The Activities section of the Common App is deceivingly straightforward. It asks you to report 10 activities (arts, athletics, clubs, employment, personal commitments, and other pursuits) that are of importance to you. Of course you’re going to report everything that you’ve been up to for the last 3 and change years. This is not optional. Students and parents alike struggle with the activities supplement because you have to condense your activities into a few short sentences and rank them in terms of importance. Fear not. We’re here to help.

First, be sure that you are accurate with your hours and weeks spent per year. In general, it doesn’t really matter if you want to continue participating in a similar activity in college—that won’t necessarily affect your application—but it’s always good to show that you’re actually interested in the activities you do instead of participating in them “for college.” So, check Yes for at least a few. Appear engaged.

As for which activities to put first, there are three rules:

List in order of importance (hours spent)
List in reverse chronological order (most recent first)
List in a uniform format

We have all of our students put together an expanded resume listing all of their accomplishments, honors, extracurricular activities, and projects. Putting it together in resume format forces you to format everything uniformly and have the dates easy to reference. You can quite literally copy and paste a lot of it into your activities section and adjust based on word/character count. Your expanded resume can be over one page because it’s a master document. You can also use your expanded resume to create other, more specific, resumes going forward which is quite useful if you continue adding to it in a timely fashion.

The one caveat to rule #1 has to do with sports. If you’re not being recruited for a sport, it should not be the first activity you list even if it is technically the activity that you spent the most time on. Because you’re not being recruited for it, it’s really not your focus. It can absolutely be your 4th or 5th activity on your activities list, but it should not be 1-3. We know it’s harsh because you spent 4 years mastering your layup so that you could finally start senior year but… it’s just not what the colleges care about. You’re more than your layup.

The activities section seems to really trip students up every year. But there is no reason for any confusion. If you follow our steps, you’ll be totally fine.

Need someone to help? Reach out to us here.