College Societies and Competitions- A Crucial Aspect of Student Life

College! College! College!

College is like another milestone for all the students. College world is your oyster. Between all the people to meet, classes to take and places to get involved on campus, it's a time ripe with possibility to discover yourself, to be on your own and to begin to fathom life and because you want to squeeze every last drop out of your college experience, be prepared to seize as many opportunities as you can and be a student who is eager to explore the boundaries and expand horizons.

Don't plan to arrive on campus only to lounge around your favorite canteen food or just enjoying with your friends in a nutshell. Get out and grab robust assortment of campus opportunities.

College societies and competitions provide a myriad of opportunities for you: a platform for you to demonstrate your talent, a stepping-stone to achieve greater things in life. They represent unconventional but effective ways of securing skills, jobs, network and exposure to real-world issues.

“Today’s effort to lead 50 will help you to lead 500 tomorrow”

Major benefits of participating in College Societies and Competitions are as follows:

1. Meeting new and your kind of people:

The most important and exciting reason is that you get to meet a lot of new people. Societies and competitions help you to meet likeminded and interesting individuals who may share the same interests as you. It's unbelievable how you get to meet students from different walks of life and various other courses who you would have never interacted with otherwise.

2. Overall Personality Development:

Don’t you think you should also have fun while learning at college? Gone are those days when college life was only about academics and students only focused on attending lectures and writing exams. Sometimes you can find yourself sitting in a class and feeling out of place. Academics is no doubt a very important part of student life but focusing solely on academics can help you score all A’s but these lectures and assignments will also put you under stress someday.

Maintaining a well-balanced experience in college will enhance your academic performance also. A different environment with like-minded people and fun activities will give you that much-needed change while keeping you healthy and active. It gives a platform to young brains to showcase their innovative ideas and compete with their peers which ultimately helps in adding layers to the personality. These activities are an amalgamation of fun and learning where spectacular ideas are displayed, and students learn and feel inspired. Even Hackathons encourage students to rack their brains and brainstorm to provide solutions for any existing substantial problem such as digitization, etc.

3. For not having a Single Identity:

Moreover, you just don’t want to be known by the course you’ve taken up in college. Like being the “Math kid” or the “Commerce kid” can become your identity in college if you solely focus on academics. Don’t be put off or intimidated by a lack of “formal” qualifications. Passion and interest can get you a long way, not just in competitions and societies, but in life more generally. Showing the breadth of your skills palette and letting all your colors shine will really help you to differentiate yourself from others and making you a person who is capable of taking up varied roles.

4. For Building up your Resume:

Everyone wants to have a strong resume in college and working and participating with people is a good way to master the skill of team work. You learn to make decisions as a group, considering every individual opinion. Winning a couple of student competitions and leading societies is a great way to stand out from the crowd and build your resume both the traditional way and via your LinkedIn profile.

With consistent efforts the “Likes” will start rolling in and job offers won’t be far behind. Your resume speaks for your talent if you have been an active participant in college societies, cultural activities, sports tournaments or anything outside of the classroom.

5. Know Yourself:

With various student organizations such as academic, sports, or non-academic, you can know yourself, your potential and passion. Find out what you are good at by becoming a part of a couple of student societies to understand your strengths, weaknesses, interests, and goals. Learn how to handle challenging situations and test your knowledge. Knowing about yourself can certainly prove beneficial in your future career.

6. Develop Soft Skills:

Acquiring people skills is imperative to a bright future. While participating in multiple activities, you can learn how to effectively interact with others and broaden your skill set such as work ethics, time management, communication and enhance those you already possess. Leading some society/ club can make you a confident leader. Even if you are just a member, you can demonstrate many qualities including teamwork and dedication.

7. It helps you become more collaborative:

Clubs and societies let students congregate around a common cause, interest or course of study at a time when social connections are crucial. Students learn how to identify and work toward a shared vision, delegate tasks and responsibilities and work together in spite of interpersonal conflicts if any just for the betterment of the society.

8. It can build your Self-confidence:

Someone rightly said "Students gain confidence as a result of practicing the art of leadership and real-world skills through a campus activity”

Students who successfully balance a full plate of academics and extracurricular activities come away from the experience with a stronger understanding of their capabilities. This can help you build up the self-confidence and assurance needed to take on more challenges.

