So I’m trying to describe one of my activities yet but am struggling to fit all of the info because of the short character count. Is it okay if I wrote “&” instead of “and” or is that unwise?
It is fine.
What I did in my Common App was I used some abbreviations in the activities due to word count, and then if it is a not-so-obvious abbreviation (especially if has your high school’s name or a specialized club) you can put the abbreviation in the Additional Info section where you can write it as
“Activities section:
[abbreviation] - [written out meaning].”
At least, that’s what I did for mine.
It’s fine to abbreviate words, but you don’t want it to read like a text message.