How many hours per week total for all the activities would you consider to be too much (so as to be unbelievable)?
If your hours add up to more than 40 (thats the avg amount for a ‘full time’ worker) then I’d say that’s when it starts to look unbelievable. Just be honest! Some EC take up a lot of time and admissions officers know that also.
Don’t just add up the hours per week of all your activities!
Consider the case in which you spent 5 hours for activity X for ONLY ONE WEEK in an year.
Let there be 10 such activities of 5 hours in a week that you did for ten different weeks interspersed throughout the year.
Hours per week = 5X10=50.
Unbelievable? Yes.
Fake? No.
Therefore, it is important to consider the hours/year and then divide the number by 52 to get the AVERAGE hours/week. This average should be around 20-30 for an ideal hard-working candidate.
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Don’t feel compelled to list hours per week. It’s fine to submit the following:
Retail sales job: 10 hrs per week, 20 wks (11, 12)
Cross country team: 12 hrs/wk, 15 wks (9, 10, 11)
ABC Club: 20 hrs (11)
DEF seminar: 15 hrs (11)
XYZ org: 2 hrs/wk, 10 wks (12)
^For Common App, you’re required to submit the hours per week AND weeks per year. I tried not to because things like All-State orchestra and academic competition are only one week a year. I guess it looks like I did next to nothing most weeks even though the activities I mentioned before are decently prestigious and took many hours of at-home prep. (I didn’t join any in-school clubs that meet every week and only one thing I did outside school met every week, most of my stuff is annual competition type)
If you spend 40-50 hours one week because of an annual time-intensive competition, then that’s probably okay. If you spend 40-50 hours every week, adcoms might start questioning you.
I consider myself to be really busy with my activities, and I have 22-28 hours EVERY WEEK (many of my activities are constant activities that I do year-round). That doesn’t look weird right? Cause obviously I actually do all of the stuff and it’s definitely possible if you look at the hours in the week and take away time for sleeping, school, etc.
I just don’t want adcoms to like throw my app out if they think no one does that much lol. 
Hopefully in some of your supplements you can show admissions that these activities are really important to you! When it comes across as passionate, then dozens of hours a week start to look believable. When I was in band my hours would rack up to 15-20 per week practicing sometimes. It might sound ridiculous but I was able to write and interview extensively about the matter. It only looks sketchy when you put down 25 hours for an EC and then fail to show how that time and subject commitment impacts your life.
Wait what do you mean by your last statement @jomarch… that’s my TOTAL hours per week for all activities, not for each and every single activity (unless you knew that haha). Like I have 5-6 activities listed, and if I add up all the hours it’s 22-28 per week for all of them together.
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That range is definitely believable and do-able for a high school student! I wouldn’t worry about it too much. As long as you stay honest and avoid resume padding you should be fine.