Don't Force It: How to Get into College without Losing Yourself in the Process

All the Questions about Extracurriculars

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How many extracurriculars are enough? Does my teen need to be a star athlete or a club president to stand out? What do colleges actually care about? In today’s webinar, Emmaline and I tackle these burning questions and more. We break down how to choose the right activities, what truly matters in the college admissions process, and how to help your teen find a balance that works. If you’ve ever wondered whether your student is doing too much (or too little), this conversation will give you the clarity and confidence you need.

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Sheila Akbar:

Sort of like the developmental perspective on extracurriculars, like, why do they even exist? Is so kids can meet other kids, and they can discover their interests together. They can learn to work together. They can build skills that may or may not be directly related to a future career or academic path. But there's so much brain development happening at this time kids, you know the stereotype of high schools, you're trying to figure yourself out, like, how do I fit in? Is all of a sudden such a big concern for these kids, and that's where all of these things are out there in front of them to help them grow as people and learn about what they do care about, and then learn about the world. Hey folks, welcome back to the podcast. Today, we are trying a slightly new format of a Q and A episode. I'm invited good friend Emmaline to join us with some of the questions that she's hearing from the parents that she's talking to. I think that's all the setup I'm going to give you. We'll let you tune into the episode. Emmaline, I want people to know who you are. Beyond being just an amazing and hilarious human being that I love having in my life. You are also the person who talks to every incoming client, anyone who's interested in our service, who wants to know a little bit more about what we do, or is ready to say, sign me up with a tutor or a consultant or a coach. You're the person they talk to. What kind of conversations are you having with them?

Emmaline Cook:

I have a fair amount of anxious conversations. I think parents think that they're going to come and they're going to be the only ones that are feeling behind or stressed out, and I often am reminding them that that is not true. I have very few parents who call with utmost confidence because they wouldn't be calling us if they felt that way. So just, you know, this notion that you're probably not behind, but what can we do now or next, or what are the next steps for this process? That's kind of the main, I would say, vibe of the phone calls is just kind of wanting a roadmap or wanting a guiding hand.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, yeah. And I think you're such a great person to be able to provide that to them, having, you know, the educational experiences you've had, and just being able to sort of witness it from the inside and out, and having this, you know, deep training in in psychology as well, like, gives you another kind of perspective on this. And I'm really glad you mentioned, like, the anxiety of these calls, because every parent I've talked to is really convinced that they're the only one facing this challenge, or their kid is the only one acting this way. And actually, oh man, it's so common. It's so common for kids to be acting this way, because it's like, totally developmentally normal, right? And it's also totally normal for parents to be feeling like they miss something or they're behind, because not that that's a developmental thing, though, maybe, maybe that should be studied. I don't know, but it's more like nobody is communicating clearly to parents.

Emmaline Cook:

Well, nobody's communicating clearly to parents, and your teenager is not going to communicate clearly to you. I feel like good relationship, bad relationship you have with your teenager. They're not opening up their soul to you at dinner every night, right? And I think parents feel like they either their student or they themselves, are really unsure what the student should be studying, or where they should go, or what they should do next on this kind of, you know, first adulthood expedition, right? They're not like we have to get past this notion that you should be able to have those conversations with your teenager, because if you can great, but 97% of other people need some other people to talk to their team.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, there are two things I'll say about that. Andrea, our Director of Operations, likes to say, Stop shoulding on yourself, which I love, because should implies there is shame, there is criticism. You're not doing something right, and that's just not the case. So in describing that situation, I think you said the word should, like, 12 times, you know, but I mean you're you're repeating what they're saying Right? And then the other thing is, I like to trot out this study in some of the talks I give, but it's sort of the classic case of we didn't need research to tell us this. But a couple years ago, some researchers at Stanford did an fMRI study of like, what's happening in the brain when teenagers are hearing their parents voices and strangers voices and what do you think happened? And around age 13, a certain kind of voice lit their brain up much more than before, and it's the stranger's voice, right? And this is we know teenagers are on their journey of self discovery and individuation, and all of a sudden, new things are much more exciting than familiar things, and sorry, parents, you're very familiar, and you're no longer exciting, and they don't want to listen to you.

