<p>Hello fellow CC'ers! One of the most difficult aspects on the Common App, for me at least, is the Activities section. There we only get 12 spots to put our EC's.
I made a list, and found that I had exactly 25 EC's that were significant. I know that adding an attached resume that simply lists 13 EC's would look slightly obnoxious and time-wasting. Thus, I decided to combine EC's to fit in the 12 slots. I did mention all of the individual activities in each slot. For example, I selected Debate/Speech from the list, and for that I put Model UN, Public Forum Debate, and Student Congress. I also listed the individual positions I held for each event in the respective box on that section. So that entire thing took up one of the 12 slots.
Another significant one, was that I placed all 5 of my honor societies as one entry. Since I was not an officer in any of them, I simply put Member as my position, and on the description said: 5 Honor Societies: National Honor Society, Beta Club, Mu Alpha Theta, Spanish, and English.
Do you guys think combining like this is ok? Or would an attached resume of EC's be better?
(Btw, I DID get all 25 activities nicely in those 12 spots using this method)</p>
<p>You are making your more significant EC’s look insignificant by doing this, fyi.</p>
<p>^ This was my thought as well. I find it difficult to believe that you can be an active, contributing member who is really making a difference in five Honor Societies while giving your all in twenty other ECs, and an AdCom likely will as well.</p>
<p>Honestly, you can’t possibly have 25 ECs that truly matter. What is your prospective major? Choose all the ones that focus on that. Which ECs are the most prestigious? Undoubtedly, include those.</p>
<p>I think the most important thing is to find the ones that you have spent the most time on or hold an officer position in. You can always attach a resume like you said, but as the common app states, the EC section allows you to highlight some of them, so you should take advantage of that, instead of diminishing all of them.</p>
<p>Thanks, that helps a lot! No, really, there are about 25 that are significant, but you are probably right that I need to emphasize the ones that stand out. Like I said, about 5 of them come from music, like Youth Orchestra, School Orchestra, All-State, All-District, etc. Then another 5 come from a student-based program that we have where we do many national science competitions. I just thought it may be too much to list every single one of these out, and rather group them under my one main activity like Cello or Space Program where I could then list the individual ones in the description.
I could still maybe attach a resume that organizes the list better.
But thanks again!</p>
<p>Oh, I see. Well, I also do a lot of music, which I found complicated matters as well. I divided my music into concert band, marching band, jazz ensemble, and string orchestra. I put area all-state under accomplishments for concert band, and all-county under accomplishments for concert band/string orchestra. So basically, I counted the things that I do all year as ECs, and the brief things, like festivals, as accomplishments relating to those. I also plan to put brass choir as a subset of concert band, because it’s only active during the holiday season, and chamber/symphony orchestra as subsets of string orchestra, because those are less “serious,” and I do count chamber orchestra as an “accomplishment” because it’s a selective group.</p>
<p>Okay, so now that I put it all that way, I’m doing the exact same thing, haha. I just never really looked at all-county, etc. as ECs of their own.
and I’m a cellist too. awesome. :)</p>
<p>I agree with the other posters, but I have 2 suggestions. </p>
<p>first: instead of calling that activity with speech, debate, MUN etc “Debate/Speech”. Call it “forensics”. It sounds more sophisticated :)</p>
<p>second: you can probably submit a music activities resume instead of having to cram them all on your activities sheet. This would work out especially well if you end up submitting an arts supplement.</p>
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<p>wait, what?</p>
<p>I cannot call it “Forensics” because that is not one of the options that the list contains. It only has “Debate/Speech” as an option.</p>
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<p>I do music as well, and I’m going to have the brief events such as all-district as part of Details and Accomplishments under the actual Activity of concert band. However, I’m not sure whether to put concert band and marching band as two different “activities”. Though now that I think about it, that actually makes more sense. </p>
<p>This is slightly off-topic, but say I’ve done an activity for three years but only been an officer for one; would it be misleading to put “officer” under “position held” even though I haven’t been an officer for all three years?</p>
<p>JHuang - I’ve been specifying the years during which I was an officer, as in “low brass section leader '09-'10.” It might be easier to put grade levels, except that I was never really a junior so I feel like the jump from 10 to 12 would just make it more confusing, in my case.</p>
<p>also, I’ve been thinking more about music and I’m considering putting instrumental music as one or two activities (cello and tuba), instead of four. Then I’ll elaborate under additional information (concert/marching band, jazz ensemble, string orchestra, chamber orchestra, etc.), which will leave more space for other activities and also lets me avoid pushing other activities really far down the list. I felt like having four music activities right at the top made everything else appear to be much less important to me than it really was, since the activities are supposed to be listed in that order.</p>
<p>Thanks! That helps :).</p>
<p>Suitcases, I think it’d be better for you to have instrumental music as two activities; jazz ensemble and chamber orchestra can be put under the umbrella of concert band. I’ve been filling out my activities section and there really isn’t very much space to elaborate in the section itself, so I agree with elaborating under additional information in Writing.</p>
<p>I did exactly what you guys did for my music! 
Hopefully, we are good ;)</p>