I will show you eleven extracurricular activities that got me into the University of Toronto with scholarship offers worth well over CA$270,000 or approximately ₹1.6 Crore 🤑
Interested? Read till the end.
My name is Zohair, and I am an Indian international student who was admitted to the University of Toronto (U of T) in the fall of 2021. I applied to U of T Scarborough for studies in Co-op Computer Science and U of T Mississauga for their Computer Science, Mathematics, and Statistics program.
I not only got admitted into both programs but received multiple competitive scholarship offers like the U of T International Scholars Award, U of T Scarbrough Entrance Scholarship, and U of T Mississauga Scholarship.
Yes, my academic performance did help me a lot but what also helped me stand out was my involvement in various co-curricular and extracurricular activities in high school 🚴♂️
When it comes to academics, even though the struggle is hard, this factor of admission is pretty straightforward: keep maintaining your grades throughout high school, score high in your final exams, and you’re good to go.
However, extracurricular activities don’t have a set formula that you can apply to everyone, which is why many students don’t have the proper understanding of the kind of extracurricular activities they are expected to do in high school and what should (and shouldn’t) be listed on the applications of top universities like the University of Toronto.
So what do students end up doing?
They take up extracurricular activities beyond their scope of interests and subject areas to ensure they have as many activities as possible on their activities list. Ultimately, creating a profile that’s all over the place.
Remember, you are not expected to be a student who is perfect in all areas. Universities do not want well-rounded students. They want a well-rounded class with students who have interests and specialties (strengths) in specific subjects and areas.
Hence, the secret is to present your extracurriculars in a way that makes certain qualities connected to your interests and passions shine more than anything else.
As for me, I didn’t mention all the extracurricular activities I did in high school, almost fifty of them, but instead picked and chose what to tell the University to keep their focus on a few qualities that I wanted to demonstrate from my profile.
That’s why I am not just going to tell you what extracurricular activities I did, what I did in those activities, and for how long I performed those activities, but why I selected them to present in my profile, what qualities I wanted to show through my involvement in them and what key ideas you absolutely should not forget when planning your extracurricular activities for the University of Toronto (or any other academically-oriented institution in Canada, U.S., UK, Australia or Europe).
Let’s start with the first quality I wanted to highlight in my extracurricular activities profile.
And it was
Tech Enthusiasm
Why Tech Enthusiasm? 🤔
Since I planned to major in Computer Science, I had to find a way to demonstrate my interest in technology apart from good grades in Mathematics and Physics.
Read: HOW I GOT INTO UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO (Stats, Extracurriculars, Advice, Supplementary App., OUAC)
Tech Channel
The first extracurricular activity I mentioned to help U of T see this interest was my Tech Channel on YouTube. I created this channel with my elder brother in June 2017, towards the end of my 9th Grade or freshman (first) year of high school.
At that time, I used to explore different applications and software on my smartphone and desktop and would create explanatory videos and tutorials on them. For instance, how to create animated videos on your smartphone, the best video editing software for desktops, and the top 10 animation apps on Android and iOS, etc.
By the time I applied to U of T in December 2020, the channel had already been functioning for three and half years. It had 450+ videos, 15+ years of watch time, and more than 5 Million views 🚀
Being a YouTube Content Creator throughout high school helped me develop and enhance my research, filming, animation, and marketing skills, to mention a few.
Tech Blog
Only a year after creating a tech channel on YouTube, I independently designed and launched a tech blog in August 2018. It was the second extracurricular activity I chose to highlight my interest in technology.
On the tech blog, which was named after the channel itself, my brother and I would research and write blog posts on various applications, software, trending gadgets, online earning methods, and much more.
When I submitted my U of T application, it was two and a half years in operation, with more than eighty blog posts and well over 700,000 views from around the world.
The tech channel and tech blog got monetized with Google Adsense, meaning we used to earn money from the ads displayed on our videos and blog posts. As a high school student, it felt pretty awesome to be making money through my content 🤑
Now, running a tech blog is way more technical than running a YouTube channel, as you have to think about SEO, keyword research, and ensure your posts are written well to attract visitors from Google. Moreover, you must constantly check for errors and update blog posts to keep the content fresh and new.
That’s why even though running a tech blog comes under the same domain of content creation, it taught me way different skills compared to YouTube, such as design skills, digital marketing skills, link-building skills, etc.
