On a Thursday evening last month, the CHS cafeteria was abuzz with students eagerly discussing and signing up for various extracurricular clubs at Club Night. However, a second glance at this seemingly innocent school function revealed that many of these students, particularly the college-obsessed juniors and seniors, were more concerned with how the prospective clubs would look on their résumés than whether they would be enjoyable or not.
Résumé padding has evolved into an epidemic at CHS. Students take certain classes, participate in certain extracurricular activities and even spend their summers doing certain things to ensure that they look impressive in the eyes of college admissions officers. While taking the classes that colleges deem challenging is a reasonable way to gain an advantage in the admissions process, spending free time participating in superficially impressive activities is quite another.
Although many CHS students claim to be members of clubs, the definition of membership varies far too broadly depending on the person asked. The president of a club will say that he or she is a member of that club, as will the student who is on the e-mail list but only shows up to one meeting. Despite the obvious difference between the commitment levels of the two students to the club, the chances are that both of these students will put the club on their college résumés, and on paper, they will look the same. 
According to collegeboard.com, while extracurricular activities boost a student’s chances for college admission, admissions boards prefer a student than be passionate about the few activities that he or she participates in then, rather than be spread thin throughout many activities that he or she does not particularly like.
Nevertheless, there is a competition of sorts among CHS students to join as many clubs as possible in the hopes of improving their personal profile. It is a vicious trend that no student wants to break for fear of the ominous consequence: not being accepted into the dream school.
“My sibling did it” is not a valid excuse for joining numerous clubs either because it is just résumé padding in disguise. When a student joins a club because his or her sibling was a member of the same club, he or she is really joining the club to ensure that his or her résumé is as impressive as that of his or her sibling. The belief that students must emulate their successful siblings in order to be successful as well is an all-too-prevalent misconception.
When it comes down to it, participating in uninteresting clubs for the purpose of college admission is like inventing a false persona in a personal college essay because that persona seems more impressive than the writer really is. Let’s face it: nobody is interested in everything, although many CHS student résumés would suggest otherwise. The rare student who is dedicated to and passionate about all seven clubs he or she belongs to is welcome to continue his or her passion. As for other students, instead of feeling the need to compete with this student, they should stick to the clubs that they truly enjoy being a part of.