Plans made in high school often change, and that is okay. Greet and direct visitors at information desk and coat check. But, bringing people together, is easier said than done. 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. Roughly estimate the number of weeks you devoted to an activity. However, you should only do so if these activities are truly essential to the admissions committees understanding of your extracurricular life. Say you are applying to gain admission to an undergraduate business program. The high costs of attending college doesn't start your first day of school. School spirit is key to creating a positive school culture. The prompt states: Community disruptions such as COVID-19 and natural disasters can have deep and long-lasting impacts. His work has been published in Our State Magazine, Ladygunn Magazine, The Nocturnal Times, and The Lexington Dispatch. 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. Quality is always more important than quantity when it comes to the activities you choose to add to your Activities List. At Command Education, we often emphasize the importance of establishing your hook otherwise known as a passion and skill set that sets you apart. The Common Application, or Common App, is a college application portal that is accepted by more than 900 schools.. To recap, lets go over the basic dos and donts for the Common App honors section: This easy scholarship is open to all US-based high school, college, and graduate students! The Common Application, which is accepted by more than 1,000 schools, including some colleges located outside the U.S., helps streamline an essential part of the admissions process for. These lack the distinction of Tier 1 and 2, but still highlight students interests. 10, 11, 12School8 hr/wk, 25 wk/yrContinue. Studied intersections of art and environmental activism. 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. 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. Roughly estimate the number of hours you devoted to an activity. College Application ProcessTesting GuidesAthletic Resources Creative ResourcesSchool-Specific Guides, About UsTeamTestimonialsCareersFAQGiving BackContact Us, NEW YORK CITY750 Lexington AvenueNew York, NY 10022, SOUTH FLORIDA1 Alhambra PlazaFloor PHCoral Gables, FL 33134. 9, 10, 11, 12Year1 hr/wk, 52 wk/yrContinue. 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. Pick people who know you best, understand your background and interests, and can provide perspective on you as a student and a person. Once you have an initial list of schools to research, you can begin researching each school on your list in more depth, with the aim of both narrowing down your initial list and potentially discovering additional factors that can help you identify more schools for your list. Explore more than 1,000 colleges on Common App. The Falcon, Average High Schools Student Newspaper. School Spirit. because they provide a large amount of information in a few words. For example, if you were Student Council Vice President freshman year and a class representative the other three years, list these out as: Vice President (1 yr), Class Representative (3 yrs). Youll have a chance to include five formal awards you received in the honors section of the Common App, but the activity descriptions are the perfect place to include achievements for which you did not receive awards. For example, if the school youre applying to is a liberal arts college, you can highlight how the community or small faculty to student ratio appeals to you. If you have more than 5 awards, try to think of ways to combine them. With the hours, make sure you are being reasonable, even if it might be difficult to put down the exact hours if there is not a consistent number. School spirit looks like teamwork. 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. The good news is 42% of member schools don't require an application fee, according to U.S. News & World Report. As daunting as all of the sections of the Common App might seem, if done right, it can help ease the process. Common App will not support questions that are prohibited by federal or state law (e.g., marital status, disability) unless the member can provide a legal exemption to do so. The Honors section allows you to show a snapshot of how you excelled on a local, national, or international level. About 950 colleges and universities around the world accept the Common App. Award winner for writing, art, photography, music, etc. They include national awards or other prestigious achievements. Theres a common misconception that only the most prestigious, well-known awards are worthy of listing on your application. Terms and Conditions. They can also include supplemental essays, usually asking why you want to attend their school. Designed rooftop herb garden installation for restaurant. If you hold a leadership position, emphasize that role in your description. The larger and more diverse, the more prestigious the award; international recognition is the most prestigious type of recognition. Through this highly descriptive and well-crafted Activities List, admissions officers can glean this prospective students important priorities and some of her salient characteristics. 