My kids brought their yearbooks home last week. And something about seeing those books on the kitchen table made me go looking for mine.
I pulled it down from the shelf, blew off the dust, and started flipping through it the way you do when you haven’t looked at something in years — half nostalgic, half bracing for the haircut. But what actually stopped me wasn’t the photos. It was the clubs.
There I was. In every single one.
That’s me in the back row of the astronomy club, pointing up at the sky like I had any idea what I was looking at. There I am in the Latin club photo. The this club, the that club — all of them. I was in all of them. And if I’m being completely honest with you, I didn’t love any of them. I didn’t even particularly care about most of them. I joined them because I had convinced myself that was what colleges wanted to see. The more I was doing, the more they’d have to be impressed. The longer the list, the better.
Depth over breadth. It sounds simple. And it is — but only once you’ve seen what the other approach actually produces. I’ve watched students hand admissions officers a laundry list of activities so long it wraps around the page, and I’ve watched those same admissions officers flip right past it. Not because they weren’t impressed by the length. Because they couldn’t find the student anywhere in it.
When every line is a different club, a different cause, a different commitment that lasted exactly one school year, what the reader sees is not a well-rounded student. What they see is someone who was trying to look a certain way. And they’ve seen that before. Thousands of times.
More activities is not the answer. The right ones are.
Every summer I start getting the emails. Parents who want to know what their student should be doing between now and August. What programs they should apply for. What volunteer work they should sign up for. What internships they should try to land. And underneath all of those questions is a version of the same anxiety: am I doing enough? Is my student falling behind?
I understand that anxiety. I lived a version of it in my own high school years. But I want to offer something that I hope feels more like freedom than pressure:
Parents — your student doesn’t need to do everything. They need to do the right things — the ones that actually connect to who they genuinely are and where they’re headed.
One meaningful summer experience that grows out of something your student actually cares about will do more for their application than four generic résumé builders they did because someone told them they should. And more importantly — it will do more for them. For their sense of who they are, what they’re capable of, and what they want to pursue at the next level.
Five ways to go deeper instead of wider
Students — look at everything you’re involved in and ask honestly: which of these actually matter to me? Which ones would I keep doing if they weren’t going on a college application? Those are your real activities. Build around those.
Students — being present at meetings is not involvement. Colleges aren’t looking for attendance records — they’re looking for impact. Leadership doesn’t require a title. It requires showing up fully, taking initiative, and leaving something better than you found it.
Parents — pick the activity, interest, or subject that genuinely excites your student and find a way to pursue it more seriously this summer. An internship, a project, a program, a job — something that builds on what’s already there rather than adding something unrelated to the pile.
The emails about what other students are doing, the conversations in the bleachers about summer programs — that noise is real and it’s loud. But your student’s path is not built by copying everyone else’s checklist. It’s built by doubling down on what makes them genuinely, authentically themselves.
Students — colleges aren’t trying to figure out how many things you did. They’re trying to figure out who you are and how you’re going to show up on their campus. A student who went deep on one thing and can speak to it with genuine passion will always stand out over a student who can list twenty things they barely participated in.
Looking back at that yearbook, I don’t regret the clubs exactly. But I do wish someone had told me what I now tell every student I work with: it’s not about being everywhere. It’s about being somewhere — really, genuinely, meaningfully somewhere — and letting that tell your story.
The astronomy club didn’t tell my story. I’m not sure anything in that yearbook did. That’s what I want to help your student avoid.
Students — find your lane. Go deep. Let the real you show up on the page. Parents — trust that the right lane, pursued with real commitment, will do more for your student than a dozen clubs they barely showed up to.
That’s what wins.
Carpe diem.
Want to help your student build an application around who they actually are — not what everyone else is doing? Entering the Arena shows you exactly how.
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He learned that breadth without depth signals nothing to colleges. Looking back at his yearbook, he saw himself in every club photo — astronomy, Latin, all of them — none of which he actually cared about. Admissions officers, in his experience working both sides of the desk, see the same pattern from thousands of applicants and discount it. The lesson: doing five things you love beats doing fifteen things you don’t.
Because depth signals identity, while breadth signals padding. A student who spent four years deepening one or two passions — coaching the JV team, writing a column, building something — tells admissions a clear story about who they are. A student in eleven clubs tells a story about anxiety. The first kid sounds like someone who will contribute to a campus community. The second sounds like someone collecting receipts.
Start with the question, “If no one were watching — no college, no parent — what would I keep doing?” That’s the activity worth investing in. Then go deeper. Run for officer, start a project, mentor a younger student, or take on responsibility outside the meeting. Two or three real commitments beat ten résumé items, every time. Quality of attention beats quantity of entries.
Chris’s five suggestions — listed in the post — are: invest your time in fewer activities you genuinely care about, take on real responsibility within them, look for impact outside the school walls, document what you learned in a way colleges can read, and ask, every year, “Am I still learning here?” If the answer is no for two years running, that activity has become résumé bloat and it’s time to redirect.
It changes everything, because activities are where a student’s identity shows up on the application. Strong essays, recommendation letters, and supplements all draw from extracurricular experiences, and those experiences are only authentic if the student actually invested in them. Families who help their teens commit deeply — to one sport, one craft, one cause — see better acceptance rates AND better fit. The right schools say yes for the right reasons.
