10 At-Home Extracurricular Activities that Actually Impress Colleges

Today, I will be sharing with you the top 10 extracurricular activities that you can do from the comfort of your home and that will make your application shine among thousands of applications. So if you’d like to make your application stand out and increase your chances of getting into the colleges of your choice, do read the complete post.

All right, let’s get started.

First of all, what are extracurricular activities and why are they so important?

As the name suggests, “extra” “curricular” activities are simply activities that are done outside of your school curriculum. It can include any activity that you actively participate in outside of your schoolwork like clubs, arts, sports, communities service, competitions etc.

But not just that if you could not engage in these traditional extracurricular activities and spent your high school time in supporting your family or taking care of your younger siblings, that too counts as an extracurricular activity if you properly reflect upon it in your application.

Now, why do universities care about extracurricular activities?

Extracurricular activities helps admission officers identify students who are willing to go outside of their class to pursue their passions and improve themselves and their communities. Also, the extracurricular activities list of a students tells colleges a lot about the overall personality of the student and what they are involved in outside of their school. As I have point out in my previous post, extracurricular activities are one of the most important elements in your college applications and you need to start planning for them even before you enter high school.

Now, due to the coronavirus and its subsequent variants, we are living in uncertain times where we don’t know when will we get back to “normal” and how long will that “normal” last before the government announces more lockdowns. But even in these uncertain times, where you can’t engage in traditional extracurricular activities the way you used to, there are endless new opportunities for self-driven students who want to improve themselves and their applications.

The at-home extracurricular activities I am about to share are all self-driven and require a lot of initiative and independence on your part which is especially valuable to college admission officers. So don’t think that because you’re doing them at home they won’t require work on your part or won’t impact your application, they will require a lot of work and will definitely boost your application if you do them in your areas of interests and passions.

Also, the extracurricular activities I am about to share are based off my personal experience and research of accepted students to top universities and remember that whatever extracurricular you engage in, it should properly sync with your overall application otherwise having random extracurriculars here and there won’t make much difference.

Before moving forward, I’d like to tell you that if you’re someone like me who prefers watching videos and graphics over text, then I have created a dedicated YouTube video on this same topic which you can check down below 👇

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Take Things Virtual

The first thing you need to do is to take things virtual. Now, even if you are stuck at home, that doesn’t mean that your pre-pandemic extracurricular activities have to stop. You can always find ways to take things online. Now, I know that there will be some operations and activities that can’t be taken online like cleaning drives or sports competitions but there will be activities that you can continue online.

If you were a member or leader of a school club or activity which you were really passionate about and which discontinued due to the pandemic, think about a way to revive that club or activity in a online format because this shows your interest and perseverance for it. For instance, if you are into writing, you can continue to collaborate with your school mates and write for your school magazine.

Start a New Virtual Club

But even if you are not able to continue your old extracurriculars, you can also start new ones and one of the best ways to do that is by starting a new virtual club or online group on a topic or activity you are passionate about. Here the sky is really the limit because the possibilities with this are endless and it really depends on your interests and the interests of your peers to decide what that club will be about.

You can start a coding club, a book club, writing club, language discussion group, debate club, art club etc. Now, if you are planning on pursuing an engineering major in college and you’re interested in computer science, I would highly recommend you to learn more about software development and start a coding club. It is a great way to connect with other tech savvy students in your school, challenge yourself and learn together.

If you are into the debating space, you can start an MUN club where you can learn about global issues, conduct in-school MUNs and even organize virtual inter-school MUNs.

Remember that you can always start a club on activities that don’t exist in your school and that you are passionate about. Note: Do ask your school about starting one.

Reality of Online Courses

Now, before we move onto out next extracurricular, I would like to tell you the reality of taking online courses for college admissions.

There are a lot of students who still believe that taking online courses helps their application. In fact, when I was in grade 11th I used to believe that online courses can help increase my chances of getting into prestigious universities. But let me tell you that it isn’t true at all.

