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It was started by 15 colleges who decided to "pool" their applications into one easily navigated application site. Selective colleges use grades and test scores to filter out applicants, but once you get past that initial stage, extracurriculars make up about 30% of your admissions decision. Show them how youve grown stronger or how your topic has changed your perspective. Admissions officers can count and will notice if your participation hours exceed the number of hours in a week! Being on a pep squad, being the organizer of rallies/spirit weeks, being homecoming committee chair, etc. Remember that this section is not there for you to prove your eloquence as a writer; you have the essay to do that. From there, you can calculate how many weeks you participated in a sport or school-affiliated extracurricular activity. You only get 150 characters to sum up each activity, so make sure you are optimizing the space by summarizing your role and impact in each activity. Most importantly, it makes your students feel like they are part of a community that is bigger than themselves. Avoid redundancy. This ensures that all of our content is up-to-date, useful, accurate, and thorough. best to take full advantage of this section. For each activity, the form will ask you in which grade levels you participated in the extracurricular activity, the timing of your participation (school year vs. school break), and how many hours you spent on it per week and weeks per year. because they provide a large amount of information in a few words. Your teachers, guidance counselors, and other recommenders can submit their letters of recommendation directly on the Common Appyou will invite them to contribute through the application platform. It is helpful to be aware that consistency across every part of the application, from coursework and letters of recommendation to the Activities List, intended majors, and essays, is necessary for building a cohesive narrative. This is not easy! The college application is a big deal. The honors section is an excellent way for, Membership in your schools chapter of National Honor Society, Outstanding achievement in a particular subject, Write each number instead of spelling it out, Abbreviate (but only for well-known organizations), In eleventh grade, I won first place in the North Carolina Youth and Government competition for writing and defending a bill on raising the minimum wage. Besides knowing you as a student and person, your recommender should also be familiar with the components of your application and your Application Persona. I noticed the "school spirit" category, and I feel like this is a stupid question, but what activity could someone put in that falls in that category other than being a mascot or something. As the application evolved over time from a paper application to online, the core of Common App's principles has never changed - promoting access, equity, and integrity, in the college admissions process for all students. There are countless ways in which you can answer how and why a college appeals to you. You might not have been expecting to talk about your religious preferences or feel comfortable doing so. The restrictions mean you will need to be selective in reporting your activities, limiting you to the most important ones or those that are most meaningful to you. Publication in research papers, journals, newspapers, Any state, national or international award that you have won in high school. Privacy Policy. In this Common App essay, they discuss their immigrant family background that motivates them. The activities list is an excellent opportunity to brag about your accomplishments, as well as the talents and skills that you have developed outside of the classroom along the way. Write in present tense only if you are still involved, and past tense if your involvement in the activity has come to an end. A volunteering club at Average High School simply called Hilltop is better referred to as Average High School Hilltop Volunteers or Hilltop Volunteering Club of Average High School. If youre including an independent activity such as painting for local arts competitions, your title and position could read: Artist, Self-Directed Oil Painting. Students, teachers, and community members download the Spirit app and are instantly connected to your extra-curricular world. </p>. Contact information for your recommenders and guidance counselor, Your schools College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB) code, Remember, each section is very important, not only individually, but how they work together to paint a more holistic picture of you as an applicant. If you visited campus, write about what you enjoyed. Your achievements should be tangible or quantifiable. The prompt states: Do you wish to share anything on this topic? As an applicant, there are some important choices you have to make here. Begin by selecting the category the activity falls under. Apply to our $10,000 No Essay Scholarship! in addition to your application. Or, if your parents might have faced difficulties with their jobs, use this section to expand on that. Sometimes students make the mistake of listing accomplishments without actually describing what they are. If not, select Other Club/Activity and identify it in the Position/Leadership description and organization name section. Community-based organizations do not include guidance counselors or private counselors (such as InGenius Prep) who might have helped look over your materials. Colleges may give your name to members of a club, organization, or activity in which you participate so they can follow up with you, but you are by no means bound to joining when you begin college (unless, of course, you are accepted on an athletic or other scholarship that requires