Peabody is the building, Jack is the dog, and I'm Dean J (she/her, btw).

There are years of posts here. The search box works well, but please consider the age of the posts when you find them. The college admission process changes every year!

References to emailing updates to your application are from the years when we didn't have the current applicant portal. Please follow the instructions in your portal to submit all updates.

Welcome to the blog and thanks for reading!

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Consistency in Extracurricular Activities

I've gotten several questions about how consistent our admission officers expect you to be when it comes to extracurricular activities. In case this is a concern of more students in our applicant pool, I thought I would address the topic on the blog.

I really think that people have overcomplicated things when it comes to activities. We want to see that our students will thrive and contribute in our community. The activity section is one of the areas that we use when we are making our assessment. Activities don't overshadow the other parts of the application, they are one piece of the puzzle.

It seems that people believe that applicants must show long-term commitment to activities. Perhaps this is because most college applications ask students to note the years during which they participated in an activity. We definitely look at that information, but we aren't fixated on seeing every activity during each year of high school. If you happen to have found an organization, club, or sport that you love very early in life and have maintained involvement in it for years, that's wonderful! If your involvement in extracurricular activities isn't consistent, that isn't a big deal to us. Sometimes, interests change and priorities evolve.

Please don't apologize if your activities haven't been long-term.There is room for all kinds of involvement here.
Tennis ball retriever - 6/2008 to present