Quantifying Subjective Extracurriculars

[AF2027]

I am a current Sophomore in High School ('23) and am working on ways to make my application more competitive. I play piano extremely well, but have no desire to play competitively. My question is how can I quantify my piano playing for my application? Apologies if I can't respond to your comments so thanks in advance.

 

[A1Janitor]

Can you start a group to teach younger students the piano?

Are there any opportunities with church groups or other organizations?

Drama or music departments?

Are you good enough to play competitively?

 

[HappyDays]

Are you in band? Could you play piano as part of the percussion section?

 

[AF2027]

I am not in band, I solely play piano for myself. Perhaps if I can't quantify it, do you think it would make a good essay topic?

 

[shiner]

As I am sure you have concluded by now, your challenge is how you discuss with a group of evaluators how you elect to spend your time. Each applicant has 24 hours in a day and they all choose to spend that precious time differently.

You will need to explain your time in essays and in interviews. You have not told us the complete picture here, but if you go to school and privately play piano --- an nothing more, you are disadvantaged in comparison to your peer group. If you are 100% focused on academics - the test scores, level of difficulty of courses taken, and the final report card will substantiate and validate how and why you spent the time in that area. Service Academies are looking for multi-dimensional applicants. Hence the whole candidate score approach. In general, a singularly focused applicant will have a difficult time applying unless their performance in this one arena is exceptional.

You have described a hobby that consumes some of your time. This is not a bad thing, but it is difficult to convey in 10 words or less to someone who has never met you. Resume bullet statements like this have historically equated to fluff and do not tend to move the needle to progress your application. Some students enjoy woodworking, or skiing, or hiking - but it simply speaks to an added dimension about you.

My hope is that there is more to your extracurricular resume to provide a more complete picture to a committee as to how you elect to spend your time.

I am unsure if you even include this on a resume unless it is part of a broader hobbies section. It is a nice response to a panel question about "Tell us about what you enjoy doing outside of school and working on your college applications..."

If you want to turn this into something to talk about, you have time to craft the narrative. As @A1Janitor suggested, you could teach lessons to an underserved community or group like Boys and Girls club. You could volunteer to play at a retirement home. You could play in the lobby of a Children's Hospital. You have a tremendous talent - be giving with it and as a result, you then have a great story to tell about serving others.

Weave it into a talk that includes the Air Force's 3 Core Values -
1) Integrity First
2) Service Before Self
3) Excellence in All You Do

Change the narrative from "I enjoy playing piano" to "Gifted piano player who regularly performs at Children's Hospital volunteering more than 150 service hours to spread joy to sick children in my community."

 

[AF2027]

As I am sure you have concluded by now, your challenge is how you discuss with a group of evaluators how you elect to spend your time. Each applicant has 24 hours in a day and they all choose to spend that precious time differently.

You will need to explain your time in essays and in interviews. You have not told us the complete picture here, but if you go to school and privately play piano --- an nothing more, you are disadvantaged in comparison to your peer group. If you are 100% focused on academics - the test scores, level of difficulty of courses taken, and the final report card will substantiate and validate how and why you spent the time in that area. Service Academies are looking for multi-dimensional applicants. Hence the whole candidate score approach. In general, a singularly focused applicant will have a difficult time applying unless their performance in this one arena is exceptional.

You have described a hobby that consumes some of your time. This is not a bad thing, but it is difficult to convey in 10 words or less to someone who has never met you. Resume bullet statements like this have historically equated to fluff and do not tend to move the needle to progress your application. Some students enjoy woodworking, or skiing, or hiking - but it simply speaks to an added dimension about you.

My hope is that there is more to your extracurricular resume to provide a more complete picture to a committee as to how you elect to spend your time.

I am unsure if you even include this on a resume unless it is part of a broader hobbies section. It is a nice response to a panel question about "Tell us about what you enjoy doing outside of school and working on your college applications..."

If you want to turn this into something to talk about, you have time to craft the narrative. As @A1Janitor suggested, you could teach lessons to an underserved community or group like Boys and Girls club. You could volunteer to play at a retirement home. You could play in the lobby of a Children's Hospital. You have a tremendous talent - be giving with it and as a result, you then have a great story to tell about serving others.

Weave it into a talk that includes the Air Force's 3 Core Values -
1) Integrity First
2) Service Before Self
3) Excellence in All You Do

Change the narrative from "I enjoy playing piano" to "Gifted piano player who regularly performs at Children's Hospital volunteering more than 150 service hours to spread joy to sick children in my community."

