There are concerns about the increasing demands placed on students not only within the classroom but outside it as well. Parents and educators alike are faced with the daunting challenge of balancing the educational and extracurricular pressures that students face. In light of student needs and limited time educational leaders along with parents are faced with making difficult decisions about what opportunities their students should or should not take advantage of and still maintain a high level of achievement. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between extracurricular participation and academic outcomes. The findings of this study can provide valuable insight to school leaders and parents as they make decisions about how to maintain the balance of academics and extracurricular activities. This study is designed to examine the relationships between participation in extracurricular activities, ACT scores, and GPA. The study provides insight as to the optimal number of activities to participate, the number of hours per week to devote to extracurricular involvement, the types of extracurricular activity to associate with, and the expected academic achievement (GPA and ACT) that is identified for those in the sample that made similar choices. The goal of this study is to offer quantifiable results on how participation in extracurricular activities related to academic achievement. A quantitative research design is used for this study. Extant data were collected from the consenting high school on the junior classes of 2014 and 2015. Gender, race, ACT scores, GPA, extracurricular participation, and lunch status were all collected from the participating school. Pearson correlations, regression analysis, and frequency analysis were utilized on the data collected in order to obtain results that addressed the questions of the study. This study revealed that extracurricular participation was significantly positive in relation with ACT and GPA. The data was found to be strongly linear with no point of diminishing return of significance. The combination of extracurricular activities that yielded the greatest returns across both measures was between five and six extracurricular activities, with an average of ten hours of participation per week, and with no more than one competitive extracurricular activity per year. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]