Yes, online courses can teach you a lot of valuable skills which colleges look for, but you need to show colleges how you have used the skills you learned from these courses and translated them into valuable work which helped you develop practical skills.

If you are learning programming languages through online courses, it can prove to be very very valuable and helpful if you do projects with them because even in the pandemic the IT world hasn’t stop but rather got a massive boost in products and work. Therefore, if you can learn some IT skills and use them to help people let’s say non profit businesses for their app or website development or graphic designs for social media, then it will become a good extracurricular for your application.

Decide what you wanna learn and learn something that will be relevant to the future and use that to create impact. If you are just doing online courses, you are only ‘telling’ admission officers that you have a particular skills, but you need to ‘show’ them these skills through your work and projects.

For instance, it’s one thing to say that you took web development courses and it’s another thing to say that you self-learned web development and built your own website with it. It’s one thing to say that you took graphic design courses and know the ins and outs of it and it’s the other thing to say that you completed 20 design projects with 20 different clients from all over the world.

Therefore, just exploring online resources or taking up online courses to receive certificates won’t help your college application much, rather is the knowledge and skills you put in practice by doing impactful projects which helps your application. Yes, taking up online courses in your areas of interests from trusted platforms like edX and Coursera can help you learn a lot of skills but you need to take it further by channeling the skills you learn online to help other organizations and utilize them in your other extracurricular activities.

Tutoring Low Income Students

Now, moving to our first volunteering extracurricular which is to teach math, science, language, or any other life skills to low income students in your community or region.

In general, tutoring is a great extracurricular to do, whether you do it as a paid work or as a volunteer work because in these covid times a lot of students need extra assistance with their school work as their online classes aren’t able to suffice their needs. Most students are facing difficulties with online schools and most low income communities do not even have access to sufficient resources to succeed, but you can solve this problem by offering free tutoring services.

No matter what skills you have in other fields, generally, almost all high school students can teach middle school students or students below their grade. You can start your own free tutoring services in your area or join free online tutoring services as a full-time or part-time tutor.

If you live in North America, you can sign up for Go Peer Tutoring as a volunteering tutor or as a paid tutor. It pays $20 per hour for teaching students.

Now, almost all low income communities have seen disruption in education and helping them catch up with their studies for free can prove to be really impactful. Plus, it is a self-driven activity that nobody asked you to do and you initiated it on your own.

Also, you can team up with your passionate friends who can help you with tutoring or managing operations of your volunteer work and together you can help a lot of students. If you are able to scale this up to hundreds of students, I don’t know how it won’t look impressive to colleges.

If you are following a famous college youtuber named Katie Tracy, you’d know that she started an non profit called Iblieve where she has teamed up with high scoring IB graduates from around the world to provide free mentoring, tutoring and resources to support IB students in the pandemic and bridge inequalities in the IB provision.

I think that’s a great idea and she has attracted a lot of IB graduates and students from around the world into the community to make this a successful project. You can think of replicating this to your local community or for your school curriculum by creating a website where you can help students esp. those from low income families keep up with their school work.

Remote Internships

Ok, the next impressive extracurricular you can engage do is to apply and get a remote internship. Now a remote or virtual internship is any internship that takes place online and doesn’t require a physical work space. It allows you to do all of the work from your home. With remote internships on your application, you are portraying yourself as a student who is going out of their comfort zone and beyond their schoolwork to gain field-related experiences and this shows college admission officers that you take initiative and have dedication to learn and get in-depth experience in your field.

Now, Covid-19 has changed a lot of the hiring process for companies and most of them are willing to offer virtual or remote internships to people with the required skillset. Not just that, employers are willing to hire people from around the world to get their job done, which means that today remote internships are more available and accessible in different fields than they were ever before.

So, no matter what your field is, be it information technology, writing, journalism, social media, engineering, you are not limited to your region or country to pursue it, rather you have the entire world within your reach. You just need to be willing to find these opportunities and apply to them.

But How do you find these remote internship opportunities?

