<p>Out of curiosity, on average, per year, how many hours did people's E.C.s add up to on the Common App?</p>
<p>I think I had 2700 hours per year committed to my ten activities. Which is about seven and a half hours a day. A full day, obviously, which I am satisfied with as I thought I communicated myself effectively in the context of the ten activities.</p>
<p>That’s 7.5 hours a day including weekends and holidays. That’s pretty absurd, unless you were working 20hours a week at some job. I worked between 10-15 hours a week and my total activity hours probably wouldn’t even approach 2000.</p>
<p>Pancaked- that doesn’t mean OP’s activities were spread out evenly across the year. I was a camp counselor over the summer, and that alone got me around 700 hours in 2 months. </p>
<p>Still, 2700 hours per year is way more than I would have thought anyone could do…</p>
<p>Mine added up to 400. 2700 is just plain rediculous.</p>
<p>My first thought? Either you’re extremely bad at math or you’re exaggerating. Michael Phelps doesn’t train 2700 hours a year.</p>
<p>My kid who is a two sport varsity athlete and straight A student at one of the top ranked HS in country spends 18 hrs/ wk in ECs.</p>
<p>You put in as many hours as a Shanghai hi-tech sweatshop worker.</p>
<p>7.5 hours during the school year? As in, outside of school, you had 7.5 hours of activities? If you had school from 7-3, that would mean you were doing ECs til almost 11 o’clock at night…Impressive.</p>
<p>ClarkU-I’m inferring the “7.5 hours a day” from the OP when he says it, but you do have a point. I will be counseling a camp this summer and will be there 7 day, 24 hours a day</p>
<p>When the OP said 7.5 hours a day, that is an average for the year, so for all we know s/he did a ton of EC hours over the summer, and an average amount during the year.
You should first hear what activities the OP has before assuming s/he is lying.</p>
<p>I have 1040 hours. Though this figure assumes that I did all my activities each year, which isn’t true. Though it also doesn’t count my summer programs…</p>
<p>I have like 900hrs total…this includes and internship during the summer and 15hrs/week at work. I have done sports last year and the year before, I spend like 15 hrs at key club stuff and 1 hr per week at meetings (nothing big). 2 hrs/week at this other awareness club. Also spend a week and a half total a year away from school all day for DECA competitions as I make it the international level.</p>
<p>I’m curious to know how the total time doing EC’s ties into the admissions process. Obviously a kid who does 1000 hours is going to be on a different level than a kid that does 10, but how much weight does the total have in the process?</p>
<p>I just did the math and I have about 1180 in EC’s. This includes everything except for summer camps and programs.</p>
<p>@bart: I think it really depends on the quality of the EC. In general though, the higher quality the EC, the more hours were probably spent doing that EC (i.e. Olympic athlete, non-profit founder).</p>
<p>Sorry, I should have clarified. I included, in my activities, things I’m passionate about, regardless of how much “clout” they may have. So a lot of my E.C.s are merely things I enjoy doing, and thus occupy a lot of my time.</p>
<p>And to clarify, I multiplied the hours per week by the number of weeks for each activity.</p>
<p>As with ECs generally, it’s quality not quantity that matters. If you spend 10 hours a week doing something really interesting and unique at high level, something that differentiates you from your peers, you will do better than a comparable student who spends 50 hours/week on routine volunteer work and typical school-related ECs. The race to add hours is just not worth the time and effort…</p>
<p>I know, it was purely an inquiry…</p>