Thank you for the response, and I really appreciate the advice. Piano is not the only extracurricular I participate in, rather the only one I thought might be difficult quantifying. I'm also a member of my school Speech Team, and was fortunate enough to receive many awards at the novice level. I am currently working my way up to the Varsity level, where I am determined to achieve success. In addition, I am a frequent Sunday School Teacher and a multi year member of my town's junior board. I plan to heed your advice and seek ways to use my Piano playing to benefit others. Again, I really appreciate the advice.

 

[Capt MJ]

Depending on what’s going on at your area

Thank you for the response, and I really appreciate the advice. Piano is not the only extracurricular I participate in, rather the only one I thought might be difficult quantifying. I'm also a member of my school Speech Team, and was fortunate enough to receive many awards at the novice level. I am currently working my way up to the Varsity level, where I am determined to achieve success. In addition, I am a frequent Sunday School Teacher and a multi year member of my town's junior board. I plan to heed your advice and seek ways to use my Piano playing to benefit others. Again, I really appreciate the advice.

Depending on what policies are at your local retirement/assisted living communities, you could see if they would like to have you come in and play for their residents, say, on Sunday afternoons, if they have a piano and a room where residents could space out.

 

[bopper]

As others mention, is there a way to turn piano into a volunteer or leadership opportunity?
- Playing for senior citizens
- Playing at a house of worship (be a substitute for regular organist, join a praise band, etc)
- Being an accompanist at school/ voice teacher
- Since you are a Sunday School teacher maybe starting/helping with a children's choir
- Teaching others/ assisting teaching others
- Join the orchestra or something at school (e.g., play xylophone or some such)

 

[cb7893]

I am a current Sophomore in High School ('23) and am working on ways to make my application more competitive. I play piano extremely well, but have no desire to play competitively. My question is how can I quantify my piano playing for my application? Apologies if I can't respond to your comments so thanks in advance.

Ever seen Top Gun?

Seriously, I will let others emphasize the importance of team sports, but I can comment about the music. My DS, Army O3, played violin from about age 5 until he went off to college. He was very good, took lessons throughout and was (much less so now, thank goodness) a natural showboat and vicious competitor to begin with. He never turned down an opportunity to play in front of people--his yearly recitals, church, school orchestra (concertmaster), nursing homes, dinner parties, on the street with an open violin case, his Polish Grandmother's Funeral in Poland, Bluegrass jam sessions, fiddling contests, you name it. He often got paid--first in cookies and later in US legal tender.

The local school district has a policy of requiring HS graduates to perform X numbers of hours of community service, so I am not going to ascribe any altruism to him, but he completed his community service hours by playing at a soup kitchen.

There are a number of great things about playing music that simple cannot be quantified. It is very complementary to math and foreign language skills. Most important to me is that it taught my son to be comfortable in a room or auditorium full of adults expecting something out of him and wanting to speak to him afterwards. All of that was invaluable for interviews. I don't believe music is a substitute for sports, but playing in an ensemble is all about teamwork.

Best of luck!

 

[bopper]

But you can quantify your piano playing...

Piano: 9-12 grades. 2 hours per day. Studying piano at the XX level.

(I am sure you piano teacher can say what level you are playing at ).

 

[Capt MJ]

Depending on what’s going on at your area

Depending on what policies are at your local retirement/assisted living communities, you could see if they would like to have you come in and play for their residents, say, on Sunday afternoons, if they have a piano and a room where residents could space out.

And for those quick to have fun, you know I meant “space out” in the COVID way.

 

[cb7893]

And for those quick to have fun, you know I meant “space out” in the COVID way.

I thought you were referring to playing for the Marines at Camp Lejeune.

 

[Personal Organizer]

So DS plays a lot of instruments. On his application he quantified by ascribing hours playing piano for church, French horn for community orchestra (in addition to school bands), mellophone for marching band, and trumpet or fh for pit orchestra. Together we tried to roughly figure hours spent practicing/rehearsing and hours of actual performance. (This was in addition to competing, which he put in a separate section.) You'll be amazed when you add up all the hours you spend with your piano. Do make sure you are sharing your talent with others, not just for your application, but for the joy it brings both to your audience and to yourself.

 

[AF2027]

Depending on what’s going on at your area

Depending on what policies are at your local retirement/assisted living communities, you could see if they would like to have you come in and play for their residents, say, on Sunday afternoons, if they have a piano and a room where residents could space out.

