Questions about filling out common app.

Well, I was going through my common application and I had a few questions.

<li>Is it better to just put undecided for your possible major or is it better to tell the college what major you plan on having? In other words does it affect your chances either way?</li>
<li>There is a part where it asks for optional info like SSN and race amoung other things. Should I fill that out?</li>
<li>(I feel stupid asking this but…) When they ask for academic honors what exactly do they mean? Is it like the Honor Role and Beta Club? I’m guessing it is but always good to make sure.</li>
<li>When it asks for work experience, I’ve tutored after school twice a week and I always counted it as an EC but I got payed for it. Does that mean it would count as work experience?</li>
<li>I also need to make a reseme to give my teachers for recommendations but I don’t exactly know what to put on it. It would help if someone could post their reseme or a sample reseme on here.</li>

I know some of these questions sound stupid but I really want to do this right and I’m not afraid to sound stupid if it means having the best application I can. If anyone else has questions you can post them here too.

<p>Don't feel stupid about your questions! I have some of the same ones so we cannot be the only people.</p>

<p>No question is stupid :)</p>

<p>1) It depends on the college. If you're aiming for a pre-professional institution, it may help to indicate a specific major. But otherwise at a regular university it shouldn't matter. Go ahead and check undecided.</p>

<p>2) Definitaley fill it out if you're an under represented minority. If you're not and you don't fill it out, you'll simply be considered in the pool of white applicants which doesn't hurt your admission chances nor does it help it.</p>

<p>3) Academic honors means honor societies and awards recieved. So Beta Club, National Honor Society, even placing 3rd in your state's math competition counts as an honor.</p>

<p>4) The tutoring counts as a job since you were paid for it.</p>

<p>5) Sorry I don't have a sample resume but format it with an objective, a list of your activities and honors and next to them a brief description of your activity's highlights/accomplishments/responsibilities.</p>

<p>Hope this helps.</p>

<p>same ...here</p>

<p>Thanks thisSHHHisBANANAs. This will help a lot. But I'm not exactly sure South Asian is a small group in the application pool. Its not the Oriental Asian which is a huge group but its still pretty big. I don't know if its bigger than the white group though. I think I'll have to do some research on that. Thanks again.</p>

<p>Okay. More questions.</p>

<p>I was going through the extracurriculars list I have and there are 9 on there. Some of them I only did for a year because they only lasted for a year. On the applications it says list the ECs in order of interest. Although the ones that only lasted a year (there are 2) aren't that high on my list I feel like they represent me a lot so should I put them in the addtional information part of my application and explain why I only did them for a year?</p>

<p>And then there is another EC that I only did for a year too. Its the Writer's Society which I got into last year. The reason I didn't do it before is because I wasn't really into writing until last year. But now its 4th on my list. Should I write something about that on the additional information section too to explain why I've only done it a year? Or should I lower it on my list and just put the ones I've been in for longer in its place?</p>

<p>buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuump</p>