How to Attack the Common App Activities Section

The activities section can be daunting for a lot of students, especially if you feel you don’t have many activities (or, have too many!) to represent yourself with. The activities section on the Common App allows for ten different slots across a range of different categories. This is your chance to give some insight to the colleges about your values and priorities by showing them how you have chosen to spend the limited time you have outside of school and homework. 

Here are my top tips on how to get the most bang for your buck out of this brief section:

• First off, step back and really think about everything you do outside of the classroom. Many students are shocked to hear that even things that aren’t structured sports or clubs “count.” Do you play an instrument? Read or write a lot? Manage to get to the gym regularly? Do art projects for fun? Have a job? Volunteer? Cook dinner for your family or look after younger siblings? Congratulations, you have some great activities to talk about! Literally ANY way that you spend time outside of class “counts”!

• Once you have brainstormed a complete list of EVERYTHING you do outside of class, put it in order of most importance to you (because that is precisely what Common App instructs!) Don’t worry about what you think looks the best, or seems the most impressive, the schools want to know what YOU value! If you have more than 10, time to make some cuts! If you have fewer than 10, that’s totally fine (just don’t put that one time you volunteered for 2 hours! 🙃) 

• You have very little room to describe each of your activities. Beyond its name, your role, and the organization it is for, you get 150 characters (yes, you read that right, characters not words!) to sum up your accomplishments in each activity. This section, though, is the only other place besides your essay that allows you to bring even just a little bit of your personality to the application. So it becomes essential to take the fullest advantage of even the tiny amount of space it affords you! Be sure not to repeat ANY information. For instance, if you put the activity title as “Varsity Baseball”, your role/position as “Shortstop”, the organization as “XYZ High School”, and the years of participation as 9th-12th grade, the description should NOT start with “I have played shortstop on my high school’s baseball team since 9th grade”! That is wasting 73 characters (basically half of the allotted amount!) on information already stated. Instead, focus on what you have brought to the team, and/or what being a part of the team has meant to you! 

• Let your personality come out where you can in your descriptions! This is not the time to be humble. Describe your accomplishments in a way that feels genuine to you. For many students, that means bringing in their sense of humor! I have had a student be self-deprecating about the amount of history books and documentaries she consumes, and another one who referred to her practice cooking for her family regularly as her crafting her future cookbook. For others, this is a place for them to be a little vulnerable. I have many students describe their practice of art or dance as a mode of stress-relief, or just say how much they love a particular activity or practice. 

• Feel free to use abbreviations (that would be universally recognizable) and shortenings like “&” instead of “and” to save on space. 

Ultimately, think about what an admission officer's takeaway will be both from what the activity is that you are describing and how you relate to it! Let your passion/devotion/excitement/hard work, etc shine through as best you can in 150 characters!