Does Extracurricular Matter?

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As a young adult close to ending his career as a high school student and about to start his career as a college student the amount of extracurricular I’ve done in the past comes to mind when it comes to applying to schools. I personally haven’t done many extracurricular but the few that I have, I’ve invested many years of my life to. I believe that to certain extents, the extracurricular that children take part in do have some sort of effect on their future academic and career success. Steven D. Levitt, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago stated that he found no correlation between the amount of extracurricular a child takes part in with academic success. While I agree with Levitt’s finding that the amount of extracurricular has no effect on the child’s future success I believe what’s important is the quality instead of the amount. It may look good on paper that a child has taken Karate lessons for one year, piano lessons for two, gymnastics for 2, and so on, but the amount of time dedicated is so minimal that it has little to no effect. I personally have spent ten years of my life playing the violin and 7 of those years playing in the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras. Even though it’s only one activity outside of school, the lessons I’ve learned as a musician are invaluable and would have been impossible to teach if I only played one or two years.