In my earliest days of college advising, I found myself regurgitating industry wisdom when it came to extracurricular activities (ECs): “Focus on one area, and stick with it throughout high school: it will look great for colleges!” Granted – this is good, basic advice that points aspiring high-schoolers in the right direction, and initially, I figured this would help my students stand out among the sea of applicants. In hindsight, however, this advice feels more ‘hacky’ than substantive. I think there’s more that we (parents and college advisors alike) can do for developing teenagers. 

Before I dive into alternative messaging for ECs, I should acknowledge that there’s very good reasons that this advice exists in the field of education consulting. With GPAs and test scores becoming ever more competitive, colleges across the country are relying more and more on something called ‘holistic review’ to select each new class. When distinguishing between applicants, they can’t solely rely on the objective metrics of grades and SATs anymore. Instead, they are looking for other attributes, such as intellectual curiosity, leadership experience, initiative, community involvement and more. And the best place for admissions officers to find convincing evidence of these traits is, of course, the personal essay and in the ‘activities section’. Leadership experience is likely to be found in students who’ve stayed in the Literary Magazine Club long enough to become Editor in Chief, and the label of ‘intellectual curiosity’ has teeth when a student runs a personal blog on Hip-Hop for four years, eventually getting published in a local editorial. Initiative is ‘initiative’ only with lower-case ‘i’ if a student started a composting club in Sophomore year, only to drop it that following summer; community involvement feels like stat-padding if the volunteering only started during the Fall of senior year. 

To find authentically driven students, colleges look for what is known as a ‘T-Shaped’ profile, which looks something like this:

While the concept originated in the field of management/recruitment and organizational psychology (hence ‘T-Shaped Professional‘), education borrowed it later. That vertical line is also sometimes referred to as a ‘spike’, and students who have shown deep commitment in one or two areas have it. This spike represents the skill development and experience they’ve gained in one domain over the course of multiple high school years. The horizontal wings on the bottom, meanwhile, indicate that they’re well-rounded and have explored other activities as well –they are not myopic in their interests, and yet they demonstrate an ability to wed themselves to one project, club or hobby for several years. Colleges like this because this ability to ‘see things through’ is predictive of similar behavior in adulthood. It can also be indicative of traits like grit, ambition, discipline or maturity. But most importantly, it helps admissions offices craft an incoming student body that is comprised of accomplished individuals with varying skillsets and experiences. The best colleges will prioritize a well-rounded student body, with a variety of students who are talented and accomplished in different domains – specialists – over a student body full of talented and accomplished individuals who are just well-rounded – generalists. 

This brings me back to messaging: on its own, the advice of ‘sticking to one thing’ makes a lot of sense for the high school student who is already intrinsically motivated to focus on one or two areas. If a student is excited to only pursue chess club or Model UN throughout high school, and there’s little ambivalence in her about that choice, this will unfold on its own and she’s off to the races to do something meaningful before she turns eighteen. This begs the question, however: what if the student isn’t sure what they’re intrinsically motivated to do? 

I’m 5 years into being an Independent Education Consultant, and I see that for most of my students, that basic advice tends to either backfire or have unintended consequences. More often than not, it’s received in the form of implicit pressure – failure to follow it will result in them not getting into their top-choice college. Sometimes, that pressure is even explicit when coming from well-meaning parents who are trying to push an unmotivated student into the right direction. The student may even buy in to the advice themselves, but there’s a lot of good evidence that this sort of motivation is more of a stick than a carrot, and not a viable life-strategy long-term.

The problem I’m circling around is that if students are committing to something simply for the sake of looking good for colleges, it is inherently an extrinsic form of motivation. Even if they consciously resign themselves to committing to an activity they’re not enthused with, the commitment will almost certainly become an onerous overcommitment – a grind through boring chores to receive a delayed gratification of ‘getting in’. A good question for us to ask as adults is: what are the long term consequences of unwittingly pushing extrinsic motivation tactics onto teenagers? Do we want students to be seeking external rewards for the activities they pursue?

An even better question: which version of the student are we encouraging with this basic advice? Behind all the developmental messiness of being a teenager, there is a deeply interested person, who pursues a passion for its own sake, that we may be overlooking if we fail to pay attention.  

Look out for my next blog on the neuroscience of teenage brains, identity formation, and how parents and educators can elicit the authentically motivated student through conversation and patience.

Sources

von Stumm, S., Hell, B., & Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2011). The Hungry Mind: Intellectual Curiosity Is the Third Pillar of Academic Performance. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(6). https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691611421204

Rubin, R. (2025, December 19). Extracurriculars Freshman Year: Try New Things or Build Depth? SparkAdmissions.

Dewey Smart. (2026). The Complete Guide to Building a College Resume and Extracurricular Profile in 2026. deweysmart.com.

Nestor. (2024, July 22). T-Shaped Skills: Transforming Organizations for the Future. nestorup.com.