<p>I wrote the common app short answer, can someone please give me editing suggestions and shortening ideas because the limit is 1000 characters (about 160 words) and I wrote about 1,195 (200 words) Much thanks in advance!</p>
<p>Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work expereince in the space below (1000 character maximum).</p>
<p>In my sophomore year of high school I joined my schools newspaper and quickly developed a profound passion for journalism and for being a voice for the student body. I started as a staff writer and gained valuable experience writing articles, conducting interviews and selling advertisement to help fund our paper. Throughout the year, not only did I witness my journalistic skills improve drastically, but I also found and interest in writing feature articles. I thus spent my first year as a journalism student writing various articles featuring students who had endured hardships in their lives including drug usage, being a student in a foreign country and teen pregnancy. Having the opportunity to sit down and interview these students at my high school was important to me because I felt that it was important to raise awareness about all sorts of different issues that were not only occurring globally, but also in our very own high school. Now as Editor-In-Chief of the paper, while my responsibilities range from delegating stories to managing the overall design of the newspaper, my hope is that I am able to instill in my current staff the same passion I have for journalism in them.</p>
<p>Seems like a good start to me- you’re not that far over so just search through it for things you can say in fewer words. I’ll try to edit it for you but don’t follow it if you don’t like my suggestions; it’s just to give you an idea of what to do. (I just italicized everything that I feel like you can cut)</p>
<p>In my sophomore year of high school I joined my schools newspaper and quickly developed a profound passion for journalism and for being a voice for the student body. I started as a staff writer and gained valuable experience writing articles, conducting interviews and selling advertisement to help fund our paper. Throughout the year, not only did I witness my journalistic skills improve drastically, but I also found an interest in writing feature articles. I thus spent my first year as a journalism student writing various articles featuring students who had endured hardships in their lives including drug usage, being a student in a foreign country and teen pregnancy. Having the opportunity to sit down and interview these students at my high school was important to me because I felt that it was important to raise awareness about all sorts of different issues that were not only occurring globally, but also in our very own high school. Now as Editor-In-Chief of the paper, while my responsibilities range from delegating stories to managing the overall design of the newspaper, my hope is that I am able to instill in my current staff the same passion I have for journalism* in them.*</p>
<p>Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work expereince in the space below (1000 character maximum).</p>
<p>They consist of resistant movements: pushups, pull downs, sit ups, etc. They require exigent actions: respiring and relaxing. For me, resistance training is both the most rudimentary and the most complex activity I perform every day. While my body adjusts to the challenges of muscular failure, I have an incentive mindset, to focus on whatever needs disposing or sorting - an argument with my mother, the upcoming days’ tasks, or relieving stress. As my muscles loosen and my breathing settles into its deep rhythm, I am able to forget that argument, set my mind in order, and release that stress. After a fraction of my workout, I stop and sit in the “Rock Pose” position to meditate. For just a moment, I listen to the thumping of my pulse, and become alert of everything in my surroundings. Then I continue to strengthen my frame again.</p>
<p>SOMEBODY PLEASE EDIT IT AS BEST AS POSSIBLE BECAUSE MY DAD SAYS THIS IS BAD…HE SAYS It’s asking for an “extracurricular” so i am confused. I feel as if this is pretty good but SOMEONE PLEASE Tell me WHAT YOU GUYS THINK ABOUT THIS. </p>
<p>I like the weight training essay - I didn’t edit for punctuation, etc. but as a concept I like it. I also like the writing style. I don’t know where you’re planning to send this, but for many schools science olympiad is pretty self explanatory and common. I actually stopped to read this rather than skimming, and it tells me (or adcom) something that I won’t find somewhere else in your app.