Through Google and LinkedIn. If you search for remote internships around the world specifically catered to your interests, you’ll get a ton of organizations and businesses where you can apply. Not just that, you can also read research work of professors in top universities around the world working in your field of interest and ask them for an internship. Don’t think that research internships have to be in-person, most research internships after the pandemic were entirely virtual, so you don’t need to worry about moving or anything.

But How do connect with organizations or employers or researchers and actually get internships without any prior connections?

Through a powerful technique called Cold Emailing.

Now, in cold emailing, you send email for any professional opportunity to someone who had no previous contact or connection with you. You’re basically asking someone who doesn’t know you to grant you an opportunity to work with them.

But How will a person who doesn’t know you will give you an opportunity to work with them?

That is what you have to write in your cold email, you need to tell them how you can contribute to their work, how your past experiences will help you in your work at that organization and why they should choose you over hundreds of other high school students who email them daily.

Now, if you’d like to learn more about cold emailing, its format and how to actually get started with it, I have given links to some helpful videos. Do check them out down below 👇.

👉 Sharing the Cold Emails that got me a Research Internship in High School~ at ivy league ~

👉 How to get Internships in High School & College | Cold Mailing Tricks

A lot of students esp. in India think that finding internships, competitions and volunteer opportunities is very difficult as a high school student and let me me tell you, IT IS ! Yes it is extremely hard to get one internship or working opportunity if you don’t actively seek it through cold emails, but you should also realize that if you get a good internship it will truly make your application shine because it would show your grit, self-drive and initiative to get experience in your field.

So do not expect that you will write ten cold emails and you’ll land in a good internship. If you do, it’s great but generally, expect that you’ll be writing hundreds of personalized emails before you get one good internship.

Now, my suggestion to maximize your chances of getting internships is by approaching legit startups and asking them to intern, they are a lot more welcoming to hire than big companies with a lot of staff and requests of interns. So yea, keep trying, keep pushing hard until you get the remote internship you are seeking.

But always remember that no matter whether your cold email is successful in getting you an internship or not, your emails are not getting to waste as you are directly or indirectly building a professional network and you never know when these connections will help you in the future. Maybe you didn’t receive in an internship now, but that employer gave your recommendation to someone else who might be helpful to you later.

Also, some people think that it is harder to get internships in foreign countries like the US or the UK, but that’s not true at all. Yes, some universities do prioritize their own students over others but most universities and professors are willing to offer you research internship opportunities if you show genuine interest and are willing to contribute to their research in meaningful ways.

I know a lot of international students who have pursued research internships with a professors from top US Universities like Harvard University and Stanford University just by cold emailing them and demonstrating genuine interest for their research. But know that these students sent tens and hundreds of personalized cold emails before they got a research internship.

Now, remember that you should only apply at places and organizations where you are interested in working and that too with personalized cold emails of your interest to work there because there because there is no point in sending hundreds of cold emails that are not personalized and don’t showcase your interest. Also, doing internship without any interest in the work and only for the sake of showing a remote internship won’t help your application a lot and I won’t suggest doing it.

Another really important thing to keep in mind when finding remote internship opportunities esp. if you are living in India is to properly research about the company or organization before committing to work because there have been instances when students were asked to pay for internships or the company they were working for did not exist and they were scammed. Therefore, before you hop onto any research or internship opportunity, make sure there is sufficient information about that organization online and you know that they are legit.

Volunteer at NGOs and other Non Profits

Taking up remote internships in your field can really boost your application, but this is easier said than done, because applying to internships is one thing and actually landing in one is another.

That’s why I would suggest you to not just email business, organizations and researches for remote internship but to also approach local NGOs for volunteer opportunity and help them with fundraising, organizing events, social media marketing etc. but if there aren’t any volunteering opportunities available with NGOs in your area, start cold emailing NGOs to help them with whatever skillset you have.