your participation in a certain activity). The honors section is an excellent way for college admissions officers to gain an understanding of your strengths. Adding numerical values offers concrete proof of your success. Good luck! Narrate your story by showing the reader your personality and emotions instead of telling. You could relate your experience as a tour guide and representative at your high school to marketing, or your experience working as a sales associate at a clothing store to client relationship skills! As daunting as all of the sections of the Common App might seem, if done right, it can help ease the process. Select the grade level in which you won the award. To start, you have to go to the Common Application website, and first create an account. Collected data on health and resilience of trees in NYC saltwater marshes after flooding events. Idk about other high schools but a high school in . Timing of participation: all year, summer, school break, etc. If you participated during the school year and during school breaks, check off both During school year and During school break. If you participated in the activity during the school year, during the school breaks, and during the summer, check off All year.. Some activities have a natural end and simply arent adaptable to a college environment, such as a club particular to your high school. Tags :applying to college,common application,Personal Statement,common app guide,how to fill the common app. It will not make or break your application. Think about. A Users Guide to the Common App for Transfer Students, 10 Maine Scholarships to Save You Thousands on College, How to Master the Honors Section of the Common App, Back to School: College Prep Tips Youll Need Starting This Year, How to Respond to the Looking Forward to Stanford Prompt. This student was admitted to Dartmouth College. Here's a guide for the perfect activities section. However, you should only do so if these activities are truly essential to the admissions committees, understanding of your extracurricular life. Coalition vs Common App: Whats the difference. The options available are: The activities list gives admissions officers a concrete idea of how you spend your time. It might be easier to estimate the number of hours you devote to scheduled activities like sports than activities you complete at your own leisure. The Common Application, or Common App, is a college application portal that is accepted by more than 900 schools.. Here are your choices: Academic Art Courses & Grades - This section is self-explanatory. <p>One of the things we were told to look for during . They can also include supplemental essays, usually asking why you want to attend their school. If you need to add more activities, use the additional information section or your essays. . Pick people who know you best, understand your background and interests, and can provide perspective on you as a student and a person. If you claim to spend ten hours per week on all ten activities, colleges will know youre exaggerating, to say the least. Be as specific as possible here. Since there are many applicants with similar academic backgrounds, colleges use extracurriculars to help them differentiate and choose between applicants. How can you take advantage of the prompt to provide your reader with a sense of your personal growth? Your child can add up to 10 school activities on the Common App. Through the following questions, admissions officers get a substantial idea of who you are and where you are from. They include general club/sports/musical membership and general volunteering. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. Talk about alums who have inspired you, about extracurricular opportunities that resonate with you, and how the location might be of importance. There is no specific answer that colleges are looking forit will just help them understand your background better. Activities that you can include on this list are: sports, community service, employment, religious activities (such as teaching Sunday school), internships (paid or unpaid), arts, hobbies (for example, biking or stacking competitions), school clubs, academic competitions, and basically anything else that you spend time doing outside of school. For example, if you are the secretary in student government and participated in a leadership program over the summer, select Student Government/Politics for the secretary position, and Career-Oriented for the leadership program. It could be used to provide context on whether there is a particular trend in your GPA, or whether any unforeseen circumstances, such as illness or a death in the family, impacted your school performance. Your entire college application process rides on how you fill the Common App out! Therefore, do not write anything thats specific to any one of the schools. If you are a leader in the activity, mention how many members the group has, how many people you serve (if applicable), how many people your work affected, and so on. Be as specific as you can be in the space available. A lot of schools that accept score choice recommend that you send all scores. personal statement, remember your Application Persona. Colleges use class size and class rank to compare your academic standing with your peers. This article provides you with step by step instructions, as well as dos and donts for each section, that will help you break down the activities section of the Common App. As daunting as all of the sections of the Common App might seem, if done right, it can help ease the process. There are so many sections to go through, and it seems overwhelming at times. Talk to your guidance counselor if you have any questions about whether or not you qualify. If youre wondering where your extracurriculars fall within the tier system, check out our. However, if