Quote:
Originally Posted by Yukinokesshou
Really? From what I heard from my cousins and friends, it appears that the pressure of college expectations usually does the trick of forcing American high school students to take on an insane number of extracurricular activities (they also seem to join lots of clubs in name only: members without contribution).
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Yes and no. It's a different kind of pressure: your peers don't expect you to (literally) "join the club" or else be seen as a slacker loser, so it's a do whatever you want thing on that front. But colleges do seem to like people with lots of activities, even if they keep telling everyone that they "want people who seem really passionate in a few activities" (uh-huh).
Frankly I think a few of them are rather pointless. Sports, bands, debate clubs, esoteric interests (anime
), all those stuff are fine. But just how many of the students who join volunteer organizations do it with their hearts and not their calculating heads? I mean, when every goddamn scholarship wants you to be a goody-two-shoes with an exemplary track record in feeding the homeless or waste your Saturday mornings organizing useless marathons for one cause or another...
Yah, Lawful Good Paladins wins all.
I'm curious, though, do colleges in Japan even care about extracurricular activities at all? Or is it the exact opposite of the US, club membership an expected norm but doesn't play much of a role in college applications? I've had experiences with Asian schooling systems and they seem to care much more about your test scores from the "Big Entrance Test," and I hear Japan's the same. In a way I almost miss that kind of hardcore fit-everyone-in-a-box compared to the -- to me -- occasionally distasteful businesslike undertone of American higher education.