Emmaline Cook:

And you're supposed to be you're supposed to fill that role. That's not. Yeah, right.

Sheila Akbar:

So it's not a sign that you have a bad relationship with your kid. It's just your kid is developing normally, and, yeah, they're just not going to listen to you anymore. And that's totally normal. It sucks for parents, but it's normal. Okay with that out of the way, what we're going to do in today's episode, and we'll continue to do over the the course of the year, is to take some of these questions that you are hearing from parents and just try to address them as fully as we can on the podcast, because this is what people really want to know. So give me one of the questions that you tend to hear a lot these days.

Emmaline Cook:

I think the one that I been hearing lately, just kind of, you know, we're in the spring, we're heading to summer, is extracurriculars. How many should we be doing? What should we be doing over the summer? What should they be doing during the school year? Are they the right ones, which I always find to be an interesting question. Yeah. So I guess kind of where do extracurriculars fall in terms of this, where my student has to be in every leadership position, or should they be doing the things that interest them? Because maybe that'll lead to what they want to study. But yeah, really, just extracurriculars. What do we do? There? Are there correct ones? How do I get into those?

Sheila Akbar:

All the questions about extracurriculars, yeah, before we started recording, you mentioned parents are often like, Oh, they're not doing much at all, or they're doing three varsity sports. Is that enough? They're a chess grandmaster. Is that enough?

Emmaline Cook:

Yea, they volunteer at four different shelters.Are they the right ones?

Sheila Akbar:

Right. And what do you think is underneath that? I mean, are they the right ones? Is it enough? But like, what else do you think is motivating that question?

Emmaline Cook:

I mean, kind of at surface, everyone thinks everyone else is doing more than them, so and nobody ever asked me if they're doing too many, which they perhaps should. But yeah, there's this fear that, you know, like the these other students are the president of every club. They started a nonprofit. They have all these things going for them. And I think it leaves out kids who have jobs, kids who do want to volunteer, kids who are doing research, kids who just like drama club, like there's benefit to these organizations, but I think underneath is, when someone's reading my college application, are they gonna care what I was doing, or are they gonna care that I was passionate about it, or that I was good at it? The notion of your child's development is maybe kind of to the side, and it's more about what should be on this paper when I turn it in?

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, as you're saying that, I feel like they're looking for an understanding of, like, how are they going to measure what this means? Like, how do you measure passion? We don't have a scale for that, right? Like, how do you translate that into a number that is meaningful, right? Because obviously, and I've got air quotes right now, you can't see me, but obviously there's a formula, and all they translate everything to a number, and an algorithm spits out a score, and that's what determines who gets it. Of course, that is not how it works at all, and it is a process that is, of course, you know, AI enabled and technology enabled, but is still a set of decisions made by humans who are subjective and who knows what fairness really means in this process. And I also like just cringe at the thought of, how can you reduce passion, engagement, leadership, community, impact to a number, right? We shouldn't be trying to translate our lives into those kinds of numbers, right? So when people like we have a lot of different kind of situations that we just kind of touched on with all these questions, but let's take them in a couple of categories, like the kid who does one thing a lot, and it might just be athletics, it might be four different sports, but that takes up all their time. Or they're a really talented gymnast or a chess player, or, you know, we've had people who are like, semi professional athletes, right? And they're going to go off to the Olympics, so they're training 20 30, hours a week, right? There's no time for anything else besides school homework and then this other thing, a lot of people refer to kids like that as, like, they've got a real spike, like their attention is like, on one thing, and it is a big, big focus. And yes, parents really do worry, like, is that okay? And of course, it's okay if your kid is doing the things that they love to do and they're finding satisfaction in them, that's great. But I will say I have a lot of families who come to us who are like, Oh, we're doing 25 hours a week of this training, let's say dance training. But she's not interested in pursuing dance professionally. She's not interested in getting recruited onto a dance team. She's not interested in studying dance at college, but it's just a thing that we do. And I really wonder, why are we doing this so much like, I mean, if they're really, truly enjoying it, great spend all your free time doing it. But if you're, like, training at a competitive dance program and doing like, but why? And I think the why is really the question at the heart of it, and that's the thing that the college admissions officers are trying to understand, are you playing the sport so competitively because you want to continue playing it competitively? Does it bring you something in your life? Do you just love your teammates? Is your parent forcing you what's happening right? So I think especially for those kids who have, like, one big spike, really digging into the why is so important and making sure they're comfortable with their reason why. Because it might mean, once they dig into it, might mean, oh, I could scale back and do this other thing that I'm also curious about, or it might mean, no, this is great. I'm going to continue on this path because I know why I'm doing it. At the other end of the spectrum, we have kids who don't do much at all. But it's interesting also, because the don't do much, there's always something,

