Club leadership in college: importance level

STT_340

How important is club leadership position in applying to law school and resumes? For such a long time I have heard how it is able to boost your resume or application, but how much so?

Alex

@jd208111 said:
How important is club leadership position in applying to law school and resumes? For such a long time I have heard how it is able to boost your resume or application, but how much so?

Hard to quantify its level of performance but I'd say it largely depends on the leadership position. There's going to be quite a difference between being student body president and secretary of the campus fashion club, for example. It's great to participate in clubs and they can certainly help bolster your resume as far as softs go, but all things considered, I don't think most college club leadership positions "boost" your resumé much at all. It's also probably exceedingly common among law school applicants. As far as your resumé is concerned, work experience is a great way to strengthen it.

Neither work experience or leadership positions will overcome bad grades and law school admissions are primarily a number game.

tl;dr Not THAT important.

Rigid Designator

In my non-professional opinion, it's probably only a very small soft factor in admissions, bordering on insignificant (in the grand scheme of things). There are so many student societies around that I don't imagine it's particularly uncommon either. At the very least, these sorts of positions are not necessary.

I would concede that it takes on more significance if you're applying to law school straight from undergrad, since you simply don't have as much life/work experience to put down on a resume.

Mellow_Z

@"Rigid Designator" said:
In my non-professional opinion, it's probably only a very small soft factor in admissions, bordering on insignificant (in the grand scheme of things). There are so many student societies around that I don't imagine it's particularly uncommon either. At the very least, these sorts of positions are not necessary.

I would concede that it takes on more significance if you're applying to law school straight from undergrad, since you simply don't have as much life/work experience to put down on a resume.

+1. The only time it might matter is if you and another applicant had the exact same stats, and exact same application (minus the softs). If you had a few presidencies of student body and they didn't do anything similar, it might be a way to nudge you above them in a decision. But even then, there is a large number of variables where this example doesn't work (Work experience, Personal Statement, choice of major, demographics, addendum, LOR's, diversity statement, etc. which all are more important)

TheMikey

It's just a soft. I don't think it will give you a significant boost, since, your numbers will mostly determine your outcomes. It'll be a small factor for admissions committees to compare you against another applicant with similar numbers, I suppose, but really it's just a numbers game.