Global Science Video Competition
The third extracurricular I included to portray my passion for technology was my participation in the Breakthrough Junior Challenge 2018. This activity was as much about passion for science as it was about technology.
If you don’t know, the Breakthrough Junior Challenge is an annual global competition where high school students create videos that illustrate a concept in life sciences, physics, or mathematics in an engaging and illuminating way. It is organized by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation.
As part of the challenge, I was required to create a three-minute video (Note: now, the video length has been changed to 2 minutes) explaining a complex concept in an engaging and illuminating fashion.
At that time, I was beginning Grade 11th and had no idea how I would pull this off, given that I had never studied advanced Physics concepts like Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and Dark Matter before. However, summer vacations were on the horizon, leaving me with ample time to commit myself to this project.
So, I dedicated a huge portion of my summer vacations to studying advanced Physics concepts, analyzing past finalists’ videos, researching a topic in-depth, and producing (scripting, filming, editing) a video explaining it 🎥
It was a two-and-a-half-month project, and by the end of my summer vacation, I submitted a video on Quantum Vaccum Fluctuations in Physics and titled it “Empty Space is Not Empty.” As part of the video, I even drafted a Poem on Quantum Mechanics, which I mentioned at the end of the video.
I uploaded the final video on YouTube with the Hashtag (#breakthroughjuniorchallenge). Here is how my final video for the Breakthrough Junior Challenge turned out 👇
It doesn’t look great, but thanks to my younger self for trying because that’s all that matters 😅
Long story short, I didn’t win the challenge or get a participation certificate. Still, it was a great learning experience self-studying an advanced Physics topic and coming up with a creative video on it.
Key Takeaways
Now, you might be wondering, “That’s all well and good Zohair, but why did you consider these activities, tech channel, tech blog, and especially the video challenge, worth mentioning in the application?” 🤔
Basically, through these activities, I wanted to show that I’m a person who’s been into building products with different technologies throughout high school. Be it through editing videos for my YouTube channel, designing page layouts for my blog, or taking up a video challenge for global competition. And I’m passionate to learn more about the ins and outs of computer systems and applications to build more exciting stuff in the future.
This way, I hoped that U of T’s admissions team would start seeing me as a student who has explored different technologies in the past and has the interest and foundational technical skills to transition well into their Computer Science programs 👩💻
These non-traditional activities also show that I’m creative, can think outside the box, and am not afraid to take up different challenges or follow unconventional routes to pursue my passions.
Moreover, universities and colleges don’t see these non-traditional activities often. They rarely get a profile where activities like a blog or channel are listed. So it helps you stand out from the crowd easily 👨🏻🤝👨🏻
Therefore, when planning your activities, don’t hesitate to think creatively and create your own unique extracurriculars if they align well with your passions and future ambitions. And it doesn’t have to be a blog or a channel; it can be an online business, a non-profit website, a sports analytics team, or a unique volunteering endeavour: anything that creates impact.
Even though my extracurricular activities in the tech domain were pretty convincing that U of T decided to grant me admission and scholarships, there was something seriously lacking in them. And this element is likely one of the reasons why all the US Universities I applied to rejected my profile.
Any guesses?
Yep, it’s Computer Programming.
All three tech extracurricular activities or projects, be it tech channel, tech blog, or video challenge, did not involve much computer programming, which is at the heart of Computer Science. Generally speaking, you gotta be able to code a bit to say you have some knowledge of Computer Science 🤷♂️
By the way, if you wanna know the five big mistakes 🙅♂️ that got me rejected from all the Ivy League universities I applied to and can seriously harm your profile if you make them, I recommend you read my post on it 👇 .
Read: 5 Mistakes That Got Me Rejected from ALL the Ivy League Universities (Don’t Do Them)
It will surely help you avoid the major pitfalls.
If you’re aspiring to major in CS, I’d suggest you utilize programming a lot more in your projects because that’s what a lot of computer science is about. Colleges love seeing an aspiring CS student who knows how to code and can combine programming with their various personal interests.
So try to develop a project or a product using programming in your areas of interest. It can be sports+programing, service+programing, or business+programing, try to combine whatever you like with programming, and if you can solve a pressing problem in your community with it, your application will surely stand out ⭐
Community Service
Community Service has been an integral part of my education and upbringing.
