At my school, we have a student council body as well as school club officers. I'm hoping to become an officer in some clubs next year, but I am part of something which I am not sure is common at other High Schools. It's called the "High School Site Base Team", and it is basically an administrative body for the school. It has a budget of several thousand dollars that it can allocate to activities, it evaluates possible high school classes, interviews teacher candidates, selects charities to partner with, deals with silverware problems, etc, etc. I don't have a ton of leadership on my application as of right now, and I'm not sure that this will make up for it. Especially because I don't think it exists at many other High Schools? Am I wrong, or should I try and find some way of clarifying what this ECA is like? Any help of advice would be appreciated.
Question about possibly unknown ECA
- Thread starter Lambda
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The high school where I teach has over 30 clubs of which at least half I have no idea what they do or what the name means. I’m sure most of them do not much more than fund raisers and meetings. The club you mention sounds busy. Never heard of it though.
@Lambda , I don't think it's unusual to be in a leadership club with no defined application bubble. Absolutely talk to your FFR! For many candidates, there are things that aren't fully conveyed on paper, and it could be an unusual club, family circumstance, etc. There will likely be a bubble for "other" and/or put on your activities record. What you describe sounds like our SBDM - Site Based Decision Making team, which every school my DDs went to had a SBDM. It is an organization that had a pot of money to do things for the school and avoid going through the district channels. The difference is SBDM is for parents.
Doesn't your club have a binder? No description of scope, scale, purpose, mission statement? If not, here's your chance to make one. One big sweeping sentence of what it is/who it serves. More detailed rules of how many events, how much money, over what period of time, etc. The great news is it does sound like a great leadership club, with fully defined resume bullets of specific activity, budget, and follow through.
Also be specific of co-(position) or the team did vs. you did. Personally, if someone explained to me that the team did xyz, i'd be downgrading that effort if they could not show their individual contribution as well. Make sure to describe club time and time spent on each project. My biggest pet peeve is having seen the Do Nothings -those in clubs that sit around goofing off after school and their only actual output is making some posters.
Doesn't your club have a binder? No description of scope, scale, purpose, mission statement? If not, here's your chance to make one. One big sweeping sentence of what it is/who it serves. More detailed rules of how many events, how much money, over what period of time, etc. The great news is it does sound like a great leadership club, with fully defined resume bullets of specific activity, budget, and follow through.
Also be specific of co-(position) or the team did vs. you did. Personally, if someone explained to me that the team did xyz, i'd be downgrading that effort if they could not show their individual contribution as well. Make sure to describe club time and time spent on each project. My biggest pet peeve is having seen the Do Nothings -those in clubs that sit around goofing off after school and their only actual output is making some posters.
Thank you all for the advice. I will definitely be getting into contact with my FFR about this to try and get a clearer answer. From what I've learned about SBDMs and from your description of it, I think the site base team at my school pretty much fits a very similar definition. Only, select students are allowed to vote and help make decisions.
Also, thank you for the idea of a binder. I don't think we currently have something fitting that description, and it's certainly something worth creating. As for making sure you contribute, I am definitely trying to work towards contributing towards every meeting we have. Since its COVID, many meetings are virtual, which makes things pretty awkward. So, I've tried to contribute a little towards each meeting, minimum, and at our last meeting about charities I think I really helped spearhead the questioning of the charities. I'll definitely try and make sure I don't end up as a Do Nothing!
Also, thank you for the idea of a binder. I don't think we currently have something fitting that description, and it's certainly something worth creating. As for making sure you contribute, I am definitely trying to work towards contributing towards every meeting we have. Since its COVID, many meetings are virtual, which makes things pretty awkward. So, I've tried to contribute a little towards each meeting, minimum, and at our last meeting about charities I think I really helped spearhead the questioning of the charities. I'll definitely try and make sure I don't end up as a Do Nothing!