Is Writing for the School Newspaper a Good Extracurricular?

If you're a high school student wondering whether joining the school newspaper is worth your time from a college admissions standpoint, the short answer is yes, but with some important caveats. Writing for your school's newspaper is a genuinely valuable extracurricular, and unlike many activities that exist purely to pad a resume, it develops real, transferable skills: research, argumentation, meeting deadlines, and communicating complex ideas to a broad audience. Admissions officers recognize these skills. The question is not whether newspaper is a good activity, it is, but whether you're doing it in a way that actually supports your application narrative.

Make Sure Your Writing Reflects Your Intended Major

Here's the mistake most students make: they join newspaper because it sounds impressive, and then they spend three years covering the school cafeteria, the homecoming game, and the spring musical. None of that is bad writing experience, but it tells an admissions officer very little about who you are intellectually or where you're headed academically.

The students who get real mileage out of newspaper are the ones who use it strategically. If you're applying as a prospective physics major, don't write the sports column. Write about science, or create a science column for your school’s newspaper. Write about a local researcher's work on quantum computing. Cover a solar energy initiative in your town. Profile a physics professor at a nearby university. Use the platform of the newspaper to demonstrate that your intellectual curiosity extends beyond the classroom and into the world around you.

The same logic applies across every major. A future political science student should be writing op-eds about local elections and policy debates. An aspiring environmental scientist should be covering sustainability issues in the community. A pre-med student might write about public health topics or breakthroughs in medical research. When your bylines align with your academic interests, the activity stops being just an extracurricular and starts becoming part of a coherent story about who you are.

The Honest Reality: School Newspaper Alone Won't Make You Stand Out at T20 Schools

Here is where we have to be frank with you. Writing for your school newspaper used to carry more weight in the college admissions process than it does today. As the landscape has become more competitive, particularly at T20 institutions like MIT, Princeton, Yale, and Stanford, school-based activities in general have seen their impact diminish. This isn't because admissions officers don't value writing. They absolutely do. It's because school newspaper, like most school-based extracurriculars, operates in a relatively insulated environment. The audience is your classmates. The stakes are low. The real world doesn't notice.

Students aiming for the most selective schools need to take their writing beyond the school building. There are two main ways to do this.

The first is getting published in outlets that adults actually read. Local newspapers, regional magazines, and community publications are more accessible than most students realize, but accessible is not the same as easy. The editorial bar at even a small community paper is meaningfully higher than at a school publication. A school editor is, at the end of the day, a fellow student working under a faculty advisor whose job involves encouraging participation. A professional editor at a local paper has column space to protect, readers to retain, and a publication's reputation to uphold. They will reject pieces that are vague, poorly argued, or not genuinely newsworthy, and most submissions, including those from adult contributors, do get rejected. You are competing not just against other high schoolers, but against adults with years of writing experience who are pitching to the same limited slots. That is precisely what makes a published op-ed in a local paper so valuable on a college application. It signals something that a school newspaper byline simply cannot: that your writing was judged by people operating in the real world, held to professional standards, and selected over other submissions by someone with no obligation to say yes. If you have a genuine perspective on a local issue — a zoning policy, an environmental concern, a public health topic, pitch it. A thoughtful, well-argued piece has a real chance of clearing that bar. But you have to actually clear it, and that is the point.

The second path is writing competitions. Competitions like the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, the John Locke Essay Competition, the Concord Review, and a range of subject-specific competitions put your work in front of independent judges and provide external validation of your ability. Placing in a nationally recognized writing competition is a meaningful credential. It tells admissions officers that your writing doesn't just meet the standard of your high school's editorial board, it meets a higher external bar.

The Bigger Picture: Real-World Experience Is What Colleges Are After

It's worth stepping back and understanding why school-based extracurriculars have been losing ground in admissions. Colleges, especially the most selective ones, are increasingly looking for students who have engaged meaningfully with the world outside of school. This is, frankly, an unreasonable standard to apply to a sixteen or seventeen-year-old, and most admissions officers would admit as much off the record. But it is the reality of the current landscape.

As high schools have become more structured, more curated, and in many ways more detached from the rhythms of adult life, the activities that happen within those walls carry less and less signal. A student council position, a club leadership role, even an impressive GPA, these things matter, but they no longer move the needle the way they once did. What does move the needle is evidence that you have operated in spaces where the adults around you had no special obligation to include you, support you, or give you credit. Getting a piece published in a real newspaper. Winning a competition judged by people who don't know you. Conducting research alongside a professor who holds you to professional standards. These are the kinds of experiences that admissions officers at top schools are increasingly prioritizing.

If you need help trimming the fat of your current extracurriculars so you can use your time better to distinguish yourself, need help selecting which activities to participate in, or have any other questions related to the college admissions process, schedule a free consultation with an admissions expert today.