<p>Again, regarding the Stanford application.</p>
<p>Under the extracirricular and personal activities:
"Please list your principal, community and personal activities... These may include art, drama, dance, music, forensics, journalism, athletics, and organized school or community activities."</p>
<p>Perhaps this is self-evident, but when it describes personal activities, does "reading" count as a major personal activity? (specifically books outside of school curriculum)</p>
<p>I spend typically 10-15 hours a week keeping up with the current literature in an area of intellectual interest that I intend to research with the appropriate laboratory equipment once I arrive at university. I obviously have not had the technical background yet to begin meaningful research, but have been trying to progress as fast as possible towards that.</p>
<p>The problem lies in the fact that they ask what "positions held, honors won, letters earned" and there are clearly none assciated with reading, unless that reading has resulted in a published scientific paper, which in my case is still very much a work in progress.</p>
<p>Alternately, which is perhaps more appropriate and looks less "funny" on the application is to simply leave it as implicit within one of the essays (which it will be).</p>
<p>Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.</p>