Maybe you are good at programming and can help NGOs with setting up their website and mobile app to connect them with their donors and help them provide their services more easily. You can approach NGOs through cold emails and ask them for this or maybe you are good at graphic design and can help NGOs with social media campaigns and graphic designs for donation campaigns. You can use that to help NGOs and work with them.

No matter what skills you have, you can always help NGOs and other non profit organizations with online campaigning and other operations.

Now, it’s comparatively easier to get internships with NGOs than with other organizations because mostly you are a volunteer and you don’t get paid for the work. Secondly, NGOs generally are looking for more volunteers to help them deliver services to more people. Therefore, alongside targeting businesses, organizations, professors, and startups with cold emails, also cold email less renowned but good NGOs working for social causes that matter to you.

Ok, let’s say you don’t get an internship opportunity at an NGO, but you can always get involved with online volunteering and service work at other big organizations that are willing to take volunteers from around the world.

If you’re interested in online volunteering and community service work, there is a great post by CollegeVine listing 40 Online Community Service Activities that high school students or gap year students can volunteer for. For example, you can connect with blind and low-vision people through Be My Eyes app and help them with their daily tasks or you can translate various texts for international organization working on crisis relief through Translators without Borders and there are other interesting volunteer opportunities and platforms like these. If you’re interested in these volunteer opportunities, I highly recommend you check out CollegeVine’s post 👆.

Start an Online Business + Freelancing

First of all, don’t panic! Starting your online business isn’t as difficult and complicated as it sounds, in fact, you can start your own online business in the next couple of hours. In today’s world, you don’t need to have a business plan, a business location, or Tax ID to start an online business. It is as simple as creating a WordPress or Wix or Blogger account to set up an online presence these days.

Now, if you’re following my YouTube channel, you’d know that I started this blog (zohairansari.com) and it took me only a week to completely set it up and sync it with my channel.

Do let me know your opinions about the design and other aspects of it in the comment section below. I would love to know your opinions about it and if you need any help with setting something like this for yourself or for your business, do let me know on My Instagram.

Anyways, I was just trying to point at the ease of starting an online business. Now, let me tell you some business ideas you can pursue. First, you can become an online tutor and offer virtual tutoring services to high school students or middle school students through your website. You can partner with your school friends or relatives in expanding your tutoring services to include more tutors and students from your region. Since you will be tutoring online, you’ll have very minimal operations costs and most of your revenue will turn out to be profits.

Tutoring is just one business idea, you can also set up a business to sell your art work online if you are into art and design and it doesn’t have to a physical art, it can be a digital art as well. And you don’t need to setup a website for it, you can create an Instagram page and attract the right audience, from your region, to buy the stuff you create.

Another idea is to approach local businesses who do not have an online presence and setup a website as well as social media accounts for them to connect with potential customers. Now, if you do not wish to start a full fledged business online, you always have the option of working as a freelancer, a self-employed individual who doesn’t work at a particular company but works for multiple clients on different projects, services or tasks. If you are setting website for local business, you will be a freelance web developer.

For freelancing, you can register on platforms like Upwork and Fiverr or build your LinkedIn profile to attract the right clients to you. However, you’ll need to have some skills at your disposal to reach out to clients and offer your services. This can include copywriting, video editing, graphic designing, social media management, data entry, animation, or voice over etc.

With online business as well as freelancing, the possibilities are endless, you just need to find out the right product or service based on your interests and passions and you’re good to go.

Creating an Non Profit

No matter what type of non profit you create, your purpose should be to create a positive impact in your community through your action plan. For instance, you can start a non profit to create online awareness about the issues that concern your local community or a non profit to empower women through writing and art or a non profit to advocate for education equality etc..

Before starting the non profit, figure out your purpose and what is unique about your organization that is not present in any other organization working in the same domain. That’s how you will be able to create a unique image of yourself and your profile in front of the admissions committee.

Now, creating an organization will look impressive when you have scaled it up and created good impact with it not just in your local community but beyond it as well. And this actually true for almost all of the activities I have mentioned above, they need to have both scale and impact.

But What do I mean by scale and impact?

