Self-study
I've always been someone with interests on the strange side. I don't mean illegal, but I was definitely always the oddball. I turned some of that oddness into deep involvement in ECs during college, but now I wonder if it will be too weird for admissions? Thoughts?
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3 comments
Hey @TRenato! I'm Jake and I'm one of the admissions consultants here at 7Sage! Just for a quick bona fides to let you know I'm not an internet rando - prior to 7Sage, I worked for 14 years in higher ed admissions including a stint as the Director of Admissions at Notre Dame Law. I'm happy to help you out with this question!
Actually though, I'm going to ask a follow up before really answering. So, what kind of interests are we talking about? Can you give me something concrete? Like "I'm totally into underwater basket weaving, but only if it's salt water. Freshwater underwater basket weaving is such a sellout." Because what you consider strange may be kinda mainstream. Example - I worked in a rare books library as a grad student. One time, we had a world famous violinist visiting the library ... and I had no idea who this dude was. Just not my thing and everyone was SHOCKED because this dude was a HUGE DEAL. Meanwhile, we once had someone leave their CD of Oasis's "What's the Story (Morning Glory)" in the coat room (so we can totally date my grad school experience - there were CDs). And I was like "That's a bummer for that person. That's an AWESOME album!" ... and everyone else looked at me funny because they didn't know who Oasis is. One man's "this is basic information, people - they were arguably the biggest rock band in the world for a year or two" is another person's "say what?"
Looking forward to hearing back from you!
@JacobBaska
Hi Jake,
Thanks for taking the time to answer this. I will say, I do think this one is legitimately odd.
For example, I was an executive in a club in undergrad that did a lot of commendable work. It was a non-denominational, ‘religious’ - I put that in quotes because that’s what the Student Activities codes us as even though we aren’t technically religious - organization that’s main goal was to bring together people from diverse backgrounds, especially religious, and get them to interact with each other and have conversations. Tense work, but we had a lot of people walk away with changed perspectives, or at least new understandings of issues from someone else’s pov. We especially had a lot of success in the fraught past few years.
I’m proud of this work, and I think it reflects well on me that I helped to engender these conversations. The issue is that the founder was a dude who had a really odd sense of humor, so he decided to give the org a weird sounding name - think ‘The Dark Church’, or something along those lines. So while I’m more than happy to talk about the work I did, I’m afraid admissions officers will look at the strange name and go ‘oh, no.’
@TRenato
Thanks for the further details!
So, if you've built a lot of your identity on "I do odd things," I'm totally going to rain on your parade ... that club doesn't sound odd at all! I've found that a lot of college campuses have interfaith/interdenominational student orgs whose expressed purpose is just what you mentioned - giving people from different backgrounds a chance to share a common interest in volunteer service or in learning about other religious traditions, etc etc etc. Totally normal! Or at least "totally normal" based on your description!
I'll admit that the title of the student org is a smidge different, but all you'd do on your resume is give the basic description about what the student org does:
"The Dark Church, 2022-2024, Executive Board
Helped lead interdenominational service organization dedicated to raising funds to teach underwater basket weaving.
Led efforts to increase club enrollment by 20%."
So is this "too weird for admissions" as far as an item I'd see on your resume? Absolutely not!