by Alice Littlehale ’26
September 26, 2023
“Passion projects” are currently considered a necessary part of any strong college application. But are all students showing real passion? Are all the non-profits, clubs, and organizations that are started in high school really created from a genuine place? Maybe, when college applications start to loom, some students create a project designed only to look good on paper.
Assistant Director of College Counseling Carly Dixon says that the college counseling department advises students to do whatever extracurriculars make them the happiest.
“If that includes community service, that’s great. We [the College Counseling department] don’t require it. And we don’t believe in students doing an extracurricular solely for the purpose of putting it on their college application,” Dixon said.
Dixon also noted that the college counseling department does not advise families to do specific activities for college, and that she hadn’t seen students create projects and abandon them shortly after college admissions at USN.
“So typically, we don’t see students start up a project at the end of junior year and then quit it right after December when decisions get released. I haven’t seen that happen yet. And I hope I don’t,” Dixon said.
However, some students have a more cynical view. They feel like this is a problem both in the USN community, and in high schools generally. A few even named specific examples of organizations or clubs they felt were frauds.
Z Aulino ‘26 believes that many high school extracurriculars are in service of college. They are also concerned that colleges aren’t able to accurately screen organizations.
“I feel like a lot of the projects that are done in high school are created solely for college applications because I feel it is encouraged by those colleges, so people feel pressured to do it,” Aulino said. “I feel oftentimes, colleges can’t tell whether that project was created from a genuine place of passion or whether it was just created for the application.”
Charlotte Peglow, a current senior, also felt she had seen instances of organizations created by people with the wrong motives.
“I think there’s been one or two examples that I’ve seen before, of people creating clubs that don’t really seem like they serve a wider purpose, or align with their personal interests.”
She says that colleges are suspicious of extended activity lists.
“A lot of the colleges don’t actually like seeing you with ten billion extracurricular activities [as opposed to a few you really care about]. I feel that’s probably an issue with the more selective colleges because especially with the very top Ivy leagues everyone applies to those, so they have to be very discriminating,” Peglow said.
Students agree this can be an issue. But how does it harm legitimate organizations? Is it possible, or even necessary, to combat it?
Saawan Duvvuri ‘26, started a non-profit early this year. It’s called LiteratureDiversified. He says that growing up, he noticed that minorities were under-represented in the texts he read for class. He continued that LiteratureDiversified aims to fix that issue.
“Our organization develops educational curriculums from the focus on various minority groups, pulled from minority perspectives, minority sources, and we have a complete English and History curriculum,” Duvvuri said.
When LiteratureDiversified is screening organizations for potential partnerships, the first thing they examine is the organization’s web presence.
“When we reach out to organizations or they reach out to us we know whether they’re legitimate or not based on their website. If it’s a free website template that’s a quick tell for me. And their resources will be limited,” Duvvuri said.
Overall, he says, it’s about looking at an organization’s impact.
“For [LiteratureDiversified], our impact is how many children we can reach through our educational resources,” Duuvuri said. “So right now, we just started partnering with classrooms because we spent most of the first few months developing educational resources. We have about 10 partner classrooms that impact 200 students.”
the home page for LiteratureDiversified, Duvvuri’s nonprofit. (via the Peabody Press)
Aaron Fulk, USN’s director of college ounseling, has been on both sides of the colege admissions process.
“I have observed a lot of USN students feeling the need to [take on] leadership positions, whether that’s in established groups like affinity organizations, whether it’s International Club, you name it. And I have noticed students trying to start clubs, maybe not nonprofits, when I would argue a lot of the work that I’ve seen could be housed within an existing organization,” Fulk said.
He says that he’s noticed students create new groups or organizations, when it seems like they could better achieve the goals they’re working towards under a pre-existing association. He feels that if their motivations are genuinely altruistic, they should pause and ask where the best place to accomplish their objectives really is.
Fulk says that plenty of students who join established institutions have great experiences.
“I think there are tons of things out there that already exist. And I don’t know if our students are aware of all of them,” Fulk said. “So no, I don’t think starting a local organization, even for altruistic reasons that works with local immigrants [for example], is more compelling than volunteering at NICE [the Nashville International Center for Empowerment] like many of our students do.”
Dixon encourages students with questions about extracurriculars to speak with their college counselors. She, Gladstone, and Fulk collectively have over 20 years of experience in college admissions.
Students face massive pressure to plan their lives around college admissions. But the creation of a club, non-profit, or organization should be out of a genuine desire to help. It can seem harmless. However, it could take away resources from other established institutions in the community — and in the end it may not even boost your standings with colleges. Sometimes, instead of starting the next animal rescue club, you can just go volunteer at your local shelter.
