind of anxiety students went through over the last two years is understandable. It was not easy!

However, there are students who made the perfect use of this lockdown and developed their profile by pursuing online courses, developing crowdfunding websites, mentoring underprivileged students, conducting free programming classes, starting their business venture and much more.

The pandemic is in the rear-view mirror now and not having suitable extracurricular activities may weaken an otherwise strong application. So, don’t limit yourself. There is always an opportunity waiting for you to explore. Seek guidance from career counsellors who can steer you in the right direction.

Do what you love. Pursue your interests. Challenge yourself. Activities done over a period of time reflect your true self. All in all, extracurricular activities add an extra dimension to your personality, help you become a well-rounded individual, and prepare you for life ahead.