So, it’s time for you to fill out the dreaded activities section, huh? Hello there, hi, hey, and welcome to our virtual Common App support group. You’re in good company. Even though the Common App activities section is straightforward and short, it tends to cause applicants a decent amount of stress.
The limited space is a blessing and a curse — it’s crucial that you spend your limited characters on what’s most important. You get to be brief, but you also need to distill the last 3 or so years of extracurriculars into just a few lines. We all know admissions comes down to more than grades and test scores, and this is where you want to show that you’re well-rounded, driven, and engaged.
It’s true that a lot is riding on this, but it’s also true that filling this section out is pretty simple in the end if you look carefully at the requirements and approach it strategically. Let’s take a closer look at the format, and then you can start mapping out your own activities section.
Step 1: Get the Lay of the Land
The activities page of the Common App starts by asking if you’d like to report any activities “outside the classroom.”
Don’t be fooled by the fact that you have a choice. Like when your mom snaps, “want to help me with this?” It’s not a real question. The answer is ALWAYS yes. Yes, you do have activities to report. You’ve waited your whole life for this moment — the opportunity to report your activities. Affirmative, yep, yes, you wish to report your activities, which have kept you active, doing the activities you’d like to report on the activities section specifically for reporting your activities.
There’s no more tricks after that, though. Extracurriculars can be any kind of activity, as you can see from the list of examples the Common App provides here. Anything that takes time and effort is legitimate, whether it’s affiliated with your school, a national organization, your neighborhood, or just your family.
Next, you’ll give all relevant details about your involvement in each activity you list. You’ll choose from a dropdown menu of activity types, list your role, name the organization (if applicable), describe what you did as part of this group, and indicate when you did it (which years of high school, what period of each year, and how many hours you spent on it weekly and annually). Finally, you record whether or not you’ll continue with this activity in college.
Step 2: Choosing Which Activities to List
The Common App only allows you to list up to 10 activities, and they suggest you do so in order of importance. But the importance is relative, right, so what does that really mean?
Here, it means the activities that are most significant to you — experiences that have informed you as a person and a student. And that last part matters, so don’t forget about the academic lens just because this segment of the application includes the fun stuff. While the emotional attachment to a hobby or job says a lot about you, you have to make sure that the list you’re putting together supports your narrative. Prioritize how your activities, and how you rank them, provide evidence for the academic future you’d like to have in college — the intended area of study or professional goals you’ve detailed elsewhere in your application.
Start making your list. We recommend that all of our students create and work from an expanded resume, but if you haven’t done that you should write down every honor, activity, or extra project you’ve done in high school and the date (or date range) during which each one occurred.
From this document, you’ll organize your activities and choose which to include. You should determine your rankings by the size of the time commitment and the duration of your involvement. Sort them in reverse chronological order, starting with your most recent activities first.
A club you’ve participated in from freshman through senior year would come before an activity you did freshman and sophomore year that you later dropped because of scheduling conflicts, for example. An activity you’ve done junior and senior year should also come before freshman and sophomore year activities.
There is one exception to this organization principle — sports. Many students find that their biggest time commitment outside of school is athletics, but you should not list this as your most important activity if you’re not getting recruited. If you won’t be a college athlete, activities more relevant to your desired academic trajectory should go higher up on your list.
Finally, it’s common to worry about the number of activities you include in this section. If you list fewer than 10, will that reflect poorly on you? Or, if you have more than 10 activities, does narrowing your list down exclude valuable information? No. The answer to both questions is the same: as with all things in the college admissions arena, quality trumps quantity every time.
Don’t include filler activities just to look busy. The hours you report with each activity will make it clear when you’ve thrown in something insignificant as a last-ditch effort to fill all 10 spots. It matters much more that you highlight the extracurriculars that have developed your interests in high school and will continue to influence your college trajectory.
Step 3: decisions, decisions, decisions
The decision-making stage is the hardest part, in our opinion, and you’re almost finished. Now you just have to do the… actual filling out of the section.
Add your activities in the order of importance that you’ve chosen. If you have or had a leadership role, list your title — ”secretary,” “president,” “captain,” etc. Otherwise, don’t overthink naming your position. General terms like “member,” “volunteer,” or “participant” work just fine.
Remember: you only have 150 characters to describe your activity, so use them wisely. That’s hardly more space than we had in the dark ages of Twitter before 2017, and yet we still managed to create some iconic content. The key to a successful short-and-sweet activity description is simple — just say what you did. Be honest, keep the style of each answer uniform, and draw attention to measurable results or accomplishments you were responsible for.
Here are two examples:
President, Academic Council
Redesigned summer reading program to increase student engagement. Organized book clubs across fields of interest, doubling reported reading hours.
Captain, Swim Team
Competed in state championship after 3 years on varsity. Organized team dinners before meets. Planned fundraisers that brought in $2,000 for new gear.
Finally, input the hours you spent on each activity per week and per year. Do NOT inflate numbers here. BE REALISTIC. Admissions committees know that you only have a handful of hours after each school day, and if your combined activity hours exceed the number of hours in a week, it’s clear that you’re lying or made a mistake.
The last question for each activity is whether you’ll continue to do a similar activity in college, and you don’t need to worry too much about your answer. As with your declared major, no one will hold you to what you say here, and it’s unrealistic to indicate that you’ll continue all of your activities. However, you should choose “yes” for at least a few activities to show that you’ll be an active member of the student body and to support the narrative you’re crafting about your goals.
And there you have it — not exactly easy as pie, but not difficult difficult lemon difficult, either. Double-check your entries, proofread your descriptions, and let ‘er fly!
If you need help with the activities section, or any other part of the Common App, reach out to us here.