When I was in middle school, my school encouraged me to participate in a lot of service projects, ranging from clothes collection drives and free education camps for low-income students to frequent visits to nursing homes and orphanages.
In high school, I was required to take up service projects because service was a big part of CAS (Creativity, Activity, and Service) in IB DP’s curriculum.
Service was built into my school curricula, and as I contributed to various projects, my passion and love for service increased to the point that it became one of my core values in high school. Most of my time outside of academics was spent in service endeavours, and as it was a big part of me and my school experience, I didn’t forget to list the most impactful service projects in my application ✍
Hunger Relief Project
This was the first and undoubtedly the most impactful service project I mentioned on the app.
Project Infaq was an annual, school-based service project where we provided needy families in our city with food packets for the month of Ramadan in the Islamic Calendar. ‘Infaq’ is an Arabic term that means spending to please God without hoping for any return from the recipient.
Project Infaq wasn’t a small project where we occasionally distributed food packets as time permitted. Instead, it was a project where we helped hundreds of needy families, and the whole school would get involved in fundraising and distribution.
Since middle school, I’ve been contributing to this project, and in Grade 9th, I became an official member 👩🎓
The project could be divided into three major parts: survey, fundraising, and distribution.
In Grade 9th and 10th, I was a member of the survey and distribution team and mostly helped with the survey of the needy families in the slums present near the school and around the city during my summer vacations. My classmates and I would come to the school and spend the whole day outside the school surveying the families and households that needed food packets.
In Grade 11th, I became the Survey Team leader and helped organize and lead the student survey team 📝
In Grade 12th, I was selected as part of the Student Leadership team of the project and tasked to lead the three teams.
That year was the most challenging not because of the added work but because the added work was mainly carried out during after-school stay-backs, and I had to balance it with my academics and other extracurriculars.
What was the added work?
We organized and managed fundraising events like charity matches and assemblies to raise funds for the project. We also expanded the survey to include more slums and surveyed thousands of families together 👨👩👧👧
Once we had all the survey data, we filtered it by considering different criteria like household income, earning members, number of people in the house, etc.
Lastly, we distributed the food packets to needy people. These food packets had all the essential items to sustain a family for two months 📦
That year, 2019, we collectively raised more than ₹14,00,000 or ~US$ 17,500 and fed 700+ families 🤯
It was a challenging project to lead, but we pulled it off through effective collaboration and communication. We developed various skills and values in the process, from leadership to organizational skills, but the most important one for me was Gratitude and Empathy.
Since I took a gap year in 2020, I participated in the project again. But due to the pandemic, all of my participation was virtual, and I mostly helped with the online marketing campaigns and fundraising for the project.
Project Infaq was a combination of personal and collective efforts. Every year since middle school, its organization and execution happened in the summers as the month of Ramadan would come in the summers. However, I did engage in several other service activities outside of it.
Computer Skills Introduction Project
This was the second activity I mentioned to highlight the service quality.
This activity was part of CAS in the IB Program, but I included it in my U of T Application since it was a six-to-seven-month-long service project, and I was pretty committed to it even though I was just a member.
After Project Infaq ended in Grade 11th, I participated in this activity.
So what did we do in it? 🤔
We taught computer basics to low-income students during after-school hours every week.
Firstly, we surveyed families near our school who wanted to send their kids to this computer education program. We shortlisted thirty kids and then taught them basic computer functions through lessons, games, and tests.
When I taught the lesson, my team would help the kids execute the tasks; when any other team member taught the class, I would help the kids complete the tasks. This happened for six long months until the kids learned basic typing, Microsoft Paint, Google Chrome, and the basics of Microsoft Office 🖱
This experience taught me more than anything else to be patient when you’re teaching because you think, “It’s so easy, why isn’t the person getting it?” then you gotta step back and appreciate their pace of learning.
Disaster Relief Project
As the weekly lessons continued, an unfortunate disaster occurred in India, the Kerala Floods.
Some of my classmates and I got together and launched an initiative to help the people of Kerala: The Kerala Floods Initiative. We raised awareness about the floods in morning assemblies and even created a dedicated presentation to bring the issue to light 💡
We campaigned online and during school lunch breaks to raise funds to support the cause. As part of campaigning, we also filmed a video on the seriousness of the calamity during after-school hours.
This initiative was relatively short: it lasted about three weeks in August 2018, and by the end of it, we had raised approximately $800, which we transferred to an NGO named Habitat for Humanity to help the people in Kerala with essential supplies.
