Extracurriculars for High Schoolers Interested in Studying Business

If you are fascinated by markets, love economics, or just want a job enables you to travel or be your own boss, you might be interested in studying business. A business education and a career in business can offer incredible opportunities—but you’ll need to work hard and plan carefully to achieve your business dreams. 

Top U.S. undergraduate business programs are highly selective; though you’ll need strong grades and high test scores to gain admission, these alone won’t necessarily land you a seat in your top-choice business program. 

To impress the admissions committee, you’ll also need to demonstrate business-relevant personal qualities. These qualities might include your leadership skills, ability to commit to and complete tasks, and dedication to your community. But how can you showcase these qualities on a college application? Extracurricular involvement is an excellent way to highlight personal qualities and career-related skills. Read on to learn more about extracurriculars that can demonstrate that you’ve got what it takes to succeed as a business student.

The Four Tiers of Extracurricular Activities

To help you understand how different extracurriculars will strengthen your undergraduate business program application, we’ll first go through a big-picture framework you can use to understand different extracurriculars.

Of course, simply signing up for a high school club or working at a soup kitchen for a weekend likely won’t impress the admissions committee. The impressiveness of your extracurriculars will vary according to a variety of factors. At CollegeVine, we find it helpful to break extracurriculars up into four tiers, which correspond to their positive impact on your application. With this approach, you can evaluate how admissions committees will likely view your accomplishments in comparison to those of other applicants. 

• Tier four activities tend to show up most frequently on applications. Not surprisingly, they will have the weakest impact on your application. Your involvement in tier four activities is typically only peripheral—you participated but never gained leadership positions or recognition. Tier four activities could range from playing in your school’s band for three years to being a member of the finance club. These activities won’t make your application “pop,” but they can establish your interest in a given field.
• Tier three activities are slightly more impressive; for an activity to be tier three, you should generally achieve some level of distinction within that activity. Examples of tier three activities include becoming the treasurer of your school’s Spanish club, winning third place at the school science fair, or achieving all-district orchestra selection. Generally, tier three activities and achievement highlight skills in a particular area, but they aren’t especially unique or exceptional.
• Tier two activities are, for many students, their highest accomplishments. Tier two activities include being the varsity soccer captain, earning an all-state selection for band, winning the regional science fair, or becoming president of debate club. These achievements are impressive and establish your skills, dedication, and leadership. Having two or three tier two activities on your application will really help you stand out.
• Finally, tier one activities demonstrate the highest level of achievement. These involve truly extraordinary accomplishments. Being a nationally ranked tennis player, earning a spot at a highly prestigious summer program, or being an INTEL talent search finalist all could qualify as tier one activities. Few students achieve tier one level accomplishments, which makes this sort of exceptional accomplishment likely to catch admissions committees’ attention.

Most of the activities that we list in this post will span tiers two through four. Remember that your goal, as a student interested in competitive business programs, should be to move each of your activities “up” the tiers through the course of your high school career. Below, you’ll also see a few examples of how you can achieve higher tiers in some of the activities we list!

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