<p>My kids, like their parents, tend to take people at their word. Our feeling was–if they wanted it, they’d ask for it. I’m sure these lists don’t keep people out of schools; I’m not at all sure they get anyone in. I think for some folks, crafting and submitting them makes them feel better, so if that’s the case, why not? For D and S, they relied on the ability of the adcoms to figure out stuff (similar to PG’s waitress example.) I think an outlier, like the much-more-involved-than-what-you’d-expect internship, could easily be worked into a short or long essay. (Not an essay that just describes an activity, but a more global one that links interests around a moment, an idea, a passion, etc.)</p>
<p>The first example warrants one line on the Common App: “Assistant Director, ABC Theater Company, 200X-200Y”. Done.</p>
<p>Unless the student can really add significant information in an activity supplement / resume, I don’t see why he / she should do one. I agree that the example looks puffed up and padded, and could have easily fit in the Common App activity lines. This activity sheet would have been a big turnoff to me if I was on the Adcom.</p>
<p>Exactly…which is why the quoted annotations in the first post are not very good at all. </p>
<p>Yes, essays can accomplish this somewhat, but not every essay is going to be about an EC activity, nor should it be necessarily. Even for my own kids, I can think of some very significant things they accomplished…creating and producing events, writing policy for their school that the school board passed, and so on and so forth, that could not be covered in essays because these were one of several significant things and the essays are not attempts to cover everything. The resume annotations brought out their contributions and what was meaningful about them. Their annotations were not merely factual “what did I do” explanations as in the quotes from Hernandez. Without these annotations, the adcoms would never have known their level of contributions in these endeavors, as the essays are not a catchall for their ECs.</p>
<p><a href=“for%20the%20activity” title=“Hospital Visitation”>quote</a>
In a joint effort with the Eucharistic ministry at my church, I visit the local hospital on a triweekly basis. During these sessions, I generally attempt to provide conversation and happiness to the otherwise lonely patients.
[/quote]
This probably means that the applicant accompanied Mommy or Daddy to the hospital when they brought Communion to the hospital patients to rack up some more volunteer hours. How arrogant of this applicant to think that their mere presence provided “happiness.”</p>
<p>My d has decided to fill out a quick application to a private college instate that called her and urged her to fill out the priority application since it didn’t need a recommendation nor an essay and she would get a yes or no quickly. So she is looking over it and it has way too little space for her activities. She probably has more than many since she spent her high school years in two very different locations and thus she had different ECs in each place. I just recommended that she type out a list of her ECs and awards and submit that too. This will likely be a simple list of awards and activities but some will have extra description. FOr example, she was in a national honor society last year but unlike my experience with this where we did nothing, she organized and ran two different charitable drives which delivered a lot of supplies of pet products to a animal shelter in one case, and food and diapers to a food bank in another.</p>
<p>Is there an Adcom in the world who doesn’t know what running a charitable drive delivering diapers and food to a food bank involves? Or who is unfamiliar with the concept of visiting the sick in a hospital? (Presumably the visitors don’t try to upset and depress the patients).</p>
<p>To provide some perspective, the UC application allow you to list 5 activities, and then give you a 140 character space to list out the details, just like an annotated bullet point list, as well as an additional paragraph space to list anything you left out. </p>
<p>If an underfunded and overexhausted admissions system could do that, then it should be perfectly okay to make your own list for private universities, whose applications do not seem to have that same amount of space present for you to explain your ECs.</p>
<p>This might be true for some and not true for many others.</p>
<p>For instance, I think that the main essay(s) should be about who you ARE, as opposed to what you did. While a few essays I have read have worked well despite presenting an additional insight in a set of activities, most that follow that route have been flat and hackneyed. I view the essay as the opportunity to show something that does NOT fit in your transcript or in your activity list. </p>
<p>I think that the key is to present a coherent (and hopefully comprehensive) package to the school. For some, the common application and its supplements will be all that is needed; for others, it may be wise to expand the scope of the application and use extra materials. Again, all applicants are individual cases and it is impossible to make broad generalizations. </p>
<p>By the way, although this could happen as the result of a very proactive student or parents who provide the information to the teacher or GC, Stanford CANNOT expect the high school officials to be the person writing about activities, especially if they are TOTALLY unrelated to the school activities. What Stanford does or should expect is for the teacher and GC to describe the student and the student’s school activities in an honest manner. </p>
