I’ll be a senior in high school this year, so I’m starting to work on the application process this summer. In the activities section of the common app, the website asks for an activity type (work, volunteer, sports, etc). My issue is that two of the activities that I’ve done in high school were volunteer and then later became paid. Do I list these as “work (paid)”, “community service (volunteer)”, or both? I don’t want to list them as two activities since you are only allotted 10 total spaces. For those of you looking for more detail, one of the activities is volunteering at a therapeutic horseback riding barn from age 13 until half way through junior year when I became a riding instructor there (paid), and the other is volunteering at a special recreation association during sophomore year and working there as a camp counselor the summer between sophomore and junior year.
Do you really have so many activities that are important to you that you can’t split these up?
@bodangles is correct, you could always split them up. I like that idea, although I understand that it can make your application feel slightly “choppy” and potentially waste an activity slot.
I think you need to ask yourself how much of the time was unpaid vs. how much of the time was paid. If you were the instructor for 80% of the time and volunteer for the remaining 20%, then I’d just label it as work. If it’s 50-50, use your discretion or follow the above advice. (To me––and people might disagree––I’d opt to put the camp counselor as volunteer and the horseback instructor as work.)
You also have allotted characters to explain the nature of the activity and what you did. You could use some of this space to explain that you transferred from volunteering to paid work if you don’t want to use multiple slots on one activity.
Indeed, you could omit entirely the part about being a volunteer first. The details of your activity listing aren’t combed over as if you were applying to the CIA. Don’t sweat the small details.
I know that no one will really care if I say volunteer and I worked some of the time or vice versa, so what I’m really wondering is which will look better? I also babysit and have a summer job at a concert venue, so I have two other things labeled “work”, so I’m thinking maybe I should say “volunteer” so it doesn’t look like I get paid for everything I do, because I don’t. Then again, maybe getting paid shows that you are valued and committed, I’m just not sure. Also, to those of you who suggested that I split it up, since it’s two activities that I have this issue with, it would take up almost half of my activities section, so I might not have enough room to include everything else.
Don’t overthink this checkbox, itself. It’s a small part of that section and it doesn’t matter if you check W or V. Your description can cover both positions. Eg, “vol 9-11th, paid instructor 11th-present.” Then a few words highlighting. (But be careful with the space limits, not to get cut off.) Since you might want OT, this may be a case where your people/kids involvement is worth two separate lines. And you don’t want to drop the vol part, it’s part of the commitment you made, starting in 9th.
We don’t know what else you have to fit in but try to be sure it’s relevant to the colleges. If it is, you can use Addl Info (but use it wisely and be brief.) You could drop babysitting, which is usually more casual.