ECs outside of campus?

[pnwhmt]

I live in a larger city but commute to a school in a nearby smaller city where I have a scholarship. I am a member of some clubs on campus and spent last summer doing research there, but generally I spend most of my time where I live in the larger city.

My question is this: How do clubs outside of campus look for ECs? Not sure if it's preferred to be more involved in your school directly or if that matters at all.

For example: I don't know if anyone is familiar with "Meet Up," but I am active in a handful of clubs through this site and am in the process of becoming a co-organizer of a large 700 person neuroscience group. To me, this seems more valuable than being heavily involved with the 15 person neuroscience club on campus. But I am also non-traditional and would prefer to be more active in my community, so I don't know if my bias is playing in here

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[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

I live in a larger city but commute to a school in a nearby smaller city where I have a scholarship. I am a member of some clubs on campus and spent last summer doing research there, but generally I spend most of my time where I live in the larger city.

My question is this: How do clubs outside of campus look for ECs? Not sure if it's preferred to be more involved in your school directly or if that matters at all.

For example: I don't know if anyone is familiar with "Meet Up," but I am active in a handful of clubs through this site and am in the process of becoming a co-organizer of a large 700 person neuroscience group. To me, this seems more valuable than being heavily involved with the 15 person neuroscience club on campus. But I am also non-traditional and would prefer to be more active in my community, so I don't know if my bias is playing in here

Just my opinion, but how involved are you actually going to be with a group of 700 people? I personally think it looks better to be really involved with a smaller group that actually does a bunch of stuff than to be an organizer for a huge group that does something once a year.

If the larger group is something that will only be sporadically active, you could always do both. If it ends up being a super active group despite its size, then I'd think that would be great for an app.

 

[pnwhmt]

Just my opinion, but how involved are you actually going to be with a group of 700 people? I personally think it looks better to be really involved with a smaller group that actually does a bunch of stuff than to be an organizer for a huge group that does something once a year.

If the larger group is something that will only be sporadically active, you could always do both. If it ends up being a super active group despite its size, then I'd think that would be great for an app.

So the way meet up works is that people "join" the group and then attend events as they can. So the meet ups themselves end up being pretty regular, about once or twice a month at least, but of course not all 700 people come to each one. It usually anywhere from 20 - 50+ people per event. I am actually a member of our neuroscience club on campus but we are more than a month into the semester and the club president hasn't even scheduled a meeting which is why I decided to look elsewhere.

Either way I will continue to be involved with the larger group because it's what I am interested in. I guess if I knew it would be looked at favorably by adcoms I would just be more active in that than the campus club. I don't see people listing off campus clubs often when talking about ECs so I didn't know if maybe on-campus clubs were preferred or if they were just more accessible for students.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

So the way meet up works is that people "join" the group and then attend events as they can. So the meet ups themselves end up being pretty regular, about once or twice a month at least, but of course not all 700 people come to each one. It usually anywhere from 20 - 50+ people per event. I am actually a member of our neuroscience club on campus but we are more than a month into the semester and the club president hasn't even scheduled a meeting which is why I decided to look elsewhere.

Either way I will continue to be involved with the larger group because it's what I am interested in. I guess if I knew it would be looked at favorably by adcoms I would just be more active in that than the campus club. I don't see people listing off campus clubs often when talking about ECs so I didn't know if maybe on-campus clubs were preferred or if they were just more accessible for students.

Then yeah, in your case the meet up group sounds way better. Essentially you just want activities you can talk about in some detail. They will be able to tell if an activity wasn't much more than the occasional meeting.

 

[akuko2]

@pnwhmt ADCOMs are very experienced in looking at candidates so they can see through 'checking off' experiences just so you can beef up your resume. Its far more valuable to invest your time into something that you can 'sink your teeth into'. By that I mean you can play an active role and make a meaningful impact on, or something that has made a meaningful impact on you. When you describe these opportunists on your application and talk about them in interviews they are much more rich and real than the chaff of throwaway activities. So I would say go with an experience like that rather than just doing something for the sake of it being tied to your school.