Later, the Habitat NGO provided each of us, meaning my friends and me, with individual certificates to commend our efforts and appreciate our timely help ⌛
Even though the experience was shorter than other activities, it was pretty time-intensive. It taught me the value of timely action and the skill of executing a project in a short time frame. More importantly, it would’ve shown U of T that I’m a proactive and socially aware individual.
The fourth activity I listed for this quality also happened the same year, in 2018, but during the winters.
Winter Clothes Collection Drive
We all know that winters cause hundreds of deaths across India, but a lot of us don’t know that cold waves cause far more deaths in India than heat waves 😲
I participated in the Winter Clothes Collection Drive in 2018 with this understanding: to provide warm garments to those who don’t have the means to clothe themselves in the freezy winters of my city.
This project was divided into three stages: collection, organization, and clothes distribution.
First, as a team, we campaigned in and outside the school community to raise awareness about the issue and collect warm garments for the poor and homeless.
Once we had all the clothes, we filtered the clothes that didn’t smell and were in good condition from those that couldn’t be worn due to the foul odor 👕
It was a hard task, but we did it somehow. Then, the stinking clothes were sent for washing and cleaning while the good ones were sorted and categorized.
Like most activities, we sorted the clothes during after-school hours, but unlike other activities, the distribution was done during winter break when we traveled in and out of the city to distribute warm garments to the needy.
This activity was unique because the distribution happened outside the school in slums while most service endeavors took place in school. It taught me to get outside my comfort zone to help others and gave me gratitude for warm clothes 🧥
The activity took two and a half months from start to finish, and by the end of it, we had distributed thousands of garments to thousands of homeless and poor people.
College Counselling Initiative
This was the last activity on the list and one that I engaged in after high school in my gap year. It was a self-initiative I started to solve a pressing problem in school: Lack of College Counselling.
When my class graduated in the middle of the pandemic, some school teachers resigned; one of them was my College Counsellor. After he left, there was no counselor in the school for several months and because my school wasn’t a big organization with lots of resources and was suffering the effects of the pandemic, they couldn’t hire a College Counsellor.
Lack of College counseling in school affected my juniors, and I would receive their phone calls about studying abroad and college planning queries 📞
Since I was in my gap year and was going through the US College Application Process, I decided to mentor the high school students at my school, specifically the Grade 11th and 12th students.
Soon, I was granted permission by the school, and now, I was not only doing college research for myself but for a bigger cause: to get others into college through my knowledge and research.
So how did I mentor them?
I would conduct online presentations and one-on-one meetings to guide the students about the US College application process, various scholarship opportunities, and the minimum requirements to apply to different universities 🏫
Specifically, I tracked and monitored the progress of twelve Grade 11th and 12th students who wanted to apply abroad.
Apart from this, I used to discuss strategies and plans with the head of the school and would create weekly reports about the progress of the initiative.
I offered this guidance and counseling for about fifteen weeks until the end of the year when my College Applications and their essays needed more attention and focus.
This activity was an independent, self-organized initiative that I took up to offer guidance to students. As you can guess, I am continuing it, but it is not limited to the school community. Now, anybody can receive that guidance online on this YouTube Channel and my Blog if they search for it 😉
Anyways, this activity taught me skills of responsibility, accountability, and self-reflection more than any other activity because this time, I was tracking profiles of students and was accountable to the Head of School for my efforts and the progress of my initiative.
Key Takeaways
By listing these five service endeavors, I wanted to show the U of T’s admissions committee that I’m a person who regularly donated his time to serve my surrounding communities even though I had other obligations in my hands, like academics, student council, and home responsibilities. Will talk about these in a minute 😉
This showcases that I can not only balance different responsibilities with academics, but I’m deeply passionate about service, and it’s not something that I did half-heartedly or just for college apps.
With these activities, U of T can picture me as a student who’s aware of the wider society, can think beyond himself, is willing to take the initiative, and has the potential to become a strong member of the University of Toronto’s student community during his study and beyond it.
This is how listing service activities would’ve likely helped me, but how would these activities help you if you were to highlight them on your application? 🤨
Apart from gaining invaluable skills through your volunteering efforts, having service activities on your extracurricular activities list is a great way of showing your commitment to a cause or various causes and your caring attitude toward others in your community.
