A full application of out-of-classroom activities doesn't necessarily win admission to undergrad business programs. Undergraduate B-schools have a message for college applicants treating extracurricular activities like an all-you-can-eat buffet: Stop gorging.

In the increasingly competitive application process for business programs, extracurriculars have become essential for students to distinguish themselves from the pack of eager, over-committed applicants. Some hold down jobs, from computer repair businesses to service jobs at McDonalds. Others attend out-of-school conferences and camps, such as DECA, an international program teaching students about marketing, managing, and customer service. But when it comes to high school clubs and other outside-the-classroom activities, admission directors from top undergrad business programs agree that the key is depth, not quantity.

"The level of commitment is much more important than the specific activity," said James Dewey-Rosenfeld, senior assistant director of undergraduate admissions at Babson College. "The common application shows when students are trying to pad their résumés. We can tell."

Be a Person, Not an Activity

That might sound like standard advice, but Dewey-Rosenfeld sees plenty of students who assume participating in a marketing or investment club will clinch their acceptance. Admissions officials from some of the nation's top undergraduate programs—such as Penn, Emory, Washington University and Virginia—agree that students targeting clubs they consider prestigious are largely wasting their time.

Nanette Tarbouni, director of undergraduate admissions at Washington University in St. Louis, said the range of student interests is so vast that no extracurricular activity guarantees admission. "It's not that one thing that will get them in. We want to get to know them as a person, not just as one activity," she said.

Undergraduate B-school applicants should not consider specific activities—even business clubs—"more valuable" than other high school extracurriculars, said Rebecca Leonard, assistant dean for undergraduate student services at the University of Virginia.

Consider Communication Skills

"There are marketing associations and finance clubs, but they don't necessarily carry any more importance than being a part of a choral group," she said. "We want to give equal acknowledgment to other activities, because it's important to be well balanced in life, too."

That doesn't mean that all clubs are created equal in the eyes of admissions boards. Andrea Hershatter, associate dean and director of the BBA program at Emory's Goizueta Business School, said some general skills, such as initiative and communication, are especially appealing to admissions committees because they are marketable in the business world.

"One big complaint we hear is a lot of people in the work force don't communicate very well," she said. "It is particularly useful to have students who have exhibited strong communication skills [in places] like writing clubs, or oral communication like [in] debate. If you have a student who has started an organization and galvanized a cause, that shows somebody with a lot of potential."

Speaks to Your Character

Admissions boards seek diverse interests and backgrounds, but if there's one constant, it's that everybody loves an entrepreneur. Tarbouni said it never hurts for prospective business majors to demonstrate entrepreneurial initiative.

"Occasionally you'll see a student who has done something like start his own lawn-mowing business or trading stocks," she said. "It separates you to do something extraordinary like that, because it speaks to your character. You're doing what you love, and you're getting results."

Many BBA programs do not have a separate undergraduate admissions department. At MIT's Sloan School of Management, students declare their business major at school like any other concentration, without a review process. But at other schools, such as Virginia's McIntire School of Commerce, a committee admits students to the business school based on their first two years of college.

The Big "Wow"

"We need to see that students are doing something outside of academics," Leonard said. "We need to see a passion and a commitment to something, and we want to see students who have developed leadership skills."

Undergraduate programs understand students have varying access to extracurricular activities. Admissions directors see applicants whose socioeconomic backgrounds prevent them from pursuing the same slate of activities as more privileged students. In those cases, they said, working experience is a fair trade-off for activities.

"We saw one [applicant] who commuted an hour to school every day to get a more rigorous education, and he went home to take care of seven brothers and sisters," Tarbouni said. "So he couldn't be on the newspaper staff. But that's still extracurricular, and to me it was a big 'Wow.' We want people who can follow through."