With scale, I mean that your non profit should involve a lot of people both internally and externally. It should at least have people from different parts of your community participating and contributing to your social cause, but if you have people from all over the world, that’s really awesome and impressive.

Now whether you should get people from all over the world depends on the mission and aims of your organization but generally it isn’t hard to reach out to students from all over the world through the internet if you really want to. With regards to impact, you’ll need to create meaningful changes in communities you are targeting.

Now, try your best to achieve both scale and impact, but if even if your organization is not able to reach hundreds or thousands of people around the world, it shows the admission officers that you are a student who is willing to put in the time, initiative and leadership for new endeavors.

Also, no matter what activity you do, just do it with a purpose and don’t just do it because you wanna start a non profit or make it look good on your application. Always remember that if you are doing something just for college applications, admission officers will see through that and you won’t be able to outsmart them because that’s what their job is.

Publish a Book

Ok, not let’s move to another really unique and impressive extracurricular activity which if you do can really make your application stand out from thousands of other applicants, it is to write and publish a book

Now, when I say writing a book, you might be wondering, how can a high school student possibly write a book?

Actually, you don’t need to be a college graduate to start writing a book, and realize that even as a student you can write a wonderful book that creates impact through the internet.

The reason most people think that students can’t publish a book and that’s what I use to think back in high school is because of the traditional perception about writing a book. Basically, we think of publishing a book in a traditional sense where the author writes for years, then a team edits it, approves it, contact publishers for distribution and the whole process takes a very long time.

However, most people don’t know that there is a self-publishing route where you can register on Amazon, meet their writing standards and just provide them your e-book. After which, they will take care of the rest of the publishing for you. You do need to take responsibility of distribution. Today, self-publishing a book is literally as easy as following a tutorial on YouTube. The hard part though, is the actually brainstorming and writing process.

Now, in my view, writing a book is a really unique extracurricular activity because

1. Most high students don’t even have a slightest clue that they can write and self-publish a book and only a few students actually write a book from those who do know about it. It means that if you write a book, you will be among a tiny group of high school students around the world to write a book, setting you apart from thousands of applicants automatically.
2. It shows your deep intellectual curiosity, interest and commitment for a subject and that is what colleges look for in students a quest for learning and going deep in a subject.
3. It shows that you take initiative and go beyond what is possible at your age to create impact in the world.
4. It simply looks really impressive on your resume.

Back in high school, I didn’t know that I could write and publish a book on my own until I saw the profiles of accepted students to top US Universities in my gap year. These admitted students were into research, publication, and writing books and not writing novels or thick books, but thin books on topics they cared about and showed deep curiosity in. So don’t think that you need to write a big novel or a very thick college textbook in high school.

But What to actually write on because in high school you are just exploring stuff and don’t really have deep understanding on a subject?

The answer to this is to write “introductory books” or books for middle schooler introducing them to certain high level concepts which might be intimidating to them like writing a book on introduction to computer science and programming with visually appealing graphics or explanation of high school science concepts with illustrations or on problems you see around you like racism or poverty or on breaking traditional stereotypes or on concepts like self-empowerment and women in stem.

I remember reading a profile of an accepted student to top US universities where she created a poetry book to raise awareness about the rising discrimination and racism against Asian Americans.

Think about something you already know and something that you can explain and elaborate to others. The book doesn’t have to be for people of your age, it can be for students below your level but remember that it should be on something that is informative and valuable to others and on something that you could share with others in interesting and enlightening ways.

There is a college youtuber named Iris Fu who got admitted to Stanford’s Class of 2024. In high school, she wrote an introductory economics book called Gateway to American Economics, in which she introduced Economics in a fun and visually attractive way to middle and high school students.

Now, Iris wrote an introduction to Economics book after reading a research paper about how introduction to economics textbooks have images which indirectly appeal to men. She decided to write an introduction to Economics textbook with gender neutral images to bridge the gender gap in economics.

