CV extracurriculars

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uhurulol
Posts: 79
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2014 12:38 am

CV extracurriculars

Post by uhurulol » Thu Nov 13, 2014 3:09 am

Hi everyone. I'm wondering if I should list music composition/production under my "other activities" section of my CV. I have several electronic music releases (not that I'd share that bit of info) on reputable labels in their industry, so I'd say it's notable, but I'm wondering if an astronomy department is going to care about this? Do they think it will be a little bit of personal flare, or is it just clutter?

Thanks.

Catria
Posts: 354
Joined: Fri Oct 26, 2012 4:14 pm

Re: CV extracurriculars

Post by Catria » Thu Nov 13, 2014 9:57 am

uhurulol wrote:Hi everyone. I'm wondering if I should list music composition/production under my "other activities" section of my CV. I have several electronic music releases (not that I'd share that bit of info) on reputable labels in their industry, so I'd say it's notable, but I'm wondering if an astronomy department is going to care about this? Do they think it will be a little bit of personal flare, or is it just clutter?

Thanks.
I know that there was some assistant professor at school that claimed that Yale was perhaps the astro department that cared about ECs most and that her ECs were what allowed her to get into Yale; she ultimately attended Cambridge, however. She even claimed that Yale puts more weight on extracurriculars than on the general GRE, and almost as much as on GPA (or at least used to; I think her info is a little dated) but Maryland and UCSC hardly look at ECs.

Of course, what I knew about her was that she had a publication under preparation, 4.1 (on 4.3) GPA, 740 on the PGRE but she claimed that most Yale admits for astro had 700+ on the PGRE, 3.7+ GPA (on 4.0), some research experience (however many Yale admits do not have a paper under preparation)

TakeruK
Posts: 941
Joined: Mon Jan 02, 2012 3:05 pm

Re: CV extracurriculars

Post by TakeruK » Thu Nov 13, 2014 12:40 pm

I would include it. ECs does not count directly towards admission decision in the way that they do towards undergrad decisions. However, I would include it just because if it's something that is important to you, why not share it with the admission committee?(**) It might help in the sense that it makes you more memorable when they discuss candidates later on. Also, personally, I included my ECs because I wanted to make a point that I will be spending a bunch of my time doing ECs, and not spending all of my time on research. I didn't mind if I got rejected by people who would think that grad students should not have ECs.


(** clarification: I don't mean to say that one should always share everything with the admission committee, but if there are some aspects about you that you feel define who you are as a person, then I think it's worth mentioning, even if it's not an academic thing)



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