Ana asks:
Hi there! My name is Ana, and I am a huge fan of the Collegewise blog! The website is definitely one of the most informative resources for all things admissions, and it gives a levelheaded view that is rare in this often stressful process. I was hoping you could answer a question of mine in a blog post. How should the extracurricular section of the Common Application be filled out? There is a drop down menu for selecting the type of activity, but where should the more specific title (ex. camp counselor, peer tutor, etc.) go: position held or activity? What about the short description of the activity? If you have some spare time and could post an example Common App activities form with a few different activities, it would be extremely helpful to me and many other confused seniors! Thanks for your time and your awesome blog."
Flattery like that will get you everywhere, Ana. Here are a few tips for the activity section of the Common App.
Let's say your three principal activities are volleyball, writing for the school newspaper, and working as a camp counselor over the summer. Here's how you might approach those.
The drop down menu
Select the activity from the drop-down menu. It's important to let this drop down menu do the work for you. Look carefully and try to find a category that works before you select "Other club/activity." There are a lot of categories you might not expect to find, like "Family responsibilities," "cultural," "academic," etc.
Positions held, honors won, or letters earned
This section is for three things–your roles, titles and recognitions. For example, if you work as a camp counselor, that's your role. Put "Camp counselor" here. If you were the Editorial Page Editor for the school newspaper, that's a title–put that here. If you were the captain, MVP, and first-team all state in volleyball, those are recognitions. Put those here.
Roles, titles and recognitions are short and punchy, like “Varsity,” “Eagle Scout,” "Coach's Award," “Counselor,” “Founder,” “Sports Editor” or “Captain”. Anything that takes more space to explain should be put in the next section.
Details and accomplishments
Ask yourself two questions for this section. 1) Is it possible that whoever is reading this application might not understand what this activity really was based on the previous two sections alone? 2) Did I or the organization accomplish anything that can’t be summed up with a simple recognition that I listed above? If the answer to either of those two questions is “Yes,” then you should provide that information here.
For example, let’s say you listed your camp counselor work under “Work (Paid).” But what if the camp was specifically for children with physical and mental disabilities? That’s something interesting the reader wouldn’t know just from the previous two sections. So here’s where you could put the name and description of the camp, like “Special Camp for Special Kids: Camp for children with physical and mental disabilities.”
And what if your school paper won a state-wide award during your junior year? That’s a cool accomplishment that can’t be summed up in the previous two sections. So here’s where you could say, “2/2010 issue won the state-wide journalism award, “Excellence in Student Press.”
Somewhat annoyingly, the “Save and Check for Errors” function of the Common App will tell you you’ve made an error if you leave this section blank. So even if you’ve already described everything necessary about an activity, you might need to just fill this space in with “High school football” just to get past the error message. Try to include information here that fits the categories I’ve described, but if you just don’t have anything else to say, don’t ruin it by trying to make it sound good. Just put the basic description in and move on.
So using the example above, our completed Common App activity section would look like this when it's printed:
A few other Common App activity tips:
- Make sure you click the “Preview” button at the top of the screen when you finish this section. That’s the only way to really tell whether your responses fit in the spaces provided.
- Pay attention to the directions for this section: “Please list your principal extracurricular, volunteer, and work activities in their order of importance to you.” It's important to make sure your activities really are listed in order of importance to you. The first activity you list should be the one you’d pick if you were only allowed to list one activity (that’s a trick we teach our Collegewise students).
- “Principal activities” mean activities that were important to you. And they don't necessarily have to be formal activities. It's OK to list a hobby that's important to you, too. So if you played JV badminton freshman year and never played again, it obviously didn't mean enough to keep playing. Why take up the space with it here? But if you write a blog, or host a book club, or knit sweaters, and it's something you really enjoy and spend a lot of time doing, it’s OK to list that here.
- Don’t try to list everything you’ve ever done. It’s OK to have blank spaces. Our sample student above only listed three activities. But they were the three activities that defined her high school experience. The reader gets what was important to her. She doesn't need her to list anything else.
- Don’t attach a resume. The directions in this section (“…even if you plan to attach a resume”) make it sound like that’s something the colleges invite. They don’t. In fact, most colleges hate resumes. They’re too long, they come in too many different formats, and they ignore the activity section of the college’s application. Unless a college specifically instructs you to do a resume, we tell our students not to do one.
And (shameless self-promotion coming) if you'd like more help, you might enjoy our Collegewise Guide to the Common Application. We take you through every section of the Common App and share the same advice we share with our Collegewise students.
Thanks for your question, Ana. I hope it helps.
Mikaela says
Hi!
I’m filling out my common app, but I’m not sure what I should include in the writing section that asks me to ‘briefly elaborate’ on one of the activities I included in the activity list.
Help?
Kevin McMullin says
Mikaela- Check out our Common App guide. We go into great detail how to answer that short essay.
http://collegewise.com/downloads-1/make-your-common-application-a-lot-less-common-single-license
Annie says
Thanks so much, this is really helpful!
Scott Tucker says
Scott Tucker
Ask Collegewise: “How should I fill out the Common Application ‘Activities’ section?” – Collegewise