Hey, Princeton Reviewers!
Given the fact that leaving home has been restricted by world governments, participating in extracurricular activities (like so many activities) might seem impossible. But whether you are still set on making your college application sparkle or looking more for a break from tedium, here are the Princeton Review PH's 10 suggestions for At Home Extra Curricular Activities.
(Keep in mind that these could not only look good on your applications, but could also provide unique topics for your college essays!)
1) Creative Writing
Novels, poems, plays, screenplays, short stories, TV pilots...these are some of the ways you can express yourself through words. Share your work online and see if you can start a following. Enter local or foreign online writing competitions or submit your work to a literary journal or website. Have a Zoom reading of your work and record it for YouTube. However you rank yourself as a writer, writing experiments can be fun, exciting, and impressive, regardless of whether you intend to professionally publish your work.
2) Music Production
Play an instrument? Are you a singer? A composer? A DJ? All of the above? Similar to Creative Writing, share these skills online. Are you in a band? An orchestra? You and your members could have an online concert. And the more members you have, the more college apps benefit from it. There are so many examples online for incoming applicants to emulate, to add their own unique sound and energy to the music scene and to the current situation. Online performances (of all kinds) are also great ideas for fundraisers, especially at a time when communities are in need more than ever.
3) Visual Art
Drawing, painting, sculpting, graphic design, collage-making. More ways of stimulating the world around you and making friends and strangers think and feel. Be bold and consider selling your work, if you feel confident enough. Try to keep some record (even in your head for later) of what drives you to be creative and what might make you create certain works at certain moments.
4) Blogging/Vlogging/Journalism
While this could overlap or complement any number of other interests, this can show off your ability to express your opinion and to think critically. Perhaps criticism is what you'll do. Maybe you will write reviews of other creative or commercial properties (of films, TV shows, albums, video games, gadgets, clothes, accessories, snack food). Maybe you'll preserve your own reactions to your country's approach to the COVID crisis in op-ed pieces that you offer to local news websites. Or you could share your articles on Facebook or Twitter. You could start a cooking blog/vlog or even design your own series of nutrition, fitness, or workout videos. A wide range of possibilities, in fact, await you.
5) Coding/software design/IT
With the world becoming more and more dependent on computers up to the minute, many will tell you that technological familiarity is automatically a plus for the near future. But even if it's not your intended field of study, colleges love seeing skills at work that lie outside an applicant's intended major. Coding may soon become a necessary life skill and in our electronically saturated world, it's something that can be learned from home. If you're already at it, consider moving on to app design. Even if you only have ideas or a partially completed design by the time applications are due, share that. It can be as much about the process as the product.
6) Building/Machine work
Got any automotive mechanical skills? You ride a motorcycle (Or did you before the quarantine)? Do you and your dad or mom or driver tinker with car engines together? Do you do that on your own? Imagine creating an automotive repair tutorial you can share online. Or are you, perhaps, more of a builder from scratch? Any interest in Robotics? Carpentry? Miniature construction projects in your yard? Hey, do you build legos? Do you consider yourself a master lego builder? Share your achievements with the world. It doesn't matter if you use hammer and nail or color blocks. An act of construction, or creation, is always worth noting.
7) Scientific Experiments
Science Major? Science buff? Consider becoming a volunteer research assistant or participant. Conduct some research of your own. Recreate the feasible experiments of others (even of other students) and see how that inspires your own ideas. If you have fascination with physics, chemistry, biology, or any other scientific discipline, keep a record of your journey with it or them, and be ready to display your inquisitive and adventurous mind to your colleges.
8) Online Job/Business/Volunteer work
Got any early entrepreneurial chops/instincts in your back pocket? Do you have a knack for making money? Do you make and sell handicrafts of some kind? Do you help out with a remote family business? Have you already made a business of any one of the other activities listed above? Has your family gotten into the distribution of certain goods and essentials during quarantine? Have you personally donated money that you've earned to charities or causes? Keep not of which and how much. Colleges will want to know.
Thank you for reading, Princeton Reviewers!
Keep reviewing, keep learning, keep reaching!