<p>Hi, simple question:</p>
<p>The Common App requires you to put down the number of hours per week you spend on your ECs. I'm wondering if I can include the commute for this, since it would be almost a 50% increase.</p>
<p>What do you think?</p>
<p>Count the time. My D had such a major commute for an EC that she even made it the focus of one of her essays.</p>
<p>Oh ok, great. Any other oppinions? I cant decide based on one...</p>
<p>Oh and, did she get accepted? Or is that for this admission cycle?</p>
<p>The essay was for last year. She got some rejections; some acceptances. Who knows if the essays helped or hurt.</p>
<p>Put it down. You're putting in time and money into commute.</p>
<p>seems like ur exhausting all options to get in, i dont see how commute shows anything about ur ec</p>
<p>I'm assuming this is a long commute? I'd put it in the additional information, somewhere. It kind of seems dishonest if you never say that part of it is due to commute</p>
<p>I would include commute. Commuting to my main EC, for example, takes longer than the actual EC itself.</p>
<p>***.. of course not. You might as well volunteer somewhere really far and say those hours were part of your volunteer hours. In the first case, different story - she made her commute the emphasis, but obviously you're not going to.</p>
<p>Hmmm, yeah, my commute isnt that long. Its about equal to the EC.</p>
<p>So I have 2 votes for yes and 1 for no.</p>
<p>Cmon, I need more. Anyway, as said, I'm not gonna talk about the commute in my app.</p>
<p>My line of reasoning was: the point of ECs to a good extent is to show you dont spend all of your time in school related activities (i.e. study a lot). I doubt any good adcom is dumb enough to think that people will invest hours and hours of their week into volunteer work for the fun of it. Its obviously motivated by the admission process. To anyone who does volunteer for other reasons: no offense intended, just my point of view on the majority of cases.</p>
<p>So? Any more opinions? I was hoping to get at least 10 =(.</p>
<p>it should depend on what the ec is. If it is say skiing where your parents do the driving and you kinda just take a nap in the car (for me), i wouldnt include it. If it is essential to what the ec is, then calculate it in.</p>
<p>I would include it because the time is to show your commitment to the activity and while you are commuting you cant do other activities, so you are still giving up your time.</p>
<p>Definitely include the commute, and deduct 25 cents a mile from your application fee.</p>
<p>I didn't include commute. I thought about including driving time for an orchestra job I had that was about 45 minutes away (with two rehearsals a day, or a rehearsal in the morning and a show at night, or two shows a day it added up), but I decided not to include it.</p>
<p>Mensa, are you being ironic on both or only the latter? I cant quite figure it out.</p>
<p>Also, are you a member of Mensa? If so, where the hell do I include this in my application?</p>
<p>What about a compromise? Counting it as half the time? Like, I take the bus to fencing, and on average its a 40min comute in each direction. Maybe i could just count it as 40 additional minutes instead of 1h 20.</p>
<p>Im suprised that there isnt a set of rules regarding this. Seems like apretty big loophole to me...</p>
<p>Anyone else?</p>
<p>count the commute time. People get paid from their jobs. There is a 48 cents/mile for business miles, so by this logic, there should be something given for time spent driving somewhere. The math team, about 25% of the time is spent driving. I am deprived of this time, so I will count this time.</p>
<p>I volunteered as a Korean school teacher at the Korean school that I had graduated from. They only included the exact (by minute!!) school hours in the letter that stated I had volunteered. Every day I had stayed at least 2 extra hours to help clean up and send off the children home, but they didn't take that into consideration. Also I had to attend teacher meetings that were at least 3 hours every week and they didn't even include that either.</p>
<p>And you're trying to include commuting hours?</p>
<p>Here is the guideline we used: Commute time counts if you are driving yourself to the EC or you are working on some facet of the same EC while someone else is driving. Otherwise, you could be using the time profitably for something else and it is not counted.</p>
<p>Add it, I mean, is the AdCom really going to check? Damn it's a simple matter.</p>
<p>uhhh i volunteered because i loved it. You dont volunteer for 1500+ hours doing sumthing for college lol.</p>
<p>but ya i dont think u should include it because u arent doing anything productive. Thats like saying, should i include the bus ride to school as a class?</p>
<p>As for the comment if the adcom is going to check, no he probably wont but does the word morals mean anything to you</p>