Not everyone has a favorite part of the Common App, but—college process expert that I am—I do! The Activities section has a special place in my heart. Maybe that’s because a thoughtfully assembled Activities section shows the reader a pretty representative snapshot of who the applicant is. Not necessarily their heart and soul (THAT is where the Common App essay comes in), but the kind of person they are: what space they would occupy on campus, which other students they would spend time with, and how they would spend their free time. That’s actually quite a bit of intel! And it's intel that colleges really do pay attention to as they select each new freshman class.
The Activities List actually reminds me of the old Facebook, or even MySpace or Friendster (before your time!). On all those (now outdated) sites, teens like you would write a profile and list their favorite movies and music and books and quotes. It was a form of self-expression that gets at a core truth: no matter how open-minded we think we are, it’s hard not to instantly size people up based on how they consume culture. (“She listens to Lady Gaga?! Pass!”) Well, college admissions officers aren’t technically “judging” your Activities List…but they do mentally put you into certain bucket(s) as they read yours.
Think about it this way: each college needs to fulfill specific needs on its campus. Marching band, soccer, ceramics, political clubs...they need to make sure they have genuinely committed students filling out all of those activities. They NEED to know if you’re going to audition for a cappella or run for student government. Otherwise, they might end up with too many Altos, and not enough people who love balancing budgets!
In essence, your Activities List should do two things: it should give the college admissions reader a sense of what spaces and roles you'll occupy once you get to campus, and it should show that you'll be an asset in those spaces and roles.
Article Contents: The 6 Steps to a Great Activities List
So with that in mind, here's my six-step method for creating a winning Activities List.
1) Brainstorm
Grab a pen and paper (or laptop) and make a list of every activity you’ve been involved in since high school began! Every club. Every job or internship (babysitting counts!). Every volunteering stint. Church or synagogue groups. Any extra classes or lessons you’ve taken in the past 4 years outside of school. EVERYTHING.
Please don’t feel limited by formal clubs and groups. If you have a hobby or interest that takes a ton of your time, that’s legit! Do you spend most of your hours making digital fan art in Adobe Illustrator, just for fun? Or organizing Dungeons and Dragons games with your friends? Do you compose songs on the piano? Those are going on your Activities List!
2) Refine
Now, next to each activity, write down which grades you did them during (9th through 12th). Write down a ballpark estimate of how many hours you spend on it weekly, as well as how many weeks you likely spend on it a year. Write down any titles or awards associated with it. Yes, you get to write your Awards in a separate section, but this step will help you determine which activities are the strongest, and therefore the most deserving of the limited space on your list.
3) Group your activities
If you are like the vast majority of the students I work with, some common threads will begin to emerge from your list. Put all the volunteering together. Group all the sports. Connect all the studio arts stuff. The pre-med/STEM stuff. Debate/student government/political stuff. Baby-sitting/camp counselor/tutoring middle-schoolers/caring for kids. You get the idea.
4) Prioritize Your Groups
Now it’s time to make the (sometimes tough) calls about what order to present your list in. Which grouping gets bumped to the top? This is an art more than it is a science, so you may have to shuffle your list around a few times before it feels right. You can try writing it out with pencil a few different ways, or putting each activity on a notecard/Post-It and shuffling the order around. However, there are some things to keep in mind:
You probably want to put the group with the most activities in it first.
If one of your groups is related to the area of study that you indicated you'll be pursuing, that gives it higher priority.
Discontinued activities get lower priority on your list. For example, if you have just as many activities in your “Fine Arts” category as you do in your “Sports” category, but you recently quit sports and now only do fine arts, the latter takes precedence.
5) Prioritize Within Your Groups
Now that you know which group of activities comes first, second, third, etc., you need to put the individual activities in order. Here are a few pointers:
Activities that are more recent should go before activities that you no longer do.
Activities that take more time (hours per week and weeks per year) and have more accomplishments associated with them should come before ones that aren’t as big of a time commitment and don’t have any awards or titles attached.
If an activity can act as a bridge between two others, highlight that by putting it between them.
6) Rejigger your wording!
You’re short on space (just 150 characters!) to describe everything you've done. That means you need to give a very pared-down summary. Here are my favorite ways to get the most information packed into those tiny slots:
Squeeze as much info as you can into the title. Instead of “Basketball,” see if you can fit in “Varsity Basketball; Captain (12th), MVP (10th-11th)." Instead of “Singing” or “Choir,” write “Ragazzi Choir, Tenor Section Leader.”
In terms of the main description of each activity, complete sentences are usually not the way to go! Instead, try to incorporate a diverse group of action verbs.
Let’s see if we can trim these sentences down to size: “I tutor underserved middle-schoolers at the Thompson Community Center every Tuesday night in math and science. Last year, I was selected as tutor of the month.” Rewrite this as: “Tutor middle schoolers in STEM weekly at community center; selected as Tutor of the Month in 2022.”
And there you have it, folks: An Activities List that gives a holistic, exciting portrait of who you are to an admissions officer.
These six steps will help you cram the max amount of information into your Activities List while also providing a clear (and favorable) cross-section of who you are. You may need to reorder and adjust your Activities List a bit after you follow this process I’ve outlined, but with a little more thought, you’ll be able to communicate at a glance what your passions and interests are to any college admissions counselor. Best of luck to you! And if you need any more help with your Activities List, or even your college app essay, you know where to find me.
