My D does a sport which requires her to travel to competitions. She has 3 competitions a year where she’s gone for the weekend. When she figures out hours on the common app, should she just count the competition hours or the entire weekend?
She doesn’t need exact hours. Whatever time she spends practicing and playing is the time that counts.
Let’s say you do gymnastics all year round and have 3 practices per week and 3 competitions per year.
3 hours/week, 50 weeks per year plus 3 weekend competitions
@bopper in that example would you only count the hours of the competition? Say you’re gone for 48 hours but the competition is 5 hours. Would you just count the 5 hours? Obviously, you’re not doing gymnastics for 48 hours. But being gone for 48 hours several times a year takes away from other activities. Would you address that at all?
Thanks for responding.
Only count the competition hours. All activities have extra hours - transportation, getting equipment fixed, medical appointments to get things tweaked, fittings for costumes. Participating in one activity almost always precludes participating in another.
The NCAA only allows 20 hours of practice per week for sports, but that doesn’t include watching film, conditioning, travel, captain’s practice, taping, ice baths… Schools know it takes more than just the official practice hours.
I think the thing is to look at it from a college’s perspective…they are trying to get an idea of how much time this activity takes. If I am taking 6 AP classes and am playing rec soccer once a week with one practice, that is different than 6 AP classes and varsity soccer with 2 hour daily practices plus weekend games.
So does the common app question specifically ask just for hours?
Is it free form?
Do your child practice for these competitions?
I would try to word it in a way that gets across that these are weekend travel competitions…they are taking you away from other activities and school.
So I would either stick to specific hours or I would say something like: 3 hours/week, 50 weeks per year plus 3 weekend competitions
I agree that for the ‘hours/wk’ you should just use the typical practice/meet times.
A student can (and should) address something they feel warrants explanation in the “Additional Information” section, which is a “free space” on the same page as the CA Essay. It allows up to 650 words, I think. My kids have all used it for a few short paragraphs to expand on certain significant or unusual ECs or other issues where they wanted to share a bit more than the 150 characters allowed in the Activities section.