What colleges look for in extracurricular activities

This seems to be the kind of question for which the answers shouldn't be taken at face value. Imagine they'd given concrete preferences for certain extracurriculars -- the potential trouble that could get them into

I agree, but even if it did not cause them trouble, they might reasonably decide to keep the details of their selection criteria vague -- so people are less likely to game the system. Imagine what would happen if they announced that they really like lacrosse and field hockey players.

And that's even assuming they are consciously aware that they favor some extracurriculars over others.

Thanks for the comment!

Ok, maybe I should reframe that point as "there's a uniform prior over the signaling value of engaging in different types of extracurricular activities, subject to basic common sense (e.g. joining the KKK has negative signaling value)." If there are preferences, they're nonobvious, and it's not clear how you would go about discovering them. (I haven't found anything more than students' speculation by Googling around.)

I also should have given more context. When talking with the admissions officers, I had the subjective sense that what they were really looking for was a good story, as conveyed by the student's essay about extracurricular activities, and that this is more a matter of being able to craft a good narrative than the topic of the narrative chosen.

I find it alarming that you assumed honesty on the part of the admissions officers. It reduces my confidence in everything you wrote that you assumed honesty from people whose job it is to be gatekeepers to the American elite class.

Well you can't assume honesty from anyone about their preferences. Unless they are talking about a completely innocuous quirk, e.g. that they prefer strawberry ice cream to vanilla ice cream. For one thing, people are often not fully aware of their preferences. For another, when people talk about what goes in in their head, they have a tendency to spin so as to put themselves in the best possible light.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/jys/what_colleges_look_for_in_extracurricular/aqp9

See also

[Edit: The post below gives the impression that our conversations with admissions officers are our only reasons for believing the claims. We've also consulted with other sources such as How to Be a High School Superstar: A Revolutionary Plan to Get into College by Standing Out (Without Burning Out) which corroborate the admissions officers' remarks]

The whole collegiate emphasis on extracurricular activities is a tragicomic example of Goodhart's Law. In the old days, when innocent high school students decided whether or not to participate in Key Club or Model UN based on their own intrinsic interests, seeing extracurricular activities on a college application was probably a good predictor of lifetime achievement, success, and leadership abilities. Now that everyone knows that colleges look for such activities, kids sign up for those things to impress the admissions boards, and so the predictor probably no longer has any power.

I think there may be a little usefulness left. Everyone knows that it helps for college to achieve a position of leadership like captain of a sports team or student body president. But it's somewhat competitive to achieve these positions. So there is still some information for colleges. It shows that you are more likely to be more committed or Machiavellian or personable, or something.

But anyway I agree with you to a large extent. It's depressing how much system-gaming goes on. And if you refuse to game the system, you are at something of a disadvantage in college admissions. For an interesting read, check out "What High Schools Don't Tell You," a college admissions guide which basically goes over the top in telling parents how to game the system so their children can get into Harvard or whatever. For example, one of the things the author suggests is having your child start an organization or club at school and set things up so that he can be president of the organization.

As I said in another comment, I didn't give enough context. The conversations were substantive, and there were little hints that I was picking up on that gave me a holistic sense that they were telling the truth on this point. I may have been reading the wrong connotations into what they were saying, but it wasn't simply a matter of literally taking what they said at face value.

I mentioned in a recent comment that there is evidence for a systematic bias against applicants with conservative/rural/working-class-white cultural signifiers.

And no admissions officer is ever going to say "By the way, if you do anything which reminds me of Sarah Palin, you're NOKD" Either because the admissions officer is unaware of his bias, or because he is embarrassed by it and does not want to admit to it.

(Vipul had read Newport's book, and we'd discussed it (back when we were researching extracurricular activities), and noted that it agreed with the general points we made here. But Newport also made other claims that I didn't want to discuss here because they'd take the discussion too far afield.)

The Failed Simulation Effect is a great name, and brings to mind this comment of Eliezer's.

Yes, I agree. I kinda touched on this above when I argued that specifics about which extracurriculars are preferred would result in more people trying to game the system.

When you think about all the system-gaming which goes on (and it does seem to be rampant), it would be surprising if any elite college would share specific, useful information about what it looks for in applicants' extracurriculars.

We're not claiming that we have better advice on this point than Cal Newport does, and we recommend his books to students. We haven't vetted all of his claims, which is why I didn't discuss him in more detail. The vast majority of our advice is on topics other than what colleges look for in extracurricular activities – it's not something that we're specializing in.