I think many people here are too wrapped up in the idea of what an “EC” is. Extracurricular activities are activities that you do outside of school. People try to develop these long lists of school based clubs etc. that don’t really tell anyone what you might be like as a person. Most of those things can be adequately dealt with in the 2 line activity section. This shows some personality.</p>
<p>This newspaper essay was already on another thread and I and others gave ideas on how to shorten. I didn’t look at the name, but did you start a second thread on the same essay, or get the essay from the person who posted it on the other thread?</p>
<p>saintfan I KNOW RIGHT…OMG UGHHH MY DAD FORCED ME TO SEND MY APPLICATION TO UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE TODAY WITH THAT **<em>TY STATEMENT CONSISTING WITH THE SCIENCE OLYMPIAD TOPIC RATHER THAN THE WEIGHT TRAINING! I ACTUALLY PUT ALOT MORE THOUGHT INTO THAT THAN THE SCIENCE OLYMPIAD CRAP…WHEN HE FIRST READ MY WEIGHT TRAINING STATEMENT HE EXCLAIMED IN LAUGHTER SAYING THIS IS “NOT” AN EXTRACURRICULAR. I EVEN TOLD HIM THAT COLEGES WOULD RATHER LOOK FOR DIFFERENT THINGS THAN “CULB-RELATED” things, BUT HE DIDN"T LISTEN AND HE MADE ME DO SOME INTELLECTUAL CRAP…</em>SIGH ***! GOD I HATE HAVING INDIAN PARENTS! THEY THINK THEY KNOW WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT IN THE FIRST PLACE WHEN THEY DONT EVEN WANT TO THINK THROUGH WHAT I’m TRYIN TO SAY! my god. </p>
<p>Thanks for your feedback saintfan i was thinking about this in the first place and no this is not a hindsight bias situation.</p>
<p>On the upside . . . chances are you get into your school and now you know something more about yourself and how you relax and stay centered while you’re at school. I’m sorry that you didn’t get the support that you’d hoped for from your dad. My D wrote her activity essay about something completely non-school related, and it turned out to be very powerful - a little snapshot, jewel-box look into her personality - very much like yours. I learned a lot about her just proof reading. Again, hold onto that truth for yourself. Good luck.</p>
<p>I am a bit confused. Is the short answer supposed to monotonously describe my activity or can I talk about its impact as well?</p>
<p>Could I say something like, “I discovered the importance of patience and perseverance by coming back from five sets down to win the game in a tiebreaker,” and etc.?</p>
<p>And does the limit of 1000 characters include spaces or not?</p>
<p>Isn’t the prompt just to elaborate on an activity or work experience? I take that to mean that you can address any activity or work experience school or non-school related in any way that you think would be compelling and give a further window into what kind of person you are. Anything that you can include in 1000 characters (including spaces) that acheives that goal would be beneficial. Everything that I’ve read says to tell them something that is not already detailed in your activity section. It could be more personal feelings about something that’s there, or something that you do which is not a formal “EC”. Just don’t cover ground that’s already been covered elsewhere. The wt. lifting piece above is different than anything that would be in an activity sheet and yet it relates back to how this student might be successful at the next level because he has something to pursue which is stress relieving and can be continued at whichever school he attends. It’s original, but not scary or completely off the wall - it says that he is balanced and well rounded and is less likely to have a breakdown first semester.</p>
<p>Is anyone willing to volunteer to read my short answer response, please? </p>
<p>I am an international student, and my English is far from native/fluent, so I would appreciate if someone proofread and fixed my grammatical and stylistic mistakes.</p>
<p>I feel like mine is really ****ty, mostly because I don’t really know what they want…</p>
<p>“When I first joined literary magazine, it was a six person organization, and I was was the youngest member. When the year ended, I was the sole member to compile accepted submissions and organize them for publication. The next year I was made editor and due to some enthusiastic friends, the club grew, we had more submissions and we discussed literary merit of pieces over grammatical flaws (not that those were unimportant). The literary magazine has been handed more and more over three years, from simply picking and publishing to judging a memorial poetry contest, to organizing and running that contest. Every additions has caused floundering, but we always rally as a team in the end and pull ourselves together in the end.”</p>
<p>@ pinkie12, EXACTLY what i though when i first read it. funny because the link before the one that led me to this post featured the running one lol :)</p>
<p>I know I’m a year late, but Pradeepred with a short answer like that you’re going to have a tough time getting in to any school. Why? Because you totally ripped that short answer off from About.com.
The sentence structure, paragraph style, and almost all the points raised are identical to the short answer found at the following link:
[Short</a> Answer Essay - A Sample Short Answer Essay for the Common Application](<a href=“http://collegeapps.about.com/od/essays/qt/short-answer-essay.htm]Short”>Sample Short Answer Essay for a College Application)</p>
<p>So congratulations on the original writing.</p>