I think that’s a great idea as well as a lesson that you need to know your purpose for writing the book? You can’t just sit down and write a book for the sake of writing a book. You need to ask yourself:

Why am I writing the book?

What problem am I trying to solve with the book?

Who is my target audience?

What impact am I trying to create with the content and graphics?

If you’d like to learn more about Iris’s book and how she designed and self-published it. I’ve given her video link down below 👇. Don’t forget to watch it, if you’re interested.

👉 Why I Published a Book as a High School Student (& how you can too)

In summary, just think about a topic you’re passionate about, do some research, find your why? and get started with the writing process.

Build an Online Community

I think after the pandemic there is no better time to start an online community around an issue or topic you’re interested in or you care about than right now. Building a community around a niche can greatly help you in reaching out to people and it can be through a YouTube channel, but if you are not into filming and stuff you can start blogging or podcasting or sharing valuable work on Facebook or Instagram to develop a good following and community of likeminded people.

Though you have endless avenues to explore here, let’s talk about the four main ways to build an online community. Starting a YouTube Channel, Starting a Blog or a Website, Starting a Podcast, and Starting a Facebook or Instagram Page. Let’s go over each of them one by one.

Starting a YouTube Channel

Here, like everywhere else, there are endless things you can do. You can teach academic concepts or foreign language to students or show others how to stay fit and healthy during the pandemic. You can create a YouTube channel around environmental activism or talk about issues like mental health etc. Basically, you can Start a YouTube Channel on pretty much anything as long as it is creating value on the internet and you are sharing something useful and helpful for others.

Remember that in order to do YouTube or any other form of content creation, you don’t need to be an expert in your field rather think of it as documenting and sharing whatever you know about the things you like and are passionate to talk about.

Don’t think too much, just start researching and sharing what you know that can be valuable to others. In my case, I went through the college application process on my own and learned a ton of things, which I thought would be helpful to other students like me and so I created my own YouTube channel and Blog to help people out with their College Applications.

Starting a Personal Blog or Creating a Website.

Here, you can go deep into topics you care about and you want to raise awareness of.

You can write poems, plays, short stories, screenplays, articles or essay and share them with the world through your blog or website. You can also use your work to enter local, national or international online writing competitions or submit your work to a renowned literary journal.

If you submit your work and win awards, it would be really great. But even if you don’t win awards, creative writing or journalistic writing will show college admission officers your ability to express your thoughts clearly and think critically, but again take this with a grain of salt because if you have a blog which no one reads, it won’t be impressive to colleges.

Hence, you’ll need to have a good number of views and a good following on your blog for it to look impressive to colleges. If you want to get into journalism, another thing you can do is to write opinion pieces for your local newspaper and if you get published that would again shine in your application.

Now, your website or blog can be on any topic you like or are interested in. For instance, if you wanna pursue international relations or political science, it can be entirely on politics, geopolitics and global issues. I remember watching a video of Singh in USA where he was interviewing a Harvard admit from India. The Harvard student mentioned that he started a blog in Grade 11th and published 100+ articles about foreign affairs on it.

In a year’s time, he received 700,000 views and some of his articles were published in newspapers like DNA India and Zee News. That was not it, when he submitted his application to Harvard, the admission officers loved reading his articles and the good number of views on his blog impressed them even further and probably lead to his acceptance. So yea, nothing is impossible and even a high traffic driving blog on a topic you care, can really impress college admission officers.

Now, it’s doesn’t have to be on foreign affairs or politics, you can also start something related to minority rights, education, health issues neglected in communities, racism, women rights etc. Basically, whatever you are interested in and care about.

Remember that you don’t need to have an award winning blog to be able to show your passion for something. Through your efforts, if you are able to show them that you are passionate about a topic, it will become your spike and that doesn’t necessarily have to be on a blog it can be your writings on LinkedIn as well.