Start with a cause you are passionate about, and then decide how you’re gonna devote your time to it.
Maybe you believe in the impact of education and decide to tutor struggling school kids for free as I did, 👩🏫
or maybe your predominant belief is about caring for the environment, and decide to organize cleaning drives in your local park, 🧹
or maybe you are into martial arts and decide to conduct self-defence workshops for students at your school. 🥋
There are hundreds of community service projects you can engage in. Yes, explore various projects but stick to a few causes that you are deeply passionate about.
In high school, I tutored struggling kids after high school, did participate in a lot of cleaning drives, and even organized hunger relief campaigns. But, I decided not to list these activities because I cared more and dedicated more of my time to the five service endeavours I listed.
Service is a really interesting quality, you know why?
Because no matter what your interests are, be it law, safety, environment, business, or tech, you can always combine them with service and create a unique activity just the way you can with programming. 😄
As I said, do not limit yourself to traditional extracurriculars; you are unique, your environment is unique, and your community’s problems are unique. Think about your interests and then inculcate some form of service into them.
Combining service with your field of interest will show that you are not in your field for money, which colleges love to know. They don’t want people who are doing Computer Science for just high packages, but who can create an impact in the world using their education.
Therefore, start small and devote more time to a few extracurriculars you actually love doing. This is how you create a focused extracurricular activities list 🚴♀️
Also, if you can’t start an initiative for some reason, NGOs operate in almost all parts of the world. Get in touch with them, and start working with them until you figure out your service interests and start your own project.
Leadership
Leadership was the final quality I highlighted on my U of T application.
Leadership is not something I grew up with, but as I participated in a number of activities, I was automatically selected and elected for leadership positions based on my skillset, and that’s how I gradually learned a bit about student leadership in school 😃
Student Council
An ideal example is my experience with Student Council at my school, and this is also the first activity I listed to portray my leadership quality.
Student Council is a small group of students elected by students and teachers in an institution to address school issues and become the voice of the student body. In many schools, including my own, Student Council also organizes and carries out school events and activities. It varies significantly from institution to institution but is an excellent opportunity to develop leadership skills as a student.
This may come as a surprise, but I’ve been a Student Council member throughout high school, partly because my school was small, with fewer than a thousand students. So it was a bit easier to compete and win student elections than in big schools with intense competition between candidates for different positions 💪
In Grade 9th, I was elected as my House’s Vice-Captain.
A year after that, in Grade 10th, I got elected as my School’s Vice-Captain.
After that, in Grade 11th, I competed for the highest position, School Captain, and luckily won that too 🥇
Obviously, of all the positions I had in high school, this was the most challenging and rewarding one in terms of learning experience and skill development.
My team and I got involved in a lot of things, but to highlight a few key activities: we analyzed the work and mistakes of the past Student Councils, discussed problems concerning the student community, brainstormed solutions for different things, and implemented the strategies as a team on a regular basis.
Here are some of the things I did in that academic session:
- Conducted more than twenty full-fledged meetings (almost all of them happened during after-school hours) 🤝
- Organized the first-ever Student Council Assembly in School 👨💼
- Formed Canteen Inspection Team for food checkups 🔍
- Introduced physical exercise in the morning assembly 🤸♂️
- Started various initiatives on cleanliness in school 🧹
In the end, we were recognized as the best Student Council in the school’s history up until that term.
And finally, in Grade 12th, I became one of the mentors of the new Student Council to guide them on the work of the past Student Council. This was to help the students transition smoothly into their new positions for the initial days, and later on, I had a very minimal role to play in the team.
Overall, this activity was one of the most enriching experiences in high school, along with Project Infaq and my tech channel. It taught me the value of working together as a team, tackling conflicts of opinion and personalities with patience, and also helped me enhance my interpersonal skills 🗣
If you are someone who genuinely cares about the interests of the student community and wants to solve challenges with other student leaders in your school, join the student council at your school.
Yes, it will be full of ups and downs, but it has the potential to become one of the most enriching high school experiences for you.
Secretary General – Inter-School MUN
Next up, I listed my role as the Secretary General of an Inter-School MUN hosted at my school when I had just started Grade 12th or senior year of high school.
I don’t think I need to describe what MUN is 😅
But in case you’re not aware, MUN is a simulation of the United Nations, which (as well know, hopefully) is an international organization whose mission is to maintain peace between countries through effective dialogue and discussions.
