Making the Most of Common App's Activities Section

The Common App Activities Section is one of the few places on your application (outside of your essay) to bring some of your own voice and that makes it powerful. It is also offering you the opportunity to highlight your priorities by demonstrating to colleges how you choose to spend your (limited) time outside of school.

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

• Account for 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”!

• Rank your activities by 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! 🙃) 

• Be incredibly economical with your words. Beyond your role and the organization it is for, you get 150 characters (yes, you read that right, characters not words!) to sum up your impact and accomplishments for each activity. 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! Feel free to use abbreviations (that would be universally recognizable) and shortenings like “&” instead of “and” to save on space. 

• Let your personality come through. 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. 

  
  

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!