<p>I do not have enough room for all description of activities and there's some extracurricular honors that I have had too that would not fit (no, this is not "fluff" and extra stuff just for the sake of putting it - things like performing with a professional orchestra, going to all-states, county band, private lessons, etc.). Is it okay to use this space extensively (by extensively I mean about 200 words, which then again is not even close to how much you can put there)? Also, some of my points are simple and concise bulleted sentence fragments, yet there's a few where I had to use full sentences to explain something (I explained that I am the first person to receive a certain leadership position for example, giving me more responsibility). I want to elaborate and use every possible advantage given, yet I don't want to annoy the nice old admissions people, and I'm getting nervous, as ironically, although my EC's are good, organizing the listing of them and elaborating is my biggest sticking point in my application while my essays and short answers are all fine. Help would be greatly appreciated - I'm applying ED at the end of this week, a few days before the deadline.</p>
<p>yeah, i want to know about this too...</p>
<p>It's not like I'm trying to be one of those people who wants to use the space to talk about the time they held the door open for an old man at the supermarket - I really do legitimately need the space to explain things.</p>
<p>Also, is it better to overestimate or underestimate hours per week? This can be especially hard for people involved in music since one week in orchestra you can have about an hour's worth of practice, and then the next week you could have two three hour rehearsals, practice in class time, practice at home, private lesson practice, and a weekend event, making for large differences in time spent. I don't want to go too under since I don't want them to think I'm not spending much time with these things, since I spend A LOT of time. However, I don't want to go too much over since I don't want them to think I'm a major exaggerator.</p>
<p>I'm a college sophmore right now at Duke. How much stuff you put into the extra section depends on the school you're applying to. Most small prestigious schools like mine are very picky about their students, so they'll look over everything, and the more you send, the better. However, many state schools just toss out extra info because they have to look through so many applications. All I can say is to consider the school, only put very relevant things in the extra section, always take an average of hours per week (you do 6 hours one week, 5 hour another, so you do 5.5 hours/week), and no matter what you do MAKE IT A UNIFORM FORMAT! Don't have some bullet points that are phrases, and then paragraphs for others. It just looks messy.</p>
<p>For me very relevant is elaborating on being the first person to be a certain leadership position (this is my largest bullet since I elaborate in more detail since I had more responsibility than my previous position), a position at the state level, a performance with a professional orchestra, county band, private lessons, activities I did by audition, community service hours through music, and just a few important things I didn't have room for on the application, like National Honor Society.</p>
<p>It's not a big deal that I didn't list NHS under extracurriculars, but I did under extra info, is it? I ended up going by a book that stated how you should list your activities by what you founded first, then by large leadership positions/time devoted, then smaller positions, then academic honor societies, then clubs you were just members of. I listed my 4 activities with major leadership/time devoted, then 2 others with leadership (lead player of two smaller ensembles but with much time devoted), then lastly an academic honor society. I chose Science National Honor Society since I'm going for a science major and significantly less people are in it (about 1/4 or even 1/3 of my senior class is in NHS) than NHS. Plus, I'm sure that most people applying to selective schools are in NHS anyway, so does it really matter that I put it in additional information? I think that the 8 hours per week/12 weeks per year I put for pit orchestra as lead player is more important than the one half-hourmeeting per month and random credit hours I do for NHS, which I'm not even an officer of.</p>