College Asssumptions about Senior Year

When college look at applications do they just assume that any activity started or created the summer before senior year or during senior year is just fluff for the application? Or do they genuinely take them into consideration because I know that although many applicants do try to beef up their applications for college with meaningless new activities, many do actually have a genuine interest or passion in whatever new EC they have chosen to do or start. So how do colleges view them?

bump for this thread

Some random community service / club / “leadership” thing should not even be listed unless…
(a) You didn’t know about the activity until then, which you should make clear in your application, or
(b) The activity ties into one of your pre-existing activities, or
© The activity requires specialized knowledge / very few people can do it.

When you list your activities, YOU list them in order of importance to you. Thus, if you declare that your Senior year project A or club B or sport C is the single most important EC of your 3.5 years, they’ll take that into consideration.

There’s nothing wrong with listing the things you’re actually doing – even new ventures as a Senior. Don’t overthink this.

Is it bad to use up all 10 activity slots on the common app? Even if one or two you didn’t put much passion into? @1golfer1

thank you @T26E4 so I’ll just re-order my activities in order of importance to me, new activity or not, I was just told that new activities at this point are just disregarded by universities and I was hoping not cause they’re not to fluff my app

I’m gonna end up using 9 slots because of 3 summer activities, and separating my club and varsity soccer. It’s up ti you how you want to present yourself tbh