Emmaline Cook:

even if they're not doing not too much at all, but a, b, c, d, e,

Sheila Akbar:

exactly you were saying. Also, like a lot of times, people don't think things that are done outside of the school context count.

Emmaline Cook:

I think things like jobs and taking care of family, volunteering at places. I feel like those kind of get pushed aside because there's this artificial hierarchy of what extracurriculars you're supposed to be doing, like, it should be mock trial and it should be debate.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, you should be able to win an award for it, right?

Emmaline Cook:

I just keep thinking, there's two phrases we use in Psych a lot, not all that matters can be measured, and not everything that counts can be counted. And I think people forget how important a job can be, like, how much you can learn from working at a pizza place.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, did you have a job when you were in high school or in college? I worked at a pizza place. You did okay.

Emmaline Cook:

I worked at a pizza place during the year, and then during the summer, I was a camp counselor. And a lot of the pediatric psych things I'm interested in were born out of things that happened with my campers. And you know, I was a counselor there because I was a camper there forever. But as you were talking, I was thinking about the why. And, you know, there is a why in there, like, there is, it did help me kind of figure out what I wanted to do, but, but, yeah, I think there's, there's kind of this made up system that parents, I think, and it's not to anyone's fault, but I think there's this societal hierarchy of what you're supposed to be doing, and a lot of them happen to be the ones that are, like, school affiliated or school sponsored, but there's so much happening in the world outside of the school.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, I worked at a Dairy Queen in high school. It was more, I think, of almost like a scare tactic that my parents were like, You should work in fast food so that you know what is waiting for you if you don't get an education. But it was great. I learned to work on a team. I learned to like multitask. I learned to deal with customers and like screaming kids who just wanted their ice cream. It was a really good experience, like learning experience, and I also had fun, and I made some money, and it was, it was great. And I think that, like unspoken hierarchy of like, what you should be doing or what counts, what matters more, has really done a disservice to kids. A lot of times, parents, you know, we talk a lot at Signet about like, we want to put the kid in the driver's seat. We want to know what they think and how they want to solve this problem. And the parent is always like, well, if they knew I wouldn't be calling if we wouldn't have this problem anymore. And oftentimes, what we're trying to do is just help the student understand their own agency and have a little more confidence that their ideas could work. Maybe you need a sounding board to shape them a little bit better. But like you know, you're a burgeoning young adult, you are gonna figure this out, and a job, even volunteering or like you were saying, caretaking for family members, whether they're younger siblings or older relatives, or who knows, a neighbor, teaches you so much responsibility and how to work with other people in a real way, not just like school project way right which? I mean, my experience of group projects was I always ended up doing all the work and everybody else got credit for it, right? Which is not really teamwork. So, yeah, I'm really glad you brought that up. I also see students who look on the surface like if you created a resume for them, they wouldn't have much to list, but they are doing things like piano lessons, or they're really active in their church youth group, or have a student who writes music and spends hours a day just noodling on their guitar, writing music and writing songs, and like that student is so engaged and so reflective and so perceptive, because they spend all this time essentially writing poetry and creating art that I think it would be ridiculous to leave that out of a college application, but people feel like, if it's not externally verifiable, if you're not doing it with like, the best school of music, or you're not playing in the orchestra, you're not winning awards for it, then it's not worth anything, right? And I it's totally a real concern of like, could people then just make stuff up on their activity list? Because there's no way to verify that they're spending hours doing this. Maybe they're just playing video games and they're going to say they're writing music, but that's where you know, sharing those passions with other people can be really important. Like, even just talking to a teacher, maybe a music teacher, about that kind of stuff, getting involved in volunteering to share those passions with other people who may not always otherwise be able to experience some of that stuff, or even reflecting on it and writing about it in an essay like, really does give it the heft of, I don't know, some competitive program at Yale, like, you know, whatever. Like, colleges don't care what it is they they really want to know the why and the engagement and what does it say about the person?