Now, if you don’t know, there is a cost to starting your blog which is of buying domain and hosting but if you don’t want to invest in starting your own blog or getting into the technicalities of setting up and designing it, you can create an account on Medium.com where you can just write content and focus on posting instead of having to worry about the technical side of blogging. I know a lot of people who started writing articles on Medium and have developed great following with it and not just that, they are earning pretty good money through it.

You can even start an online website using WordPress.com, Wix or Blogger with your school friends on a specific topic. This way you’ll be able to showcase your creativity, leadership and collaboration skills while having less work load overall.

Starting a Podcast

This is quite untraditional but a great alternative to starting a magazine or website. Here you can talk about topics you’re interested in like social issues, tolerance, education etc. and invite people to speak about those topics on your podcast.

Again this should be on a topic you are deeply passionate about and I think Podcast gives you great opportunity to have sessions with other people and explore their views on your topics of interest.

Starting a Facebook or Instagram page

Now, creating a YouTube Channel, making a blog or starting a podcast, all require a lot of initial setup work but through Facebook or Instagram page you can both share your work with the world and develop a following through it.

The great thing about social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram is that you can start your organization or non profit or business just by registering on these platforms and creating a dedicated page for it. That’s how far you are from connecting with other people with the same interests as you.

Through Facebook and Instagram Page you can sell products for your business, post and create awareness for your organization, help local businesses in creating an online presence for themselves and much more.

No matter what arena you chose, I think creating an online community that demonstrates your interest and values is a great extracurricular to go after.

Also remember that if you’d like to make something online succeed you need to be consistent. You don’t need to be ferociously posting for a week and then disappear after that but rather you need to maintain consistency and regularity with your uploads to succeed.

Online Fundraisers

Now, using whatever online resources you have, you can create your own online fundraising event to support your personal project, community service projects, or service projects of local NGOs and other non profits. The first question before delving into fundraising for any service project is to ask yourself what does my community need the most right now and what are the current problems with my community that I can solve.

If you’re into arts and design, you can start a fundraiser by designing your own accessories in the form of t -shirts, mugs, phone covers etc. which you can then sell through a website or social media page. You can also create a team of students who are dedicated in helping people raise funds as well as awareness about issues through their art. Moreover, live art performances can also be used for as a starting point for fundraising campaigns.

If you are not into arts and design, you can conduct challenges or creative social media campaigns to raise awareness as well as funds for a good cause. Think of creative ways to raise funds like online charity sports matches or Esports matches online for fundraising purposes. With creative ways, you also have a good chance of getting partially viral and encouraging more people to join.

Extracurriculars & College Admissions

Your extracurricular’s impressiveness to college admission officers is subject to a lot of factors such as

How long you’ve been invested into the activity?

What impact did you create with it and how that activity impacted you?

How passionate were you about the activity?

Did you just do it for the college applications?

Were you really self-driven in the activities?

If you are able to show passion, dedication, intellectual curiosity, leadership, and impact through your extracurricular activities, it can really help you in enhance your application drastically. One of the ways you can show the success of these self-driven extracurriculars is by showing the quantitative impact you had through them.

For instance, you can tell colleges the audience retention stats for your blog or website or you can show the number of views you got for your YouTube videos or the number of people the NGO was able to reach through the website you created, so it shows the colleges that your activity had both qualitative and quantitative impact in the community.

My best advice would be to plan right now. Don’t wait a day or a second, just pick your pen or open a note taking app and start planning for the extracurricular activities you want to engage in and once you get that clarity, research and start the process immediately.

Bonus Extracurriculars

Participate and win online competitions, contests and events like Breakthrough Junior Challenge.

Learning a New Programming Language and using it to solve problems in your community or creating impactful projects with it.

Connect with a native language speaker virtually and learn a new language.

All right, these are all the at-home extracurricular activities I know, if I have missed anything do let -me know in the comments below.

If you stick around till the end of the post, don’t forget to comment down “I READ TILL THE END” in the comments below to let me know this.

Do share this video with your high school friends or relatives who might find this video helpful in their extracurricular activity plans.

See you in the next video,

Good Bye and Take Care.