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. Command Group Inc. and this website make no representation, promise, or guarantee that any particular result or outcome can or will be obtained. The religious preferences drop-down menu includes many different practices along with none. Listing your religion will not hurt your chances of getting into college. Note that even if a school does not require Courses & Grades on the Common App, all of your high school transcripts go to each school. Therefore, do not write anything thats specific to any one of the schools. Show them how youve grown stronger or how your topic has changed your perspective. You can list up to five honors, and for each one youll be asked to provide a brief description (100 characters or less). If you spend a lot of time with your family, perhaps you take care of an ailing member, that absolutely counts as well and shows a great deal of responsibility. The Common Application allows students to list 10 activities and 5 honors and awards separately, while the UC application allows students 20 spaces in total for both activities and awards. Since 2008, he has worked at Colby College, Wesleyan University, University of Maine at Farmington, and Bates College. Lots of applicants win debate competitions. For example, if you played tennis all four years of high school and became captain of your school team senior year, that is an activity to include in this section. In addition to a top-tier, rigorous education you can also enjoy your time at college. Since the list is fairly broad, you will probably find that your activity fits into at least one of the sections available. Cookie Notice Here are two examples of what an activity can look like once you have filled out each of the 9 fields! Privacy Policy. They include general club/sports/musical membership and general volunteering. Follow the same guidelines as suggested for the activities list for awards you received during the summer, selecting the year that preceded the summer! The honors section of the Common App is reserved for you to list your academic honors and awards. For example, if you were Student Council Vice President freshman year and a class representative the other three years, list these out as: Vice President (1 yr), Class Representative (3 yrs). Run weekly meetings, brainstorm topics, assign and revise 10 articles/week, collaborate with printers to distribute 500 copies to students and faculty. As a result, this section only becomes available if you select one of the schools on the list. This is the place to indicate whether any community-based organizations such as Questbridge or Upward Bound have helped you with your application. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design. Instead of superscoring across test dates, some schools will just look at your highest score from a single sitting. Additionally, college admissions officers will view your extracurricular involvement as a good indicator of how well you might function as a member of your future college community, and afterwards, how you might perform in the real world, since commitment to your activities will allow you to demonstrate time management skills, drive and commitment, and a genuine interest in the world around you. A hook is typically thought of as a well-developed record of distinctive achievements, activities, and service in one or two specific areas of interest. What prompted your thinking? Commonly listed activities include participating in school clubs, playing an instrument, playing a sport, attending pre-college summer programs, volunteering, and many others. As you can tell, it is pretty straightforward and gives you a bigger picture of where youre from and where you grew up. Keep in mind that this was. can be daunting. The Common App activities list is the very best place to express your persona with some direct assertiveness. , and can show colleges how you were involved specifically. 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. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. (99 characters), Winner, R.J. Simmons Award for Community Service, performed 100+ hours of service work, Grade: 10. How can the Activities List be used to demonstrate a hook? The club should just serve to complement the hook you have been working to develop throughout your high school career. But school spirit can also be generated in other ways, and we have seen that on several campuses. #17 Best Colleges that Accept the Common App in America.University of Notre Dame. All of your . You will also want to jot down the years youve been involved in the activity in terms of grade levels. To help guide you through them, here is a step-by-step look at each of the sections and the best ways to tackle them. So by answering yes to this question, you are merely indicating that you are interested in continuing the activity. They use the 4 Tiers of Extracurriculars: Tier 1: These are rare activities that show exceptional achievement or leadership. 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? This enables you to have a certain degree of agency as to which scores colleges see. Colleges wont see the brevity of your involvement as a negative factor; they understand that some activities simply have an imposed beginning and ending that are not within your control. Publication in research papers, journals, newspapers, Any state, national or international award that you have won in high school. We know that it can be tough to describe your accomplishments in such a tiny amount of space, so well provide some advice for that later on. Yes, universities and colleges do care about honors when they review applications! asks you how many times you took the standardized test of your choice. They want to know that you have researched the school and that you are genuinely interested. Available on iOS, Android, and Web. It will not make or break your application. 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. However, If you experienced bigger problems as a result of the pandemic, provide context for your circumstances, whether its unemployment or lack of learning resources at home. the reader your personality and emotions instead of telling. The Common App uses a drop-down menu to help students divide their activities into preset categories. . ways to show school spirit. Instead of filling out the same general informationlike your address, GPA, and extracurriculars a dozen times, you only have to do it once. Within the Common App is your main essay, a primary writing sample that all your prospective schools will read to evaluate your critical thinking skills and value as a student. This is especially true of lesser-known regional awards. Tier 3: These lack the distinction of Tier 1 and 2, but still highlight students interests. The Profile section helps the admission officers get an overview of your background. 