Emmaline Cook:

Yeah, I think also people forget that. Like this is something when people always ask about, like, if you could tell your younger self if you are really focused, really engaged, really good at one thing, it doesn't matter at all what that is. I think there's hobbies that people are afraid to really advertise, but everyone thinks it's really cool if you're really good at something. Yeah. And so I'm thinking of a friend I had growing up who's a really good skeet shooter, okay, which I don't I couldn't even really tell you what that is, but he was, like, nationally ranked, ah, and then he went to Cornell. So it's just like, if there's something you're passionate about that's allowed, you're allowed to do that, and you should do that.

Sheila Akbar:

Right. now i I'm hearing, like, the skeptical parent voice in my head being like, well, what if the thing they're passionate about is video games?

Emmaline Cook:

Yeah.

Sheila Akbar:

What do you think about that?

Emmaline Cook:

My first answer was, well, then they should code them. I think that there has to be space for your teenager to be a person, and that's going to include socializing. And for a lot of young people, video games are very social. And I think maybe parents don't always see it that way, but I know for a lot of my male friends, playing video games are the only time that they really even talk to each other. And so doing an intake kind of on what's happening in video games, but finding some other things outside of it. But I don't think that video games need to be demonized, necessarily.

Sheila Akbar:

Right. I was also thinking like, is that really a thing that they're passionate about? Because if they are, then, yeah, by all means, like, go design one, Go code one, like, whatever.

Emmaline Cook:

There's e sports teams at schools, like.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah. And it comes down to like, Well, how do you define a passion? But there's like, a difference between, like, what you do in your downtime and what you do as like a passion, like a thing that you're you're doing to hone a skill, which I guess is true in video games too. But hone a skill, get exposed to potential careers and other interests, meet people who share the same interests, like all of those things you said this earlier, I think we should go back to it is sort of like the developmental perspective on extracurriculars, like, why do they even exist? Is so kids can meet other kids, and they can discover their interests together. They can learn to work together. They can build skills that may or may not be directly related to a future career or academic path, but there's so much brain development happening at this time. Kids, you know, the stereotype of high schools, you're trying to figure yourself out, like, how do I how do I fit in? Is all of a sudden such a big concern for these kids, and that's where all of these things are out there in front of them to help them grow as people and learn about what they do care about and then learn about the world. And somebody else told me this. I think it was one of our former consultants that was like kids who are interesting and do like interesting things go on to become interesting adults and. I think back to the extracurriculars I was doing in high school. It was definitely a way for me to stay out of the home longer. My parents very strict, and they would have let me just be out. But if I were at this club meeting or that club meeting, like they were fine with it, and a lot of those things I did extracurricularly, I think, with the exception of playing on the soccer team or things that I was not actually really interested in just kind of the wrong way to do it.

Emmaline Cook:

Yeah.

Sheila Akbar:

What were you involved in?