<p>Fwiw, I think that there are no reasons to agonize over this activity list. Students who do not need one should not worry about creating one because nobody EXPEXTS one. Students who DO have an extensive list of activities that could use a specific presentation should not hesitate to use it.</p>
<p>I don’t think it will hurt an application to include the activity list, but at least in my son’s case, the activities were pretty easy to fit in the Common App format. Orchestra - concert master. Science Olympiad, won x medals, co-president. There were two activities that needed more explanation. As I said, one ended up in his main essay the other got covered by the Common App question that asks you to elaborate on one of your ECs. (I actually thought the EC essay was his best essay, it showed him really thinking like a historian and also showed his sense of humor.) If he’d written his main essay about something other than origami, he probably would have included the activity list, because it did not fit into the CA boxes at all. I think done right talking about what you did, can show who you are. (Younger son did this just fine, older son, not so much.)</p>
<p>I don’t think it will ever hurt you to attach a succinct activity list that covers more than what the Common App has. (Though I wouldn’t at Stanford since they tell you not to.) I like xiggi’s solution to ask the teacher or GC to send in the list!</p>
<p>The one I saw in real life linked activities such as working on a homecoming float to “my passion for school spirit and my desire to choose schools that have such school spirit.” I didn’t care for it at all; it was a little too twee for my taste.</p>
Yes, but I think we all have to admit that “I detonated many large explosive devices” is a pretty irresistible line. :D</p>
<p>IIRC, the Common App includes a space for a brief, freeform elaboration on ECs. I suppose a student could mention the “mystical flarelike effect” there, but it would seem more interesting to tell something about the student: How he grew in the position, why he stuck with it, what he learned. The samples quoted in the original post are just awful imho.</p>
<p>I’d really appreciate an example here. For instance, for our budding pyrotechnician, I’m thinking he should have written how the experience made him realize he enjoyed the production aspects of theater work and that it added another level of understanding to his acting. Plus explosions are lots of fun. </p>
<p>Not everything needs an explanation, and I’d expect that not every activity needs to have a description of how the student learned and grew from the activity.</p>
<p>I think consideration for some of this really needs to be customized according to where the application is being sent – sort of like knowing your audience; putting your finger on the pulse kind of thing. Of course, part of that has to do with the student’s own due diligence which should be the case anyway. My kids included additional materials for some schools but not for others. They also placed more or less emphasis on certain items in their application depending on where it was going. As others have said, it’s very difficult to know how much that additional effort really helped, but the results certainly seem to have proved them out in terms of being very deliberate about what went to each school.</p>
<p>Not everything needs an explanation, and not every activity needs to have a description of how the student learned and grew from the activity. </p>
<p>But, at the elite schools, most students will have an EC list that includes NHS (if their school offers it) – and usually some combination of music/theatre, student gov’t and/or a sport. Many of the elite school applicants will be leaders in one or all of these activities. The list usually does not make a student stand out - because the lists are virtually all the same. </p>
<p>The point made by Stanford is that a long list is fairly meaningless – unless one or two of those activities in some way impacted how the student sees him/herself, impacted others, or adds something unique to the community. And…the student needs to be able to express what made their participation in a particular activity unique.</p>
<p>"1) Does any applicant really, really write like this? These snippets, typical examples from what’s shown in the book, seem so totally over the top that I can’t read them with a straight face. "</p>
<p>YES, they write like that all the time, and I view it as my job to make them stop! </p>
<p>More often than not, top students try to throw all their SAT words into their essays. They’re trying to sound like adults, but the result is that they sound like pretentious kiss-ups. These essays always make me think of little girls sipping imaginary tea with their pinkies up. The goal is to sound like the smart, interesting teenager you are, not like you already have a Ph.D. If you don’t use words like “plethora” in conversation with me, they don’t belong in the personal portion of the application.</p>
<p>(There are a few students out there who are 16 going on 45. Some of them emerged from the womb channeling Jim Lehrer. If that’s your kid, then it’s fine for them to speak in their own voice.)</p>
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