How good is this as an EC? Does it count as national/legitimate?

Applying to College
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[Current junior] Over the summer, I worked with two friends who attend [T40 in MA] on finding ways to increase abortion access to women in unsafe situations. We came up with a general mailing address locator, which would allow them to get medication shipped to them and prevent it from being intercepted by a partner or family. One friend coded the tool, another handled graphic design, and I handled all outreach to organizations, took meetings with nonprofit lawyers, and was heavily involved in the brainstorming process. I would say that I spent about 3-4 hr/week for 15 weeks working on this project with them.

A national public health campaign (as an organization, it has been featured in CNN, Washington Post, NPR, NYT, etc, so pretty big deal) is going to use the tool, and we will be credited on its website. Iā€™m super excited about this, but Iā€™m not sure how to quantify it. I will have no way of knowing how many women this will help, and am not sure how exactly to show the organizationā€™s relevance - not Planned Parenthood level, but also not small either. I also donā€™t know how important of an extracurricular this is, and how ā€˜impressiveā€™ it would look compared to other applicants. Can I say it has national impact? How would I describe it?

To give context, I go to a not-very competitive but T200 in CA high school (although it is in the East Bay), am top of my class, and among other ECs, I have started multiple programs in my school district that have impacted 400 and 1000 students (respectively), and will be the first girl ever from my HS to attend Girls State. Next year Iā€™ll be applying SCEA to Pton since Iā€™m a legacy. I know compared to most applicants one national EC (if it is even that) isnā€™t much, but I want to get a sense as to where this one stands.

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I think this is a fine EC and more noteworthy than the usual EC. It ties in nicely with the other types of public service ECā€™s you allude to that paints a picture of an involved student who is actually accomplishing things vs just being a participant. Try to include an LoR from a teacher who is knowledgeable about these activities and can speak to them as well as academic qualifications.

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Thanks! My friends and I have been discussing reaching out to other organizations that actually provide medicated abortions, and offering them the use of our tool as well. While that may not happen, Iā€™m still excited to see how we can expand. Do you have any suggestions as to how I should describe it when I apply? Could it be deemed to have ā€œnational impactā€ or is it not big enough?

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In the Common App section on ECā€™s, you have 50 characters to describe your position/leadership role and 150 characters to describe the activity. I would focus on your role, what the app does, and the organization(s) that use it. If you can get the actual usage, I might include that. I would do this in bullet form to get across the substance within the character limits. This EC may be worth mentioning in an applicable essay prompt if you want to add qualitative flourishes (e.g., why it means so much to you).

Whether something is ā€œnationalā€ or not in scope relates to the list of academic honors. Where this might come up in the EC section is if in the description you can say something like, ā€œUtilized by [Planned Parenthood] on its national and 50 state websites; as of 11/1, [over 500,00] registered users in [37] states.ā€ But let the facts do the talking rather than ā€œpuffā€ the importance through conclusory adjectives.

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