Emmaline Cook:

That's what I was just thinking of. I was a very big dancer, and I ended up I lived in the suburb, like an hour outside of Boston, and I was going into Boston for dance, and that was obviously taking up a lot of time. But I was thinking about how my senior year I did scale back how much I was going to dance in Boston, because I wanted to do more things with my drama club, because it was where my friends were. And I'm realizing that the timing of that probably was centered around the I realized that I wasn't going to go to a conservatory school. I did, you know, kind of debate whether or not dance was going to be something I wanted to go to school for, and when I made the decision that it wasn't going to be, scaling that back was easier. I was in our national honor society. But that kind of, you know, nerdy leadership stuff is the stuff I liked, so it's hard to kind of pull those out, but I know my brother was involved with, you know, a model, un sort of group, and I had no interest in that, and so I didn't do that. But I was earlier, also thinking about my guidance counselor. My senior year. I was saying that I wanted to take AP math, but I was already taking all these other APS, and she said, why? And I was like, great point. Like, all she had to say to me was why. And I was like, Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I don't need to take that. But there were definitely things like, you think you're supposed to do this, this and this.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, which takes us full circle, I think, to these questions we're hearing from parents is like, Yeah, well, how is it evaluated? And like, is there a right number? Nobody's asking you this, though they should, how much is too much? And also, you know, how much, how little is too little? And I think the thing that I would say is, you want to make sure your kid is involved in something. It doesn't have to be a school activity, it doesn't have to be an every week thing, but you want them to have some interests and hobbies, and as a person, yeah, exactly. And in fact, if they don't have any interest, maybe it's time for a depression screening

Emmaline Cook:

Like just a check in, right on something going on.

Sheila Akbar:

Yeah, people have interests, right? Even if whatever you think about its worthiness or not, people have interests, right? And if there are no interests, that might be a sign that there's something else going on. And I will say, college admissions officers are looking at the kind of activity list that goes along with the college application to see if the stories that the student is telling really bear out in their day to day life, if a student is claiming to really value helping others, well, I would expect to see some helping stuff in their activity list, right? If they're really interested in scientific inquiry, and you know, like, want to advance our knowledge and theoretical physics, I would expect there to be something sort of along those lines. Obviously, high school students can't access theoretical physics research opportunities, but like something that shows that they are really interested in this process of inquiry and expanding knowledge, right? So it's kind of like where you walk the walk. But also they want to know what these students like to do in their free time, because they can project that forward and say, Oh, they're really involved in making their community a better place. We love that at our school. We want people to come here and make our community a better place, or they're really instrumental in, like, making sure people have fun. They started the ping pong club. They had a student, we had a student a couple years ago who, for no reason whatsoever, got all these little like, these little, they're like, fuzzy pom poms, and he put googly eyes on them, and he hid like 200 of them around the school, apropos of nothing, yep. And then just delighted in watching people find them in like, random places. And it was like a thing, right? That everybody was like, oh my god, I found this one. And they were all collecting them. They were trading color, like, that's amazing. I want a kid like that at my school. You know? Yeah, right. And I don't know how I think he ended up writing an essay about it, but I don't think he listed it on his activity list, like agent of chaos, you know, or whatever on his activity list. But they are really trying to understand the whole lives of these students, and of course, it's like reduced. But like, if they are spending time taking care of siblings or older relatives, or they're working, whether it's because they want exposure or they need to make money to contribute to the family, it tells you a lot about a student, right? And that's what they're really looking at. And so if you want to try to be strategic about it, like you want to make sure that whatever the student is really about, they're living that in their daily lives, right? And that's that's going to happen in a lot of different ways. The other thing I would add to this is, how little is too little? Going back to that question, it's sort of like we want to make sure a couple of boxes are checked. Number one, that there are interests, that they are doing something that is at least meaningful to them in their free time. Parent, you may not think it's meaningful, but if they do, then that's great. And then the third thing is that they I think it's really important. And you know, reasonable people can disagree on this, but I think it's really important that they're doing things with other people, that not everything that they're doing is just alone in their room, that there are places where they are meaningfully interacting with other people, working together with other people, that could be like joining a volunteer effort, or working at a soup kitchen, like they are interacting with other people, or it could be a team activity or a club activity or a group kind of thing that I just think that's really important developmentally, to give them that kind of exposure. It also sends a message that this person is not going to show up on your campus and just live in their dorm room with the doors closed all the time, like they are going to be engaged and participating.

