Distinctive

By Victoria Tillson Evans, Ph.D.

A student recently asked me, “When are we getting to my essays?” She was clearly tired of discussing her activities.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve heard this question, so I reassured her, “Soon.”

She then raised a quizzical eyebrow.

I realized I needed to explain further and continued, “Your essays don’t exist separately from the rest of your applications. Your activity descriptions are just as important. They work in dialogue with everything else to convey your accomplishments.”

My student nodded, slowly absorbing my words.

“Think of it this way,” I offered. “Your activities are meant to impress, while your essays are there to persuade.” With that simple explanation, I could tell my student was on board.

Just like my student, so many people underestimate the value of activities in applications. They get so caught up in writing essays that they fail to put the necessary effort into fleshing out the details of their extracurriculars. This then leads to the underrepresentation of accomplishments and/or major holes in information, which later have a massive impact on admission chances.

It’s important to realize that essays are not the only part of your applications that matter, and that they often operate in dialogue with your activities. To make the most of your activity descriptions, and by association your essays, keep the following tips in mind:

Activities Communicate Your Interests

Students frequently do activities that reflect their passions and goals. This can be particularly informative when it comes to explaining why you wish to pursue a certain major in college. Colleges can easily ascertain how serious you are about your indicated academic interests just by looking at how involved you were in them outside of school.

Take Michael, for instance. He served as Head Delegate of his school’s Model UN Club, created and ran a Model UN Club for a local middle school, and served as Student Ambassador for the US State Department’s American Youth Leadership Program in Nepal. When he indicated that he wished to major in International Relations, schools not only believed him, but they found him to be an attractive candidate.

This is why I encourage you to pursue activities related to your academic interests outside of class. Not only does it make it easier to convince colleges that you will contribute to a particular program, it helps tremendously when writing “Why This School?” essays, in which you reflect on your intellectual and academic goals.

Essays Fill in Activity Holes

Now take Beth as a counter-example to Michael. She has been a very successful performer in numerous theater groups and has been a vocal women’s rights activist. She has not done a single activity related to chemistry, but she wants to major in it in college. In such instances, it is going to be hard for colleges to believe that she is serious about her academic goals unless she writes a compelling essay about something chemistry-related, like setting up a chemistry lab in her backyard to observe reactions in her free time. We wouldn’t have known that this essay topic was necessary, however, unless we had spent time fleshing out the details of all her activities.

If you look at your past experiences and find that they don’t align with your future goals, this is a good clue that at least one (if not more) of your essays will need to fill in the blanks. Doing this will help you become more competitive at the colleges of your choice.

Activities Communicate Your Accomplishments

On several occasions, when I’ve told students that it’s time to rank their activities from 1-10 and cut down their descriptions to 150 characters or less, so that we can fit them into the Common App, they look at me like a deer in the headlights and stutter, “What do you mean I can’t include everything?” I get it. You dedicated your time to twenty activities and they all mean something to you! What the Common App, and really all other applications, are trying to get you to do, though, is focus on what’s actually important.

No one, including Hollywood’s wunderkind, James Franco, has twenty activities that are super-important to them in which they have achieved at the highest levels. We all, however, have certain talents that we would like to share and that’s how you should use your Activities section.

One of the ways in which you can express this is by including multiple groups in which you did more or less the same activity. A common example of this is when you play a sport, like lacrosse, but you do so on multiple teams and go to summer camps focused on that sport. If you dedicate five different “activities” in your Common App to the different ways in which you played lacrosse over the last four years, colleges will understand that that sport is very important to you (and that you’re also likely good at it).   

Additionally, if you fill in an activity description with your top awards or other forms of recognition, their impact, or their meaning to you, that’s all you actually need. Colleges just want to see the best of what you have to offer. For example, if you write, “I made the U.S. Junior Olympic Ski Team and won second place in the Down Hill Competition,” that impresses me very quickly! I don’t need to know much more. Only in instances when an activity evolves from a personal project and undergoes multiple phases of development should you consider using your Additional Information section to elaborate.

Similarly, by the time we get to your tenth activity, you will undoubtedly have minor or no accomplishments to report. The lower activities in any application are universally less impressive, frequently functioning as just filler, or in a best-case scenario, fodder for supplemental essays. Don’t feel bad if you leave 10 other activities out. They really won’t add anything.

Final Words

Allowing your activities to speak to their fullest and intersect with the other parts of your applications will get you your best results. Many uninformed applicants will try to use their essays to brag about their accomplishments, when really it’s the job of their Activities section to showcase those talents. So, to make the most of your applications, treat your activities with the attention and respect that they deserve. After all, they are your opportunity to impress. Your essays will be there later on to persuade.