MUN stands for Model United Nations, and it is where students become representatives of different countries and try to solve real-world issues with the political stance of their assigned countries.
I’ve been a member of the MUN Club at my school for several years and had participated in a couple of Intra-School and Inter-School MUNs before I was tasked to lead my School MUN as the Secretary-General in 2019.
Organizing an Inter-school Model United Nations is a huge task, and Secretary General has quite a big role to play in it; however, to be honest with you, in this MUN experience, I didn’t have as huge a task as I expected it at first.
Yes, I did plan and coordinate with the organizing committee on various matters, but I had a minimal role to play apart from regular follow-ups with the team 📆
Since my team was quite dedicated, I didn’t have to do much work except prepare my opening and closing speeches.
On the event days, I mainly visited different committees to make various announcements and conducted feedback sessions (along with the Director General) towards the end of the MUN.
Another role I played in that MUN was supervising the video creation team for the MUN. I helped them and provided some of my input in the editing of the MUN video 📷
Before you start thinking that this guy was really into MUNs in high school…
Nooooo, I wasn’t 🙃
In high school, I was neither a MUN enthusiast nor disliked the idea of participating in or organizing MUNs. It just wasn’t my main extracurricular activity.
So why did I list it on my application?
Yes, I wanted to highlight my networking, organizational, administrative, and communication skills, but more than anything else, I wanted to show my past experience in leadership and portray myself as a potential student leader at U of T.
Sidenote: Participating in National and International MUN conferences can really boost your application, but before you can get there, you need to take your first step by partaking in your first MUN conference 🤵
If you wanna get into the world of MUNs but have no idea where to start, I recommend you check out the beginner’s guide to MUN by Best Delegate 👇
Check out: Getting Started with your MUN journey
Don’t worry. It isn’t sponsored. Just a helpful resource I found 😄
Family Responsibilities
The third activity for highlighting my leadership and the last one on the list might seem counter-intuitive but will make sense once I explain it.
It was my family’s responsibilities, specifically my role as the caretaker of my younger brother.
Since my father and mother aren’t highly educated (in the context of traditional education), I had to assume the role of educating and mentoring my younger brother throughout my high school life. This responsibility increased tenfold in my gap year, especially after the Pandemic when his online classes weren’t effective for his learning and development 😷
I would organize his daily schedule, help him with assignments, and regularly teach him the necessary Math and English skills for his standard. English communication was one of his weaknesses, and in this area, he gave me a really tough time in terms of patience and understanding of his learning curve ➰
To teach is to learn twice
Joesph Joubert
If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.
Albert Einstein
I came to terms with these two realities during this experience and realized the power of teaching for my own learning from this experience.
If you wish to strengthen a concept in any subject, teach it to someone. Ideally, teaching it to a child will be the best. If you make them understand, you learn twice, but if you can’t, you don’t really understand it yourself. 🤷♂️
While I taught my brother in high school, I constantly learned and improved my fundamental math and English concepts without realizing it. I was not only helping him but helping myself.
You might be thinking, “This is all good Zohair, but where is leadership in all of this?” 🤔
Firstly, being a caretaker of my younger brother and taking his responsibility, all while managing my own activities, highlights a level of maturity and responsibility to the admission committee. These are two essential ingredients for any leadership role.
If you look at this role alongside other activities, it shows the U of T’s admissions officers that I have actively cultivated a desire to look after the people around me and developed a sense of responsibility that a leader needs to have to succeed in his role. Therefore, making me a potential candidate for the position of a strong student leader on campus who looks after the U of T’s student community.
These activities worked well for me, and they were some of the best ways to demonstrate leadership potential to U of T for me, but they may or may not be the best for you.
Key Takeaways
You can try engaging in these traditional leadership extracurriculars by participating in MUNs, Student Council, Sports Teams, Social Groups, or Student Clubs, but don’t limit yourself by thinking that only these activities can demonstrate leadership qualities to universities.
If one or a few of these activities work for you, get deep into them, and you’ll be good to go, but if they do not, try creating your own projects and groups around your passions and interests and get more like-minded people involved. Together you can create something remarkable.
The whole point is to think outside the box because leadership can be portrayed in less traditional ways too. Remember, universities give extra attention to unique extracurricular engagements, so don’t be afraid to try one 😎
If you want to start your own project but have never taken up a leadership role whatsoever, a good place to get started is to either become a member of a student club or organization or participate in any project run by someone else.
