Quick Question: How important is volunteer experience for US Master's Apps?
 
Admissionado Answer: Any school is looking for leadership and extracurricular experience, but at the same time you have to work with the material that you have. Definitely add any volunteer and leadership experience you have. If you don’t have any of that material it’s not the end of the world – you’ll just want to make sure all of the other parts of your application are as strong as possible and that you show leadership potential in other ways (via a LOR for example).

You can also work around lack of extracurriculars by being ready to speak to how you plan to contribute outside the classroom once in school – for example, by leading a club, planning a speaker series, etc. That information won’t fit in your essay (unless they’re specifically asking you for it) but could come up in an interview.