For Elite College Admissions, Fewer Activities May Mean More

Forbes

16-06-2025

The River Ridge bench celebrates in the final seconds as River Ridge's Jesica Mergen scores on a ... More free throw in their 43-42 overtime win against Prentice in a Division 5 semifinal WIAA state tournament basketball game Thursday, March 24, 2011, in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Andy Manis)
When people find out that I write about colleges and universities, I am frequently asked for advice about getting kids into college, or getting them a rung or two up the college prestige ladder. I probably get a related question by e-mail once or twice a week, on average. I usually disappoint the inquirer, since I do not think I have much to offer on the topic.
Although lately, I have been advising parents not to let their eager applicants use AI for their applications or personal essays. Colleges want authentic voices. And many do check for AI use. Few things will do more harm more quickly than having an admissions reviewer think an applicant is faking it, or worse – being dishonest.
I do also suggest that parents and families sign up for direct admission programs because I am a big fan of how they're changing the application and admissions process. I love how these programs give admissions instead of rejections, which can be great for student confidence and grit. I also love how they can dramatically broaden an applicant's gaze to include schools they perhaps did not even know about, and very likely never even considered. Plus, direct admission financial aid and scholarship packages can be quite strong.
Maybe that means that I do have a few things to offer about the college admissions journey.
But starting now, based on a survey I saw recently, I'm adding another morsel of admissions advice – don't overdo the extracurricular activities.
For some families, that may seem counterintuitive.
The inclination has been, I suspect, to do as much as possible, to jam every available hour with one enterprise or another. The assumption was that carpet-bombing a college application with this activity, and another, and yet another thing showed ambition, energy, and curiosity – things applicants assumed colleges wanted in their students. Or that, alternatively, showing how an admissions prospect was managing 20 hours a week of extracurricular activity while also booking a 3.9 GPA demonstrated maturity, focus, and time management skills.
But based on a survey of students who applied to, and were admitted at, top-tier, highly exclusive colleges – think: the Ivy League, plus the likes of MIT, Stanford, Duke, and one or two more – fewer activities, fewer hours a week may be the best course to convince the admissions gatekeepers.
The survey, by Pioneer Academics, which provides accredited academic and extracurricular enrichment programs to college-bound students, asked more than 150 high-tier applicants and admitted students about the high school activities that went into their applications.
The results show that for elite universities, the sweet spot for quantity of extracurricular activities is just four. Acceptance and enrollment rates ramp upwards based on the number of activities from one (8% admission rate), two (15%), three (25%), to four, where 30% of students get in. After four, the rates drop. Students with five extracurriculars got good admissions news 25% of the time. At six activities, the admissions rate was seven percent, slightly worse than having just one extracurricular activity.
Further indicating that it's possible to over-do the out-of-class activities for students accepted at the nation's elite schools, the average number of extracurriculars was 3.7 – just under four, in other words.
A similar trend held true for the amount of time college prospects spent on their extracurricular engagements. For hours spent, the admission and enrollment sweet spot was just four to eight hours a week.
Those rates were close to, although slightly ahead of, the rates for students who spent an average of eight to ten hours a week on activities outside the school. If students spent more than ten hours a week on extracurricular stuff, their admissions rates actually fell by 10%. On the other end, students who spent less than four hours a week were, according to the survey, nearly three times less likely to get golden admissions tickets.
Putting the two data points together, if you were planning, the best place to be is three or four activities practiced four to eight hours per week, about an hour or two per activity.
The survey suggested that this three-to-four, four-to-eight window was a kind of Goldilocks zone, where commitment was evident, but so too was passion – that students were investing in what they cared about, not just checking as many boxes as possible in the hope that something stuck. The survey analysis also suggested that it may be beneficial for the chosen extracurricular activities to be related, all in music or art, or all related to animal welfare or global climate change, things like that.
Demonstrating genuine passion over frantic pace, in other words, may be the code-cracker.
Even though the lifetime benefits of a college education, especially at an elite college, are rich and abundant, I would never advise overtly trying to hack or code-break college admissions.
Nonetheless, this survey information from Pioneer is likely helpful for students and their support people not to overdo it. Extracurricular activities are not like the SATs or your GPA, where every extra point can matter. When adding enrichment activities to a college application, having fewer activities may be more.