you choose to do so, it helps colleges get a better idea of the race distribution in a class year, what ethnic or religious group might be underrepresented, and can be used for affirmative action purposes. These are little more common than Tier 1, but these activities still showcase high levels of achievement and leadership. Individually nominated for AVCA All-American Awards and won Average HSs Spirit Award. For example, you may spend 14 hours of your week attending tennis practice and taking tennis lessons, and two hours hosting a tennis clinic for elementary school students through the organization you founded. Instead of dabbling in a little bit of everything, we encourage our students to delve deep into activities they are particularly passionate about. Your teacher or counselor cannot write a stellar recommendation on the spot if you only give them a days notice. You can find a complete list of our partners here. Not only does doing so allow you to include more extracurricular activities, but also provides more space for you to expand on the descriptions of your activities since you are not limited to a certain number of characters. Not all of the members of the Common App require your courses and grades. You do not want to list a C instead of an A! Talk to them openly about your interests in the major of your choice, about the activities you want to pursue in college, and the extracurriculars from high school that you have tried to highlight in your application. These lack the distinction of Tier 1 and 2, but still highlight students interests. The writing section requires the following: The personal essay plays a crucial part in showing colleges who you are, and it has a strict word limit of 650 words. If the activity is typically referred to by an acronym, be sure to list the full name, as you never want to assume that admissions committees will be familiar with the activity to which you are referring. Many students will have experienced disrupted testing dates and summer programs or other plansand thats okay to unpack those obstacles here if they were significant and unique issues. To delete an activity, move it to the bottom of the list and click on the delete icon. The average school year is 36 weeks, give or take a few weeks depending on your schools break schedule. Within 250 words, you have the opportunity to inform colleges whether the Coronavirus outbreak and social distancing protocols affected your health, family life, and learning abilities. This section is also for admissions officers to find out if your parents went to college, what your parents do, and their current position. For instance, if you are the president of the tutoring club at your school, you dont need to list tutoring in the description, since colleges are likely to consider that a given; instead, emphasize your duties as president, how you manage and distribute tasks and how you work with club members. In this case, unless the position and organization names are fairly self-explanatory or very recognizable, you will need to be a bit more specific in your description. Below, youll find an Example Common Application Activities List! Colleges care about the effects on your health and well-being, safety, family circumstances, future plans, and education, including access to reliable technology and quiet study spaces. . Unless the activity was high school-specific or if there is a good reason you wouldnt participate in it later on, we recommend that you mark yes.. If you have more than 5 awards, try to think of ways to combine them. Do not rush through these details. You dont need to use complete sentences. Through the following questions, admissions officers get a substantial idea of who you are and where you are from. How to complete the Common App Activities Section. Within 250 words, you have the opportunity to inform colleges whether the Coronavirus outbreak and social distancing protocols affected your health, family life, and learning abilities. These are examples of strong activity descriptions because they provide a large amount of information in a few words. A very important factor to remember is that these upcoming sections apply for all of the schools on the Common Application! Plans made in high school often change, and that is okay. Please use this space to describe how these events have impacted you. This usually includes holiday breaks, study and finals weeks, and sometimes, the first few weeks of the semester when clubs do not yet meet. If it seems like you are choosing one category for everything, try to diversify a bit and think about how activities can be related without being exactly the same thing. It can seem like the Activities section of the Common App gives rise to the most questions, and for good reason. Your siblings attending the same college also counts as legacy. Award winner for writing, art, photography, music, etc. They include top leadership positions for well-known clubs and organizations, winning regional competitions, or state-level sports/music distinctions. Because this student also has an entrepreneurial streak, she could optionally indicate a secondary interest in business if a school offers dual degrees, majors, or minors in business administration for undergraduates. The term academic can be interpreted pretty loosely: arts awards, publications, and even character/sportsmanship awards for athletics are fair game. Work shifts at gift shop and assist customers with check out and locating merchandise. Each admissions officer is assigned a particular geographical region, either according to each US state, or according to country. But, bringing people together, is easier said than done. How can you take advantage of the prompt to provide your reader with a sense of your personal growth? Just make sure to practice good judgement when it comes to the