Absolutely, there are many nursing homes around where I live, and I would love to use my Piano playing to raise spirits of the elderly. Unfortunately, it might be half a year until anyone is allowed into a nursing home, but once the opportunity becomes available, I work work to seize it.

 

[T-37IP]

Look up The Congressional Award. You'll be able to use those hours, quantify them with goals, and earn Congressional recognition at the same time. The highest level, Gold Medal is difficult, but it gives you a clear, well-defined path AND will help identify and quantify different aspects of what you are doing. Highly recommend.

 

[AF2027]

Look up The Congressional Award. You'll be able to use those hours, quantify them with goals, and earn Congressional recognition at the same time. The highest level, Gold Medal is difficult, but it gives you a clear, well-defined path AND will help identify and quantify different aspects of what you are doing. Highly recommend.

I will definitely look into it, thanks for the reply.

 

[HappyDays]

Ever seen Top Gun?

Seriously, I will let others emphasize the importance of team sports, but I can comment about the music. My DS, Army O3, played violin from about age 5 until he went off to college. He was very good, took lessons throughout and was (much less so now, thank goodness) a natural showboat and vicious competitor to begin with. He never turned down an opportunity to play in front of people--his yearly recitals, church, school orchestra (concertmaster), nursing homes, dinner parties, on the street with an open violin case, his Polish Grandmother's Funeral in Poland, Bluegrass jam sessions, fiddling contests, you name it. He often got paid--first in cookies and later in US legal tender.

The local school district has a policy of requiring HS graduates to perform X numbers of hours of community service, so I am not going to ascribe any altruism to him, but he completed his community service hours by playing at a soup kitchen.

There are a number of great things about playing music that simple cannot be quantified. It is very complementary to math and foreign language skills. Most important to me is that it taught my son to be comfortable in a room or auditorium full of adults expecting something out of him and wanting to speak to him afterwards. All of that was invaluable for interviews. I don't believe music is a substitute for sports, but playing in an ensemble is all about teamwork.

Best of luck!

Very nicely put! I remember Top Gun! My DS loves that Great Balls of Fire song as an aspiring and beginner piano player! Hopefully he’ll get to the level your DS achieved and have opportunities like him to play for others.

 

[HappyDays]

Absolutely, there are many nursing homes around where I live, and I would love to use my Piano playing to raise spirits of the elderly. Unfortunately, it might be half a year until anyone is allowed into a nursing home, but once the opportunity becomes available, I work work to seize it.

Possible opportunity would be to offer outdoor social distances mini concert with an electric piano, weather permitting.

 

[BuckeyeDad20]

I will offer a different take. If you play sports and have Speech and have demonstrable leadership experience along with good grades, you don't need to travel around your region doing charity concerts. If you need to bolster your resume then go for it. Service is something that is discussed often and sometimes given more weight on this board than it is in real life.

NO ONE asked my son about his service work during his application process. Just about every high school kid these days has some service hours. And how do you judge/compare those? Does playing piano for elderly count more or less than delivering meals or working at the food kitchen. My single datapoint is not proof that is doesn't matter, but it does suggest service is not a significant differentiator. My Doolie son knows classmates that claim they basically had no service hours on their resume. I would be surprised if service hours trumped ACT scores, GPA or athletics. I bet you have service hours already anyway. And if you go with charity concerts, its not really about your piano, its about your service.

If you lack other extracurriculars and need to make your piano playing the centerpiece of your application then do what you have to do. If however, if you are involved in multiple extracurriculars and you just want to express that piano has been a keen interest of yours then think of it that way. Think about the commitment, and the practice that playing as well as you do entails. What struggles did you overcome and how do those lessons better prepare you for USAFA or USAF? Sounds like your piano work took significant time, effort, and practice over a long period of time. Those demonstrate a person who can start down a path and stick with it.

My point is that if you need service hours then do service anyway you like. If you are trying to get into an academy, you are probably better off working on your team sports, Speech, gaining a leadership position, getting great grades and prepping for the ACT. I would invest my time in those endeavors first rather than try to make piano slightly more important.

 

[Stealth_81]

Service is something that is discussed often and sometimes given more weight on this board than it is in real life.

This! I’ve said it many times when candidates focus on service hours or fret that they only have xx hours. It is not something that adds points for your WCS for USAFA and your efforts are better focused elsewhere. Does it show that you are well-rounded? Yes. But it is given way too much weight by some people who are looking to improve chances.

To the OP - bring up your piano where you can in an essay or wherever. But, focus on your athletics and leadership activities to get the most benefit for your application.

Stealth_81