<p>The list is shockingly brief:</p>
<p>Model U.N.
A mentoring organization
Volunteering at a county supervisor's office
Piano</p>
<p>Actually, I also have a few personal activities/hobbies that take up a nice chunk of time, but these are the only more or less "official" sounding ones. I'm heavily involved in each activity, but the list just looks too short, doesn't it? Sigh...</p>
<p>if your heavily involved talk about and list your involvement in your resume or w.e. your doing</p>
<p>What are the personal activities? Those take up just as much time as "official-sounding" activities and adcoms know that.</p>
<p>I enjoy creating my own computer games through editing the programming code of the few computer games I actually have. I also enjoy baking pastries, which is really entirely my own, since my family usually isn't interested in the stuff I make.</p>
<p>It matters where you're applying. Your list is wonderful for most colleges in the country and may even help you get merit scholarships. This particularly would be true if you've done a good job as a mentor and if you describe that in your essay or get a recommendation attesting to your contributions.</p>
<p>It's only for places like the top 20 colleges, where even being student body president would not necessarily make you stand out, where your ECs would seem unsubstantial.</p>
<p>It matters where you're applying. Your list is wonderful for most colleges in the country and may even help you get merit scholarships.</p>
<p>I disagree
definately not only for top 20 colleges</p>
<p>The majority of colleges in this country accept the majority of their applicants. The majority of applicants in this country get into their first choice college.</p>
<p>For most colleges, ECs just aren't that important. </p>
<p>Now if the OP is applying to places like HPYS, even if s/he has 2400 SATs, he may have a hard time getting accepted with the ECs he mentioned. At most public and private universities, though, those ECs would be fine.</p>
<p>Would a resume/activity-list help in explaining my involvement? Or would they simply notice that the list doesn't have that many items on it?</p>
<p>four activities isn't really a list. Unless you have extensive research into each program, or they need excess information etc, I wouldn't bother with an activity sheet.</p>
<p>What you need to do is explain what you have done with each organization. For instance;</p>
<p>For 3 years have spent 2 hours a week mentoring a middle school student as part of ABC Mentoring organization</p>
<p>Model UN, VP 1 senior year; treasurer junior year, member, soph year.</p>
<p>Piano: 8 years of classical music studies. Won a third place award in a local piano competition. Have been an accompanist for a school choral group.</p>