Emmaline Cook:

Yeah, and I will say also, we're still in the era of kids who were in really important developmental stages during COVID. So being involved in things, and, you know, wanting to build community, and having even the inkling to be a part of community is something that's has become not the default, right? It is no longer assumed that people kind of grew up in clubs, in organizations with their friends all the time, the people who are applying to schools in the next couple years were in middle school. That's an incredibly important time to figure out how community works and figure out how groups of people work. And I correct me if I'm wrong, but I do feel that colleges are trying to make sure that that came up eventually, because it wasn't an option for them for a while.

Sheila Akbar:

Right, for sure, and I think that such a good point to bring up like I don't know if it's a blanket setback for everybody, but it was a hurdle for everybody, and some people are still getting over that hurdle right, like the social anxiety, the school refusal, like all of these things that came out of that time. There are some kids who are still working through it right.

Emmaline Cook:

And people really underestimate it, yeah.

Sheila Akbar:

And there are all these reports about it's like showing up in math. It's showing up in whatever

Emmaline Cook:

Right.

Sheila Akbar:

Like, it's also showing up in these, like, social ways. I was listening to Jonathan Hape on a podcast recently, and he was someone was playing devil's advocate with him. Was saying, like, oh, Gen Z doesn't drink as much and they don't the rates of teen pregnancy have have fallen so much, like, all of these sort of signals that Gen Z is, like, somehow more wise not doing these, like, reckless teenage things. And Jonathan hate was like, Well, yeah, because they grew up on smartphones, they weren't doing things with each other, they weren't having sex, they were not having parties. They're like, they're not doing those things because they're isolated. And so it's, it's a give and take, right? Of course, we don't want addictive behaviors and, like, dangerous things to happen. But teenagers are seeking risk, right? It's, it's how they figure out what their boundaries are, and they're, you know, tasting life. I think about when my son was a newborn, like, he wanted to put everything in his mouth, wanted to taste everything. Is how he, like, sensed the world, right? And teenagers do that through testing limits, right? Yeah, they're really just trying things on. Okay? We went in a lot of really interesting directions from this seemingly simple question of, like, what extracurriculars should they do and how many? But I hope that this gives listeners, like, an idea of, like, why there is no answer to that question, but like, there's no structure. There's no structure. There's no checklist, though, like some guiding principles would be, as we just said, have some interests, spend your free time, meaningly, hang out with other people.

Emmaline Cook:

Allow a passion.

Sheila Akbar:

and think about the why. Whatever it is excellent. Well, I'm excited to continue doing more of these. Thank you for joining me. Emmaline.

Emmaline Cook:

Thanks for having me.

Sheila Akbar:

Well, that was certainly a lot of fun, and I really appreciate that the episode is not just me talking the whole time as always. If you have questions that you would like to see us tackle, please send them in. Always happy to to hear what you're thinking about and see what perspective I can offer from my position. I. And please do, please do tune in for our April session, our April webinar, which is going to be on college visits, and how that plays into your college admissions strategy. I think a lot of people just kind of know, oh, we got to do some college visits, but they don't realize you can do them before it's time to apply. And in fact, that might actually give your student some points of reference to help you build their college list. And also the kinds of things you learn or ask about on those tours and visits can really help you define your narrative strategy and all kinds of ways to pull that through. So it's not just this thing you do, but it is deeply integrated into how you approach the college process. So I hope you will join us for that. You can find out more at Signet education.com/events, All right, everybody. We will see you next time. Thank you so much.