Quantify your achievement wherever possible. Place the activities that are most important to you — and most likely to impress colleges — at the top. The list should appear in descending order of importance. Activities that garnered you national awards or recognition, such as the aforementioned National Robotics Challenge, should appear first in most cases, while activities that took place in your school or community, such as president of a school club, should probably be further down, unless they led to more significant achievements.
It may be tempting to overstate your commitment, but gross exaggerations will be easy to spot. You may not know exactly, but your rough estimation will suffice — nobody expects you to go in with a stopwatch.
If you truly do spend 15 hours per week tutoring disadvantaged youth, say so. This goes for your entire application. For the Common App Activities section in particular, check for:. And, as with other components of your application, try to get another set of eyes on it to check for errors, consistency, omissions, and more.
In the Activities section, you get the chance to describe the breadth of your extracurricular life and meaningful experiences that made you a great applicant for your chosen colleges. We also provide three examples of expertly-crafted activities sections to help you shape your own. Note: If you would like to navigate to specific sections of the article, click "Article Contents" above on mobile or on the right desktop to see an overview of the content.
The Activities section of the Common App is your chance to list and describe the important details pertaining to your life outside of academia. Why are qualitative details so important? Application components like the Common App Activities section permit you to describe the important non-academic factors that have shaped you, and to showcase your unique strengths to the key decision-makers. Would you like us to help you with your college applications?
Select the category that best matches the specific activity. The Common App Activities section category options are:. A key tip for selecting categories is ensuring you have a good variety throughout your list, and that they match the activities in question as closely as possible.
This can include sports, clubs, hobbies, jobs, and any other applicable activities. You can list up to 10 activities. You can focus on your high quality experiences, even if you have only 7 or 8. At the same time, we recommend telling a cohesive story with all of your application components, including the Activities section. To meet these requirements, you will have to spend a significant amount of time choosing the right activities and describing them accurately.
Remember, you also need to list the activities in the right order since Common App requires a ranked list of activities. Figuring out which activity is the most crucial is one of the trickiest aspects of writing this section.
Redundancy, as in most situations, is generally frowned upon in the Common App Activities section. It's common, if you have enough space, to make some notation of activity duration in this field. Limited to characters, this is the simplest category by far. This is the real meat of the Activities section and will be the most challenging, even for experienced writers. Although there are important aspects of the first three fields to consider, the most important, by far, is the activity description.
However, the strict limitation on character counts in the Common App Activities section means that you cannot afford to abide by the normal rules of grammar and syntax. For instance, consider these two descriptions of working as a reporter on a school newspaper:. Throughout my time as a reporter for the X High School Ledger, I worked on stories that covered school charity work, musical performances, and more.
The types of stories written, of course. Contrast that with the following:. I also edited peer articles. The second description is action-packed and full of details that show the reader that the student also worked as an editor for the paper, not just a reporter.
Always choose the points that are most impactful and focus on having them read as clearly as possible without sacrificing coherence.
What does this mean? For instance, consider these descriptions for an entry on student government:. Using numbers and other concrete quantitative notations can define the otherwise indeterminate frequency and volume of a given activity.
Oversaw 7 cleanup and improvement projects for our school auditorium, as well as 3 annual clothing drives to support 2 local orphanages. Another tip? When describing current activities, make sure you use the present tense. For example, if you currently volunteer at a retirement home, you can add this description:. Drive patients to their medical appointments, organize monthly raffles, and assist with an ongoing digitization project, as well as janitorial tasks.
Moreover, it will likely come off as sloppy or poorly edited if there is repetition from field to field. Colleges are more impressed by dedication and commitment, rather than quantity. Signs of commitment and dedication include an activity participated in continuously for several years and-or an activity where a student has gained some level of distinction, either as a founder, leader or officer; made a significant contribution; or was publically recognized or won an award.
It is important to note that most accepted students to elite colleges fill in activities on the Common Application. The exception is typically a student who has stellar achievement in at least one activity. Students should work to make sure their extracurricular list is diverse. For example, students devoted to the orchestra should also try to list community service or athletic activities.
Students who show that they have a wider range of interests will appear better-rounded to an admissions officer and convince them that they are a student who will be open minded to new opportunities on campus. Action verbs show what a student has accomplished. A description for an activity can start by finding an action verb. This section is limited to 50 characters. Be as specific as possible here.
For example, if you were Student Council Vice President freshman year and a class representative the other three years, list these out as: Vice President 1 yr , Class Representative 3 yrs. You should also be specific in defining the organization. If it has a name, say it, and define what it is if that is unclear.
If the activity is typically referred to by an acronym, be sure to list the full name, as you never want to assume that admissions committees will be familiar with the activity to which you are referring. You are limited to characters for details, accomplishments, honors won, and accomplishments within each activity, so you will need to be concise and offer only the most pertinent details.
If you absolutely need more room to thoroughly explain truly important details about the activity, use the additional information section to expand, or describe it in more detail in your essay if it relates to the topic you choose.
Remember that this section is not there for you to prove your eloquence as a writer; you have the essay to do that.
Rather, this serves to inform the admissions committee about your life outside school as succinctly as possible. Use active verbs and limit the use of adjectives and adverbs. Be as specific as you can be in the space available. If you hold a leadership position, emphasize that role in your description. Try to focus on quantitative descriptions over qualitative ones. Adding numerical values offers concrete proof of your success , and can show colleges how you were involved specifically.
If you are a leader in the activity, mention how many members the group has, how many people you serve if applicable , how many people your work affected, and so on. Try not to be redundant, especially considering the limited space.
If you want to talk about the actual tutoring in more detail, discuss your approach — e. Member of most advanced ensemble, led sectionals to teach difficult passages, performed five concerts per year. Participated in multiple science-based events; 2nd place for Write It Do It, 3rd place for Meteorology. These are examples of strong activity descriptions because they provide a large amount of information in a few words.
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