What extracurriculars does UCLA look for?

UUCLA's admissions office has said in its own magazine what its readers look for in an applicant's activities, and the number of entries was not on the list. The staff described involvement, leadership and honors in specific terms, and they illustrated the point with a pair of real applicants, one admitted and one denied. The denied applicant had a perfectly respectable list. The trouble was its shape, and it is a shape many diligent students build without realizing it.

The columns of the UC activities section reveal that shape to a reader almost before the descriptions are read.