9. Well-rounded College Experience:

Participation in college clubs and organizations creates lifelong memories and provides a more memorable college experience. Aside from all of the skill-building and potential for personal development, participation in college is just a great way to make memories. It's a chance to put yourself out there, try something new and have a great time doing so.

Activities can spice up mundane college weeks and break up long blocks of study sessions. Plus, they'll help you make the most of your college experience. It might give you friends for lifetime and tons of memories and experiences that will go with you beyond college.

10. It can Increase your Marketability:

You'll get a lot out of your involvement on campus while you're still a student, but the benefits don't stop once you graduate. The skills you develop and the experience you acquire add up to an enticing combination for hiring managers once you begin your job search. Your community participation in college can set you apart from the pack when you're vying for your dream job.

We've all felt or heard the frustration with job openings that require years of experience before you've even lived long enough to acquire those resume items. Involvement in college clubs and competitions can be a great way to start garnering impressive skills and hands-on experience that can catch the eye of hiring managers until you're able to build up that cushion of on-the-job professional involvement.

Taking initiative in college signals to recruiters that these students are hard workers and have a strong work ethic, with a higher probability of being a successful hire.

Employers prefer to hire candidates who are equipped with knowledge and expertise in their field and know how to communicate and interact with clients. If you are involved in multiple activities, it reflects your talent and potential as it teaches students how to manage time effectively, prioritize work, follow a schedule and respect deadlines.

Additionally, if students wish to pursue higher studies abroad, these co-curricular activities make them stand out from other students.

11. Show your Talent:

Many students feel it is difficult to express their talents in school. So, by participating in a competition/ society in college can give you a new opportunity to show your talent and apply your skills. In turn, the rewards these competitions and societies give whether tangible or otherwise, can help you achieve your educational and professional goals. Some competition might win an internship that leads to the job of your dreams or some money that would help you buy course books, learn new skills or even help to start your own business.

12. Connect with Top Employers:

Competitions can also be a way to connect with top employers, such as Google, Deloitte, EY, Facebook or IBM, that are otherwise difficult to reach, in a setting that puts you and your skills in the spotlight. Regardless of your formal educational background, if you have the skills to win a competition, you have the ability to connect.

Applying through traditional recruitment channels can often be a drag and many talented students fall through the cracks and never reach their dream companies. Traditional application criteria are based mostly on the level of academic excellence, which may or may not showcase your true talent and skills set.

So, take a shot and participate in their competitions. Still not convinced that student competitions are the way to land your dream job? Loreal hires nearly 1/3 of all graduate interns from its challenges and almost all top employers organize some sort of competition for students.

13. Challenge Yourself:

Obviously, not everyone who enters the competition will win or all those who apply for societies get selected. However, you can still benefit from the opportunity to challenge yourself. You’ll learn new things while going through the recruitment or competition process and you can always share these experiences in the job interviews.

The most important thing to note is that your competition journey/ selection steps in societies is a process, not an endpoint. Any one success (or apparent failure) is just another stepping stone to the next point along the way. So, whatever the outcome, focus on what you’ve gained and how to keep on developing.

14. Get help to realize your Dream:

Whether it’s a dance, photography, finance or marketing society, it will always help you realize your dream and will set a founding stone to fulfil it. Likewise, competitions can help you realize your dream as it offers a chance to understand and solve real life cases from the dream companies you wish to enter into.

15. Test your ideas:

Finally, student competitions/ societies allow you to test your ideas to see how viable they are in a risk-free environment where you are able to collect and incorporate feedback from your society peers and professionals in case of competitions. If you are committed to realizing your dreams, any time spent on fine-tuning your ideas and opinions is a great investment.

Remember, this is not time wasted; it is time spent learning and growing. Societies and competitions provide an enriching and stimulating experience that allows you to apply your existing knowledge and to learn from other people.

The more you participate in presenting your ideas or opinions, the better you get!

“The arts are an essential element of education, just like reading writing, and arithmetic... music dance, painting, and theatre are all keys that unlock profound human understanding and accomplishment”