Make the Most of Your Common App Activities Summary
Your high school extracurricular activities are of great interest to the college admissions committees. Whether you played sports, volunteered at an animal shelter, played in a band, or were part of a religious or community youth group, such involvements show the adcoms what matters to you and where you have chosen to invest your free time. Yet despite how important these activities are to the schools, you have only 150 characters per activity you list. That’s really tight!
So, for your Common App to stand out from the crowd, your super-short activity descriptions must reflect the same thought and care you give to your personal essay. Let’s look at how you can accomplish this in such a short space.
When you open the Common App activities tab, you’ll find the following note: Reporting activities can help colleges better understand your life outside of the classroom. Examples of activities might include:
- Arts or music
- Clubs
- Community engagement
- Family responsibilities (learn more)
- Hobbies
- Sports
- Work or volunteering
- Other experiences that have been meaningful to you
Do you have any activities that you wish to report?
You can list up to ten activities on your application, and we hope you will have several to choose from. For each activity, you’ll need to include the following:
- Activity type
- Position/Leadership description (Max characters: 50)
- Organization name (Max characters: 100)
- Please describe this activity, including what you accomplished and any recognition you received, etc. (Max characters: 150)
- Participation grade levels
- Timing of participation (during school year, during school break, all year)
- Hours spent per week
- Weeks spent per year
- I intend to participate in a similar activity in college. (yes, no)
The Common App specifically asks you to list your activities in order of their importance to you. We offer a word of caution here, which is that the activity that you believe sounds most impressive might not be what you genuinely consider your most personally significant activity. Do not list an activity as being the most significant to you if it really wasn’t.
This means that the correct choice for your most significant activity isn’t necessarily the community service project you think will earn you acceptance points. It isn’t necessarily the sport in which you were team captain or the club that elected you president. Instead, choose the activity (or hobby) that truly makes you happy and provides fulfillment. One year, an applicant who was a dedicated baker took the time to explain her commitment to mastering the croissant. The adcom found her absolutely compelling, and she was able to convey that her interest went well beyond baking a batch of cookies for the track team bake sale.
Colleges want all sorts of students on their campus. They want tuba players and tennis players, presidents, prose writers, and even bakers. So be yourself!
Spend some time thinking about why you dedicate yourself to this activity. What makes it rewarding to you? How do you feel when you participate? Because there’s no real room to elaborate, you’ve got to state its significance in a straightforward, bottom-line way. The good news is that you can expand on your relationship with this activity more personally in one of your essays.
Avoid redundancy. If you’ve written your primary common application essay about an activity or interest, or even a person related to one, branch out here and identify a different activity or interest as your most significant one. Show the adcoms that you are not a one-note applicant, that you have several interests and are a multidimensional individual.
Be real when stating your true commitment. Sure, you might spend 12 hours in one week preparing for a debate tournament, or a full week on a mission trip. But most special activities involve far less time on a regular basis. If you claim that your individual club commitments add up to more than 50 hours in a single week, you’ll be suspected of exaggerating. This will work against you, so resist any such temptation.
We cannot stress this enough: honesty and authenticity are extremely important throughout your application. You need to present not just your best self but also your truest self. Besides, unless you’ve demonstrated an unusual or impressive level of commitment to an activity through your essay or elsewhere in your application, you will lose some legitimacy with the application reviewer.
We appreciate that the less space you have to write, the harder it typically is to be effective. Often, applicants’ entries in this section lack thoughtfulness and could benefit from being edited. Crafting yours with care and thought will do you proud and add bonus points to your application.
Take the guesswork out of your college applications. From school selection and essay strategy to deciding which extracurricular activities to highlight – and how – our experienced consultants will offer wise and supportive guidance. We are here to help you get accepted!
By Judy Gruen, a former Accepted admissions consultant. Judy holds a master’s in journalism from Northwestern University and is the co-author of Accepted’s first full-length book, MBA Admission for Smarties: The No-Nonsense Guide to Acceptance at Top Business Schools. Want an admissions expert help you get accepted? Click here to get in touch!
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