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. Since there are many applicants with similar academic backgrounds, colleges use extracurriculars to help them differentiate and choose between applicants. 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. Remember that this section is not there for you to prove your eloquence as a writer; you have the essay to do that. These questions can help you narrow down which activities to include, since you should only be adding the ones to which you are truly dedicated. 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. LGBT Be ready for the world. speaks for itself. . For activities that are less structured, estimate the average time you devote per week. This means that art awards, publications, and athletic awards are all fair game. You can always come back to this guide for tips and tricks, as well as visit any of the blogs linked on this blog to get more detailed information on how to approach each section. Each admissions officer is assigned a particular geographical region, either according to each US state, or according to country. 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). The best entries succinctly recap the meaning of the prize and why you were awarded it. as early as possible. and our Also read:How to write an essay about yourself. Goalkeeper, Varsity Field Hockey (school team). Our chancing engine factors in extracurricular activities, demographic, and other holistic details. Think about all of these logistics carefully, and you will set yourself up for success as you fill out the Common Application. Colleges want to know this kind of information so that they can understand the factors affecting your performance and opportunities this past semester. The Common App classifies awards by the following categories: Remember that while you should strive to complete all five entries, its not absolutely necessary. Well let you know if your profile is competitive for your dream schools and give you tips on improving your profile! Be sure to include weeks for preseason or tryouts and auditions in your final number! The question thus sets a context for your entire application process. Choose the ten activities you plan to include: Determine the order in which you plan to list your activities: Fill Out the Common Application Activities List Fields: Position/Leadership Description (Max characters: 50), Activity Description (Max characters: 150). How can you take advantage of the prompt to provide your reader with a sense of your personal growth? For example, you might spend 20 weeks during the school year attending your robotics club. When it comes to filling out this section, the last thing you want to be is humble! For any activities that fall outside the predefined categories, which are listed below, just select Other Club/Activity. They include minor leadership positions for well-known clubs and organizations and smaller athletic/musical distinctions. The prompts for the personal statement are as follows: When brainstorming your Common Application personal statement, remember your Application Persona. Since this essay is read by many colleges, avoid mentioning any . Our complete and essential guide to the College Application covers each step from junior spring through senior fall to help you optimize your time and earn admission to your dream school! 9, 10, 11, 12School16 hr/wk, 18 wk/yrContinue. This section is limited to 50 characters. If you visited campus, write about what you enjoyed. This is not easy! This usually includes holiday breaks, study and finals weeks, and sometimes, the first few weeks of the semester when clubs do not yet meet. The application asks this because colleges want to know what kind of student you will be when you arrive. This is not to say that you cant join a new club as a junior or senior, you definitely can! Having two to three meaningful extracurricular involvements is always better than ten activities that have no meaning to you at all. Junior R.O.T.C., for example, refers to Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, a Federal Program sponsored by the U.S. Armed Forces. As an applicant, there are some important choices you have to make here. Abbreviating first and the title of the Engineering Fair helped reduce characters. Applications typically open on August 1 and close on January 1. The Common Application is a single online college application form used by over 900 colleges and universities. You could be going up against people from your school and from your area. 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. 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. Accordingly, you should only list that activity if you actually participate in that specific organization. 9, 10, 11, 12Year4 hr/wk, 45 wk/yrContinue. In 2020, the Common Application introduced a question for students to outline any changes in circumstances due to COVID-19. You will need: Start collecting the documents and asking for recommendations ahead of time. Below, youll find more examples about how to make the most of each field to highlight your potential! Your activities list is the key place you can demonstrate your hook to admissions officers. Its understandable that you spend more time on some activities than others. Coalition vs Common App: Whats the difference. In the Colleges and Universities section of the. Also read:How to complete the Common App Activities Section. The important step is to make sure you do not select Undecided. Think about what you are passionate about, what courses you are excited to study, what activities you enjoy. Your achievements should be tangible or quantifiable. Well let you know what your chances are at your dream schools and how to improve your chances!
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