As students start preparing for their freshman year they are told that they need to get involved in clubs and extracurricular activities. However, many students struggle to find the proper balance between the classroom and extracurricular activities which causes them tons of stress. Some students join way to many clubs and either their grades or social life suffer. Other students believe that no involvement is needed and that they are fine letting their grades represent them. However, most universities like to see students involvement and community service in the applicants that they accept. What many people now ask themselves is, how much is too much?

When the club fair comes students are overwhelmed with all the different activities that our school has to offer and many decide to join too many of them. Of course, there is no problem in joining a couple of clubs but there is such a thing as too many clubs. By joining all these clubs students are left with much less time for homework, studying, and social life. This can cause serious problems because a lot of the time students choose to go out with friends rather than do homework or study. As a result, grades usually go down and parents start getting upset with their children and start to warn them. These warnings paired with handling all their clubs and homework causes a lot of stress. Involvement in all those clubs won’t help with colleges if the GPA takes a serious hit. This negates the purpose of all these extracurricular activities, but students can’t just stop being involved clubs.

“I think that if I let my grades do the talking, colleges will see that I work hard and [they’ll] appreciate that,” senior Rommel Ricalde said

Some students maybe forgot to attend the club fair or just decided not to participate in any extracurricular activities. Colleges do not like to see a student without any extra curricular involvement. Some of these students have issues with time, money or transportation, which is understandable and can be resolved with a high GPA. However, others choose to not stay after school and rather go home and rest. While they might think that this is fine, universities won’t like it. They like to see students doing something meaningful with their free time, like joining a sport or a club.

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I feel like involvement is very important and that if I don’t get involved in anything then colleges won’t be as likely to accept me.

— freshman Saily Salgueiro

Some might believe that universities like to see students getting involved in 10 or more extracurricular activities but they don’t understand the purpose of involvement. The important thing about involvement is taking interest and committing to that activity, maybe even taking leadership positions in those activities. This helps build uniqueness and leadership skills which is what colleges like to see. Students need to make sure they have a healthy balance of free time, school, and extracurricular activities, and as long as they can keep a balance they can try to get involved in a few more activities. However, they need to be committed to these activities while keeping up their GPA.

Student involvement is something that many students don’t really understand. Colleges like involvement because it shows uniqueness and character. The proper way to be involved is to choose a few activities and really stay committed to those. That way students have time to balance school, extracurricular activities, and rest in a healthy way.