Additional Information section. You also have to order your scores to be sent from the Collegeboard or the ACT websites to each individual school. Today, the Common App has grown to extremely large proportions. Below, youll find more examples about how to make the most of each field to highlight your potential! How Spirit can keep your community connected during the COVID-19 pandemic . Honors and awards students commonly list include: Deans List, Language Honors Society, National Merit, Congressional Award, Valedictorian, etc. Colleges want to know this kind of information so that they can understand the factors affecting your performance and opportunities this past semester. Having two to three meaningful extracurricular involvements is always better than ten activities that have no meaning to you at all. Create art (paintings, portrait photography, nature photography) and exhibit on personal Instagram. Spirit boosts school spirit, event attendance, and makes communication easy. As a result, this section only becomes available if you select one of the schools on the list. Currently, due to COVID-19, standardized tests have become optional in many schools. It is very important that your description should make clear what your specific impact or contribution is or was, as opposed to what the organizations members did as a group. The high costs of attending college doesn't start your first day of school. While this portion might seem very straight-forward, these fundamentals matter. An exciting sports season is something every student can embrace, even if they are not football fans, or basketball fans, etc. You could also be really interested in a subject and use the opportunity to learn more about the subject. Create public art installations including murals and sculptures in community gardens. The prompts for the personal statement are as follows: When brainstorming your Common Application personal statement, remember your Application Persona. Applications typically open on August 1 and close on January 1. You want to stand out, you want to tell your story, and share some of your biggest passions and important parts of your life. School Spirit. Keep in mind that this was a global crisis. But school spirit can also be generated in other ways, and we have seen that on several campuses. Some colleges have a superscore policy, which allows you to pick each of your top sub scores and combine into one superscore if you have taken a standardized test multiple times. Instead, they could say something like: entertained children in the waiting room by sharing riddles and performing mathemagics; fully digitized the patient filing system. If you graduated from high school and continued to participate in that activity, mark post-graduate.. Today, students can use the Common App to apply to over 1,000 colleges and universities. As the application evolved over time from a paper application to online, the core of Common Apps principles has never changed promoting access, equity, and integrity, in the college admissions process for all students. Intrinsic to these principles is the promotion of fair, transparent, straightforward, and consistent practices in admissions. 2023 Scholarships360, Inc. All rights reserved. They use the 4 Tiers of Extracurriculars: Tier 1: These are rare activities that show exceptional achievement or leadership. In the description itself, use strong verbs and be as specific as possible. Describe your title to the best of your ability here - this can be as simple as Volunteer or Club Member. However, try to get specific when you can! Juniors and seniors can often fall into the trap of signing up for many clubs at their schoolbut this strategy could end up backfiring by making an application seem disingenuous. Convinced school admin to implement meatless Mondays. They want to know that you have researched the school and that you are genuinely interested. Make sure to be clear in writing. If you hold a leadership position, emphasize that role in your description. Check off the grades during which you were involved with the activity. If you say you were the Editor of your school paper in your title, you wont need to repeat that in the description. If you need to add more activities, use the additional information section or your essays. Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others. The Common App dashboard also helps you track necessary application documents (like your . This could include anything from a science award to an article in an economic journal. Remember to account for spring/winter breaks as you calculate weeks you participated. Many schools allow score choice - where you are able to choose which SAT and ACT scores to report. As an applicant, there are some important choices you have to make here. As you can tell, it is pretty straightforward and gives you a bigger picture of where youre from and where you grew up. So by answering yes to this question, you are merely indicating that you are interested in continuing the activity. Create and print posters to promote events, design and order class spiritwear, manage social media. The prompt states: Community disruptions such as COVID-19 and natural disasters can have deep and long-lasting impacts. The Honors Section will prompt you to fill out 3 fields. School Specific Essays - A lot of schools have specific questions that they want to ask about your interest in their campus and course offerings specifically. For any activities that fall outside the predefined categories, which are listed below, just select Other Club/Activity. Host weekly meetings, trips. Biden quoted the teacher in saying, "There's no such thing as someone else's child.". Make it clear what your responsibilities were and highlight your key accomplishments. What prompted your thinking? If youve transferred schools, there is a