October 10, 2025
the leadership paradox
It is the time for college applications, and your inbox is full of leadership tips and extracurricular checklists.
Leadership experience in college applications is often presented as:
Organized a college fest
Captain of a sports team
President of 2 clubs
Further, most applications look quite similar.
Everyone thinks that leadership means holding titles. Admissions committees look for something else entirely.
what do they look for?
College applications are not about your titles, but about how a leadership experience has made an impact and has influenced your thinking and development.
Solve a real problem, and Create genuine impact:
Most applications: I organized the college fest, attended by 20 colleges
Outstanding applications: As the organizer of the college fest, I expanded our outreach to include liberal arts colleges, growing participation from 12 to 20 colleges, with 40% of students first time attendees.
Activities vs. Navigating complexity and Achieving outcomes:
Most applications: I got elected as the cricket team captain, selected the team, and won the inter-college cup.
Outstanding applications: Taking over as cricket captain after we failed to qualify for regionals, I identified our core issue: lack of match practice and team cohesion. I created a weekend inter-college match system, implemented mental conditioning alongside physical training, and developed a mentorship pairing between seniors and freshers. We won the inter-college cup for the first time in 5 years. I learned that sustained performance comes from systems, not just individual talent.
Learning:
What did you learn from the leadership experiences? Most applicants describe what they have done but fall short of articulating how did they adapt to a leadership responsibility, how did they handle conflict and crises, what would they do differently, and how they have grown as a part of the leadership experience.
some common mistakes
Having guided and mentored several students, and having evaluated hundreds of college applications, here are the top issues with demonstrating leadership in college applications:
Having 5 leadership titles in your application
Focus on the top 2-3 experiences where you delivered maximum impact
Passing off participation as leadership
Joining or attending a group, forum, NGO is not leadership - admissions committees understand this. Leave out experiences where you are not a leader or an organizer
Exaggerating impact without evidence
The admissions committees go through thousands of applications and know how to evaluate impact. Provide genuine evidence of the impact that you've created
Professional vs Personal Leadership experiences
Students feel they have not had opportunities to demonstrate leadership. But leadership can be in a personal context too - say how you overcome the fear or public speaking, or how you struggled with a particular subject and built your confidence and skill to top your class
Going too far back
Winning a debate or being the lead actor in the high-school drama is too far back. Try to demonstrate leadership experiences that are more recent, and more impactful
beyond the blog
Leadership in college applications is not about being a perfect or having a national level award or recognition. It is about being thoughtful, authentic, and having clarity in your thinking.
This post gives you a framework. It needs to be applied to your specific situation:
Which experiences should you highlight?
How do you articulate them in a compelling way?
How do you show the evidence of your leadership?
How do you craft your narrative, and weave that story into your application and your interviews?
This is where personalized guidance and mentorship helps. nekome's Kickstart program helps students and early career professionals chart their right course in their higher education journey.
Our Primer program helps you review and refine your SOPs, essays, resumes / CVs, and college applications
Our Focused program helps you with a dedicated session on addressing a specific aspect of education or career
Our Momentum program works with you on a personalized mentorship program for 3 months.
Check out the mentor's background. Read what our mentees have to say about us. Send us an email to get in touch with us.
Not sure where to start? Setup a free, 30-minute exploration call to discuss your application strategy.
nekome mentoring, 2025