In the description section of the Common App, how should I note the year of certain positions/achievements in the least characters possible? What I have now is something like “President–12th grade. Member–10-11th grade.” This is taking up too much space but I don’t want to abbreviate too much either. How do most people write it? Is something like “President (12), Member (10-11)” okay? This gets confusing though for something like “8th place individual in state (9)” because there are so many numbers jumbled together.
Definitely do not have to include the word “grade”. The 2nd way you show it is fine. Being consistent with grade level notation, where you feel it is needed, is good. Remember, AdComms read A LOT of these. They understand the notations and abbreviations used (they’ve pretty much seen it all).
I might even suggest “Pres.(12)” if it means you have room to say something about WHAT you accomplished - “organized school-wide assembly; recruited 20 members”. AOs know what ‘Pres’ means. And really you don’t need to say “Member (10-11)” - you are already saying you belong to this group grades 10-12, right? - it’s redundant. You can just say Pres(12) and then use the space to tell about your participation/accomplishments.