Do competitions count as extracurricular activities for the Common Application?

Applying to College Common and Coalition Application
1

<p>I'm on the Activities Section of the Common App, and I see it says to list the activities "in their order of importance to you". </p>

<p>For two years now, I've participated with a group in this annual 13-hour mathematics challenge. I'm not sure if it counts as an extracurricular because it seems like they want activities in which you devoted your time weekly. My group never did actual scheduled training sessions. We just generally learned new concepts in math class that could possibly help us solve whatever problem was going to be thrown at us for the competition. </p>

<p>It is definitely a very important activity for me--I was even thinking about using it as the topic of my choice for the Short Answer part of the Writing Section.</p>

2

<p>I have a similar problem… I have a few activities that only lasted a week or two, but were very, very valuable to me. I’m including them in the activities section, I think it’s fine.</p>

3

<p>Oh that sucks!!! I would say to put them in. The activities section deals with hours and weeks because the admission officials want to see what you did in your down-time regularly.
So, I recommend you to add the number of hours you possibly might have worked on those particular new math concepts(though you might not give them a separate schedule) which helped you in your competitions.</p>