Once you’ve gained experience and understand how the event or project is organized, upgrade your role or take a bigger responsibility. Gradually, take up more tasks and move up the ladder ☝
As you make your way up, you’ll know your strengths and weaknesses and unlock your leadership potential because everyone has leadership qualities; they are just waiting to be unlocked through experience and trial and error.
Muti-faceted Extracurriculars
Now you might have noticed that a lot of activities from these ten do not just highlight one quality. They are a mix of various experiences and showcase a variety of qualities apart from the one I attended to portray for them.
Being a caretaker isn’t the only quality that shows responsibility. My College counseling initiative showed responsibility and accountability, and so did Project Infaq, where I was one of the students held responsible.
Similarly, Leadership is demonstrated not only in Student Council and MUN but in other activities as well, including the College Counselling project, where I was leading the whole initiative independently, and Project Infaq, where I was collaborating with the team and organizing fundraising events.
Certain extracurricular activities may help you in more ways than one. Maybe you intend to develop leadership skills through Student Council but end up learning organization, community service, and various soft skills alongside Leadership, or maybe you expected to improve teamwork through volunteering, but you also enhanced communication, problem-solving, and gratitude 😇
Some of these activities that help you in multiple ways and teach you things beyond your expectations include leadership positions, community service, team sports, entrepreneurship, and self-directed projects.
So, find opportunities to engage in these extracurricular activities not just for the holistic development of your personality but because later on, you can portray them from different angles in your profile or your essays by bringing up any quality from that specific activity.
In my profile, tech enthusiasm, community service, and leadership were the three overarching qualities, but under them, I also demonstrated numerous qualities, from initiative to teamwork to building stuff. This is the power of multi-faceted extracurriculars.
But surprisingly, it all comes down to how you present these activities in a manner that attracts the admission officers’ attention. But that is a topic for my next post 😉
Some of you might be thinking,
“Oh my God! these are so many extracurricular activities?”
“My school doesn’t haven’t this.”
“How will I be able to do that.”
Don’t worry ✋
If you don’t have the opportunity to engage in the same or similar extracurricular activities, get involved in some other projects. Utilize whatever opportunity comes your way because colleges look at your profile in the context of your background. They look at the opportunities and resources you had at your disposal and how you made the most use of them.
Many students don’t realize this, but we are living in a day and age where if you have an internet connection, you are surrounded by immense opportunities. 😏
There are literally so many opportunities present online to get involved, from competitions to remote internships. If you don’t have traditional opportunities, make the most use of online opportunities.
If you wanna know what online extracurricular activities are worth doing for admissions and scholarships at U of T as well as other top U.S. universities, I highly recommend you check out post on it 👇
Read: Top 10 At-Home Extracurricular Activities For College Applications | Best Online Extracurriculars
Academics > Extracurriculars
Honestly, these activities are a lot, but this is because I was all over the place and wanted to do everything I could get the opportunity to do before my high school journey ended.
But do you need these many extracurricular activities to get into U of T?
NO, YOU DON’T 🙅♂️
You actually don’t need to do ten or eleven extracurricular activities to get into U of T or win their automatic, merit-based scholarships. Generally, for Canadian Universities, including the University of Toronto, grades are the deciding factor for admission and merit-based scholarships.
Hence, if you have maintained good academic performance in high school, you have a pretty good chance of getting into U of T and winning scholarships even with fewer extracurricular activities on your application.
I got an Automatic Entrance Scholarship worth CA$225,000 from U of T based on my academic profile, so I know it’s possible to get admission and academic scholarships with little extracurricular involvement 🙂
However, if you’re targetting the University of Toronto’s fully funded undergraduate scholarships, be it the National Scholarship for Canadian students or the Lester B. Pearson scholarship for international students, you definitely need a pretty good extracurricular involvement along with stellar academics because now you need to prove to the scholarship committee that you have great real-world experience in the past and you’ll be a potential change-maker for your country and the world in the future.
Let’s not get into this. If you wanna know more about the Lester B. Pearson Scholarship, its requirements, and the complete application process, again, I have a dedicated post on it 👇
Read: How To Get Full Scholarship at University of Toronto as an International Student
Generally speaking, for admission and merit-based scholarships at U of T, you just need to do a couple of extracurricular activities that you’re interested in, ideally related to your field of study, to show the university that you can manage your grades alongside other extracurricular involvement and have the potential to do the same in college when you’ll be juggling with hundred other things with rigorous academics.
