Extracurricular Activities – Is Tutoring One Of Them?

One of the most critical components of your college application is your extracurricular activities.

They are the finest way for a college to learn more about you and determine the type of student you might be on campus, second only to your test scores and grades.

What if you don’t participate in any extracurricular activities? Is all hope lost?

Continue reading to see why circumstances may not be as dire as they appear and what kinds of activities you can do to make up for your lack of extracurricular activities.

Students struggle the most with the Common Application’s extracurricular activity part because they are unsure of what qualifies as an extracurricular activity.

How are you expected to fill those ten spots if you weren’t chosen to be the class president and you weren’t selected to the varsity team?

What if you have no extracurricular activities? 

If you are a broke student or teacher looking for an extracurricular tutoring activity, the following information could prove that tutoring is and can be an extracurricular activity.

Schools Closed By The Pandemic

After starting my teaching career in Thailand, then moving onto China and Hong Kong to teach English, I moved back to England before the pandemic started in March 2020.

After living through the first lockdown, I accepted a job teaching English in Turkey.

Unfortunately, when I got to Turkey, all the schools closed down.

Luckily, an online teaching position I had applied for to supplement my income in Hong Kong got back to me and offered me the job.

After teaching school students in classes of over 50 kids in both Thailand and China and doing small class tutoring in Hong Kong, I had all the experience needed to teach Japanese students in Native Camp doing one-to-one tutoring.

Having already taught English online with Cambly and Da Da ABC, I was also familiar with online teaching platforms.

Time Management Skills

Native Camp is in Japan and my laptop clock is set to UK time. Turkey is 2 hours ahead of the UK and Japan is 5 hours ahead of Turkey. I was therefore operating in three time zones.

There is a 24 hour schedule set to UK time in Native Camp and you can teach anytime you want.

This allowed me to do a part time sales job ringing the UK for 3 hours a day. I therefore teach on Native Camp from 7am to 11am Turkey time then switch to calling the UK from 9am to 12pm UK Time.

I then switch back to teaching on Native Camp from 8pm Japan time for 2 hours.

So, I teach for 6 hours a day and sell for 3 hours a day in 3 different time zones.

I start at 7am Turkey time and finish at 3pm Turkey time.

So, if you consider your main source of income the highest paid, teaching English online is a tutoring job that provides me with extra cash in my spare time away from any academic activity.

Native Camp is a trustworthy family and pays me every 2 weeks. There are not many extracurricular activities that do that and the lessons are only 25 minutes.

Real Solutions

In these times of global crises jobs like these could well be extracurricular activities that both students and teachers alike can use as a buffer through hard times and act as practical solutions

Time gaming could be better spent and community centers is where you could spread the message and earn yourself a $50 referral fee by getting your friends to sign up. An excellent choice you have made there sir/madam.

A lazy student could also benefit from teaching 4 x 25 minute lessons a day for an extra $400 a month. You can also teach 7 days a week for those that are not lazy.

Almost everything you’ve done outside of the classroom that isn’t for school credit qualifies as extracurricular activity.

Ideally, you’ll also be interested in or even passionate about these subjects.

It’s best to have explored a variety of interests during your four years of high school before deciding to devote a considerable amount of effort to one of them. 

These kinds of extracurricular activities are popular among college admissions officers since they reveal a lot about your personality and your character when you’re dedicated to something.

Through your actions, you can also demonstrate “intangible” traits like leadership and the capacity to see a project through.

Although many students who falsely believe they have no extracurricular activities in fact do, they do not perceive these activities as extracurricular. 

No Extracurricular Activities?

Make a list of the following things as you sit down to see if you have an extracurricular activity (or two!):

How do you pass the lunch hour at school?

Do you ever take part in clubs at your high school, activities with your friends that are more specific (like intramural sports or a magic club), or interactions with other students that are constructive (like tutoring)?

What are your after-school plans?

Have you ever done community or school volunteer work?

Have you got a job?

Do you head home immediately? If that’s the case, what do you do when you arrive?

Do you lend a hand around the house or take care of your siblings? 

How did your summer go?

Did you enroll in any classes that weren’t necessary for your studies?

Did you play a sport outside of school or join a club?

You had a job, right?

What is your preferred pastime?

Do you enjoy playing the bagpipes or other unusual instruments? Or do you engage in more widely recognized hobbies like knitting, skiing, or other leisure pursuits?

It is acceptable to participate in a city orchestra and plan a festival for the neighborhood. These do count as an extracurricular activity.

The good news is this. Anything that comes to mind that you have invested a lot of time in accomplishing for a great cause can certainly be considered an extracurricular activity. 

Not An Extracurricular Activity

Unfortunately, not all extracurricular activities qualify.

These are those kinds of activities.

You can’t claim your extracurricular activities if you actually spent all of your free time watching television after school and your summer hanging out at the mall, family moments at the country club pool, or amounts of time playing video games.

The bunch of activities that actually classify as extracurricular, however, is much longer than individuals may realize.

Some students become disheartened as a result of believing myths about what constitutes and does not constitute a valid activity. 

Activities outside of school can be almost anything you are actively committed to.

It could be a club in your city, a national organization, a club at your school, or anything you locate online.

The most important thing is to actively participate in these sorts of activities and have an impact through your participation. 

Check with your school if traditional one-to-one tutoring counts towards and extracurricular activity and you could be earning extra dollars twice a month.