great question, alexandra. as maddi says, a lot of scattered extracurriculars that you only devote a little time to won’t look that impressive.

however, if you really are able to do all of those extracurriculars and devote at least a few hours to each of them each week, that will look impressive.

so if you’re devoting just a little time to some of the extracurriculars, should you drop them? well, not necessarily. if you love an extracurricular that you’re just devoting an hour to a month to, there’s no harm in continuing it. but you may not want to mention it on your college application in that case. in other words, don’t think about dropping or keeping extracurriculars to impress a college admissions officer. instead, think about mentioning or not mentioning extracurriculars to impress university admissions. and if you’re really devoting a lot of time to all of your extracurriculars, you may want to reference or explain that in your admissions letter.

with that in mind, ap classes can be very demanding! if you are having trouble making time for both your studies and your extracurriculars, that’s a good reason to drop some of them.