Balancing yourself in school is really important. What do I mean?
Some students are too focused on achieving perfect grades in school while neglecting any extracurricular involvement. This is one extreme. The other one is when you start exhausting yourself with too many extracurricular activities to the point that it takes a toll on your physical and mental health 😩
Don’t go to either of the two extremes. For U of T, lean towards academics and prioritize it over your extracurriculars.
How to Plan Your Extracurriculars?
Let me share with you a few crucial factors you need to keep in mind when planning your extracurricular activities for U of T or any other academically-centered institution.
Relevance > Number of Activities
The relevance of Extracurricular Activities is far more important than the number of activities on your list 📄
We all know the importance of quality over quantity, yet we somehow feel that having a lot of activities on our activities list will help us.
In reality, universities want to see extracurriculars relevant to your interests, field of study, and core values, even if they are a few.
Sometimes having less is better, which is undoubtedly true in this case because it shows that you committed yourself to these activities and went deep into them 🧐
Explore, Focus, and Filter
Personally, I would suggest you try a lot of extracurricular activities to explore your interests and discover new areas.
Exploring different activities is how you’ll know what matters to you and what you want to keep pursuing. Once you get this clarity, focus most of your efforts on a few extracurricular activities that are important to you and (if possible) your field of study while having room for more exploration 🧪
And when you’re filling out your application, you can further filter your extracurricular activities to include activities that really mattered to you.
Impact of the Activity
Think about the impact of the Extracurricular on you and your community 🏞
It’s not just a matter of relevance and focus, but it’s also the impact of your extracurricular involvements on you and your surrounding people.
Are your extracurriculars impacting you? If yes, how?
Are your extracurricular activities helping your community or solving their problems?
Are you using the knowledge of your field to create something that can bring positive change to any community?
Activities that have an element of positive change and impact on local communities show colleges that the student has the potential to create a similar impact on the college community as well.
Importance of Presentation
A lot of times, how you present the activity is more important than what you did ✒
Believe it or not, presenting your extracurricular activities and framing them in the right language is one of the most important elements of creating a stand-out extracurricular activities profile.
The admission team doesn’t know you. They most likely don’t see the work you did except if it is something you did on a national or international level, so whatever you tell them and how you tell them will determine how they will understand you as a student.
Hence, take great care in presenting the right information about your extracurricular involvements 🎁
In case you want to get a rough idea about the importance of presentation in applications and how I crafted some of my activities in my profile, see my University of Toronto Scholarship essays in the post below.
In the post, I read my scholarship essays and went into great detail on why and how I chose to write about them.
Read: My Lester B. Pearson Scholarship Essays + Tips For Yours
Actionable Takeaways
Before you leave, here are the five actionable takeaways from this loooong post, so get yourself right into the action.
✅ Prioritize your academics over extracurricular activities: the University of Toronto values academics more than extracurriculars for admission into most programs.
✅ Don’t randomly list activities on your application. Pick a few qualities you want to highlight from your extracurriculars. One can obviously be your interest in the field. The three main qualities I wanted to highlight from my extracurriculars were tech enthusiasm, community service, and leadership.
✅ Find Interest, Relevance, and Impact in your Extracurricular involvement. It’s not about the number of extracurriculars you do but more about your interest in it, the relevance of it to your study, and the impact of it on you and your community.
✅ Balance academics and non-academic pursuits. Take a balanced approach to extracurriculars. Don’t over-exhaust yourself with 100% academic focus or 100% extracurricular involvement.
✅ Think about how you’ll present your extracurricular activities: the secret to grabbing the admission officers’ attention comes from how you write about and present the extracurriculars in your applications, not just what you do in them.
All of my posts on the University of Toronto’s application and scholarship can be accessed from the College Applications and Scholarships categories on this website. So don’t forget to check them out to get a good view of U of T’s application process and scholarships.
These posts have helped hundreds of students, and reading them will most likely help you too.
I hope this post helped you a little bit in understanding more about extracurricular activities needed for top universities like U of T. If it did, let me know in the comments. It will mean a lot to me.
Thank you so much for sticking around till the end.
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Good Bye & Take Care 👋
