'Brazil school games' - USC Extracurricular activity

Hello, I'm an international student applying to schools in the US and I'm feeling insecure about my writting. I would appreciate any help!

My favorite thing about my school in Brazil was pobably the annual beneficient school games. The chance to get involved in activities, work in a team and get to know new people was always really exciting for me. It takes a lot of time and hard work to put 32 tasks together, and since school didn't stop, my grades went down a lot during the games. In 2011 I had the chance to lead one of the 3 teams and it was really complicated, however it's amazing to see the final results. My team and I managed to get 150 sponsors and collect 10 tons of food and clothing for charity. It's incredible to hear your team's name as the winner, but in the end, the opportunity to help people in my community was the best part of the experience. As the winners, we had the chance to go to each institution and deliver the 24 tons of food and cloting that the school collected, and to see so many people happy and smiling was priceless.

Hello,

Rule number one in writing admissions essays: Do not make yourself look unnecessarily bad. Why would you put that your grades went down because of a extracurricular activity? That will show the admissions staff that you are not prepared to make good judgement. I would leave that out of this essay. -AAO

Hope this helps.

Hello admission2012.

I only wrote that because my brazilian counselor said that it would explain why, in that particular time of the year, my grades weren't good.

Thank you a lot! I will make sure to fix that!

Bom Dia,

I am from Rio myself, so I know how it can be. However, school is school. You are there to learn first and foremost. So it is really never ok to have a voluntary extra-curricular activity bring your grades down. If your grades went down and you want to explain that, you should use an optional essay to do so. However, if it was a slight drop that is more than a year or so old, I would not worry too much about it.