section that allows you to discuss this transition. Explore more than 1,000 colleges on Common App. Total number of activities. You do not want to waste their time with something that could have been mentioned elsewhere in the Common App. Disciplinary information: disciplinary violation at any educational institution, misdemeanor, felony. What was the outcome? An example of a weaker response would be: Description: Helped patients and doctors. An outstanding Activities List should invariably help admissions officers grasp who you are, what is important to you, and how you have spent your time learning and serving others in your community during high school. If youre a candidate who has done well even through setbacks and taken advantage of this time that can show how youve persevered during tough circumstances and made the most out of the hand youve been dealt. Provide the reader with a theme or a takeaway message. This is your chance to list all the great things youve accomplished during your high school years. You will want to provide context for awards or opportunities that are selective. We connect applicants and those who support them to a wide array of public and private colleges and universities across all 50 U.S. states, and 20 countries. While many of these extracurricular activities are fairly general, such as Academic and School Spirit, a few of them refer to specific positions or organizations. This section is limited to 50 characters. Your parents or legal guardians employment information, education, etc. College admissions officers dont have the time to read large blocks of text, and its generally better to try and write less in areas where they are not asking for an essay. All of the colleges you apply to within this platform will see the same information that youve filled out in the Family section or Activities section of the Common App. Be as specific as you can be in the space available. Make sure to look at each of your colleges test requirement policies. If you absolutely need more room to thoroughly explain truly important details about the activity, use the additional information section to expand, or describe it in more detail in your essay if it relates to the topic you choose. Admissions officers go through a lot of applications. The drop-down menu under schedule allows you to select the system your school usesbetween semester, quarterly, and trimester. Be careful of any spelling errors or any courses you might have missed. In the past, applying to college was often seen as a . I intend to participate in a similar activity in college. . Team placed 1st in division and advanced to state semifinals. Be sure to list your Honors and Awards in descending order of recognition, listing your international awards first, followed by national, state/regional and school. 4 Year,NOTRE DAME, IN,1394 Niche users give it an average review of 4 stars. Then, there are colleges that do not require standardized test scores. This is especially true of lesser-known regional awards. Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. This means that art awards, publications, and athletic awards are all fair game. Thus, demonstrating a strong hook through your Activities List is very important. Even though you spend much more time running the clinics than you spent hosting the equipment drive, you place the drive further up on your activities list because it was more meaningful to you. If youre an athlete, talk about the importance of the teams spirit if it appeals to you. Admission officers want to see your academic track record, and what classes you have taken at different levels. Mention specific faculty members you might want to do research with. Number one priority your school spirit must be an attention getter. For your current school, you have to indicate whether your school is a boarding school, when you started the school, and whether you plan to graduate from your current school. Extracurricular activities encompass a broad range of activities. 9, 10, 11, 12School16 hr/wk, 18 wk/yrContinue. Higher education has never been more confusing or expensive. Also see:Coalition vs Common App: Whats the difference? Instead of superscoring across test dates, some schools will just look at your highest score from a single sitting. Dont include honors and awards just for the sake of including them. ways to show school spirit. Think about topics to avoid. As daunting as all of the sections of the, might seem, if done right, it can help ease the process. Well let you know what your chances are at your dream schools and how to improve your chances! A lot of schools have specific questions that they want to ask about your interest in their campus and course offerings specifically. How does your personality tie into your Application Persona. Be sure to include the following information: the name of the award, what the award was for (community service, for example), and if applicable, what place you received (1st, Bronze, etc). All of these efforts show admissions officers that you took an extra step to explore a topic of your interest further than obligated at your school. Why does it captivate you? School Spirit. Y/N. Ask yourself questions. Through this highly descriptive and well-crafted Activities List, admissions officers can glean this prospective students important priorities and some of her salient characteristics. For more information, please see our , but you probably dont want to choose the same category for every activity. What is the Common App activities section? Zach graduated from Elon University with a degree in Cinema and Television Arts. Commonly listed activities include participating in school clubs, playing an instrument, playing a sport, attending pre-college summer programs, volunteering, and many others.

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