<p>Two part question from a mother of a HS class of 2017.</p>
<p>1) Does the summer before 9th grade "count" for EC's? Do S need to keep track of EC's now, or can he wait until the fall?</p>
<p>2) How closely do you track EC's? If your kid does something off and on, does he just guesstimate how many hours, or does he/she keep a calendar or a spreadsheet of some kind?</p>
<p>I’d say write it all down and you can cull later.</p>
<p>My kids didn’t keep track, other than the volunteer hours, but I think a spreadsheet is a great idea. It would help your S learn to organize information and keep track of things. Maybe visit the spreadsheet to make updates on the last day of every month or something so it isn’t too onerous.</p>
<p>My friend who used a private college counselor told me that the counselor told her junior year son to create a resume and look at it once a week for updating. That seems extreme, but certainly might work on a once-a-month timeframe…if you’re doing it weekly, I would use an attached spreadsheet to log volunteer hours as Sylvan suggests.</p>
<p>D just estimated it at the end.
But we have kept a spreadsheet that lists every EC that she has done, and it’s grouped by category (Plays: then plays by name, sports: then which sports. Work: which jobs, etc). Also listed on it are awards won. And we put the awards in a box. Usually got updated once per year. Then when it’s time to fill out the Common App, reduced it to 10 that would tell a story. Then she estimated the times.</p>
<p>Yes, summer before 9th grade is considered 9th grade.</p>
<p>We just estimated at the end, too. No spreadsheets. I think colleges are probably less interested in numbers of hours than in the more substantive accomplishments that show how those estimated hours were put to good use.</p>
<p>We started a spreadsheet to keep track as one of the first colleges the kids toured required an EC resume as part of the admissions paperwork. They ended up not applying to that school but 3 other schools they applied to also asked for the same thing and a 4th required it if you wanted merit aid.</p>
<p>There is no harm in tracking all your activities in a spreadsheet, or whatever works for you (as long as this is not just raising anxieties leading up to the college-selection process.)</p>
<p>However, keep in mind that GPA, rank, course rigor, and scores remain more important to most selective schools. ECs come into play most significantly at about 50 schools where nearly all admitted students meet high standards for these fundamental criteria. Demonstrated commitment, passion, and achievement in one or a few ECs is likely to be more compelling than a long laundry list of activities. I doubt you need a complex accounting system to keep track of that.</p>
<p>tk21769–while what you say is true to a point, there are far more than 50 schools that put weight on EC’s and most kids are in more than one or two things. Not only did the schools the kids applied to want to know what they were in, they also wanted to know any honors, awards, special recognition, etc. I know plenty of kids that were rejected from schools for lack of EC’s and none of those schools were in the top 50 of any ranking. Our kids keep busy but they are not nearly as busy as some kids here and even then it was hard to remember everything they had been involved with, and more so the awards and recognition.</p>
<p>The summer before 9th grade might be considered middle school activities. It depends on the situation and the school.</p>
<p>Simple mom here…I created an old fashioned Word document for each of my kids. I listed the activities they did each year. If it was something they tried fleetingly but didn’t actually DO, it did not get listed. I updated it in January and June of each year.</p>
<p>Re: ECs. It would depend on the EC. One of my kids went to a summer music thing the summer after 8, 9 10 grades so it got listed. The other kid did something after 8th grade but never again. That did not get listed.</p>
<p>Kept a word document starting freshman year for my daughter listing all ec, volunteer hours, and any awards or honors. The school counted the summer before 9th grade volunteer hours for recognition on the transcript for 9th grade - so I included those.</p>
<p>I did like kiddie. Pretty much a simple list but it beat trying to remember things later on when you really needed it.</p>
<p>By the way…the reason I kept this list was so my kids could give it to their guidance counselor when it came time for the GC to write THEIR letter of recommendation. One of my kids did many out of school ECs. The other kid flew totally UNDER the radar screen of the GC. In both cases, the GC needed this compilation to craft her letter.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone,</p>
<p>What exactly does the Common App ask for for EC’s? And how is it organized? If S does an activity in multiple places, is that still listed? I’m still trying to get a handle on how much detail we need. </p>
<p>For example, football is big for S. Let’s say in a year he goes to Camps A and B at 2 different universities, and Camp C at a local HS, plus practice with his school team, plus games with his team, plus working out offseason in a program at a local gym, plus he volunteers as an assistant coach with the camp affiliated with the youth program he used to be part of. Is that all one activity called “Football”, or does he need to keep track of each camp/combine/volunteer program and write a separate line? Do things like mandatory team study hall, or volunteering with a football fundraiser, or riding the bus to a game count in the total?</p>
<p>Also, what counts? S does snowboard club, which lasts 9 hours (3 to midnight). Of that they probably spend 3 hours on the bus round trip, and an hour eating/getting gear etc . . . So is that 5 hours, which is how long they’re on the slope? Or 9 hours?</p>
<p>If I’m going to do the list/spreadsheet thing, I’d like to include as little as possible, and still end up with what I need.</p>
<p>I just guestimated when I went to fill out my apps. </p>
<p>They don’t want to see every little activity you ever did. They want to know what you were passionate about. My reasoning was, if I didn’t remember it senior year when filling out apps then it probably didn’t contribute much to my life and it’s unnecessary.</p>
<p>I did NOT include transportation, fundraising time, lunch or other meal time, or something like a study hall. Here is an example of what I wrote:</p>
<p>Precollege orchestra and wind ensemble 6 hours/week
Ski club: 3 hrs/week.</p>
<p>Precollege orchestra was outside of school (and involved one hour of driving each way…driving time NOT included). Ski club was in school.
There IS a limited amount of space on the common ap. You will need to prioritize if you have too many.</p>
<p>I will add…in my opinion colleges are NOT looking for a laundry list involving every type of EC available to your kid. They are more interested in demonstration of a commitment to something the kid really is interested in.</p>
<p>I’m of the school write it all down, because it’s so easy to forget the important stuff. My older son had fistfuls of Science Olympiad medals and he couldn’t remember what half of them were. Luckily we were able to find most of the records somewhere on line, but we still ended up with some mysteries. It was also surprisingly difficult to remember which years he’d done what for some of the low key volunteer work he’d done more as favors than as conscious community service. I don’t think it really matters how you keep the info just as long as it’s written down. The Common App doesn’t have unlimited space so you are likely to end up doing some culling or condensing.</p>
<p>For example two different football camps, might get condensed into “football camp” without the names of the particular camps, but leadership roles like being assistant coach will either be included on that line or on their own line depending on how much space is available by the time senior year rolls around.</p>
<p>I just put down what seemed fair for hours - Science Olympiad met once a week for an hour or two until the last few weeks before the contests when panic set in, then there would be an entire weekend of events and then after March they were pretty much done.</p>
<p>I started a paper folder for the kids where I put registration info, certificates, participation forms, schedules, etc.</p>
<p>This already came in handy for my sophomore student when he was applying to summer camps.</p>
<p>My daughter received an award at school for her community service hours, it also was instrumental in NHS and the college she chose gave her quite a nice community service scholarship. It is important to track ex as well as community service hours</p>