Extracurriculars in college can be life-changing

College applicants know how important high school extracurricular activities are in selective admissions. Hardly anyone is telling them, however, what power the activities they pursue during college can have over the rest of their lives.

I often think about my undergraduate days. If you are heading for college, you should know the most important stuff often has little to do with the classes your parents, or perhaps just you, are paying for.

Among the guides being published on the college selection process, I had trouble finding any that help applicants locate schools with extracurriculars in tune with their dreams.

“I don’t know of a resource on extracurriculars at state schools specifically, nor of one for private colleges,” said Connie Livingston, a former admissions director at Brown who is now a lead counselor at the Empowerly college admissions counseling service. She said Empowerly counselors can help track down such opportunities. But your own efforts may bear more fruit.

Check with friends and family who know people who work in fields that interest you. For instance, universities such as Northwestern, Missouri and Columbia have great reputations for teaching journalism. But once I started at the Washington Post, I discovered some of our biggest talents came from schools I had never heard of, such as the State University of New York at Buffalo. Where you go to college is less important than how hard your favorite extracurricular activity inspired you to work.

What I see missing in discussions of college is the critical mass of young people on campus playing around with wild ideas. The Hewlett-Packard company, for instance, grew from imaginative chats between two undergraduates after electrical engineering class. In this century, stories of sophomores coming up with great ideas during dining hall exchanges are part of business lore.

Campus relationships have launched innovations and created jobs everywhere — in music, film, television, medicine, rocketry, energy, publishing, economics, real estate and the many parts of the internet I don’t understand.

The college guides don’t appreciate the power of young people living and studying together for the first time, organizing their days without having to check with their parents. In such circumstances, both creative and romantic sparks fly.