<p>This may be a silly question. The applications ask for an activity and hours/wk.</p>
<p>D commutes 20-30 minutes regularly each way to participate in some of her EC's. </p>
<p>Do they want to know </p>
<p>1) the time she actually participated (not including commuting), or
2) the time commitment that it took to participate (includes commuting)</p>
<p>When she filled out her community service forms for school, she only included the participation. For the applications, it's not clear to me which ones the Adcoms really want to know.</p>
<p>Personally I would not include commuting time. My children have/had about about 20-25 minute one way commute to HS. The school district and state certainly don’t include that in calculating school hours.</p>
<p>The school district is measuring something different though. </p>
<p>What it comes down to is do they want to know how much time you spend participating or are they trying to assess how important the activity is to you and how you spend your time.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t include a commute of just 20-35 minutes. If you live anywhere but next door, it takes 20 minutes to get anywhere at all. If you commute over an hour or two, then that really means something - but 20 minutes? That’s not significant.</p>
<p>I used that as an analogy. It’s like commuting to work. Some of us spend 15 minutes and some of us spend an hour commuting. Is is any less important to those with a 15 minute drive? </p>
<p>They are looking for the time you are actually spending participating. To include commuting time in that total seems unethical to me.</p>
<p>agree w/ rrah unles that time is spent actually involved in the EC. For example if a kid worked w/ an animal rescue non-profit and the trips to adoption events required some care or management of the dogs and cats going to the event it would count. But simply riding to and from wouldn’t. If asked to elaborate somewhere else in the app it may be OK to include a sentence mentioning the length of the commute but I wouldn’t count it in the overall hours reported</p>
<p>Commuting to a local activity–I wouldn’t count it. But if I could see counting it if the location was far away–like a orphanage in Mexico you worked at every weekend, leaving home at 7 am and coming home at 7 pm. I’d count 12 hours a week.</p>
<p>But counting commuting time would be the exception, not the rule.</p>
<p>My kids didn’t include commuting in their reporting time. It would have added another 4-5 hours weekly to the total involvement in their primary EC - I don’t know whether that would be considered significant or not. If colleges wanted to include commuting time, I think they’d specify it.</p>
<p>But if a student makes a major time sacrifice in commuting to fulfill EC commitments, that can be addressed in the Common App short essay about ECs. If a coach or private teacher is writing a rec, the student could ask them to mention it, if applicable. It does suggest the student’s responsibility and dedication.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t include commuting time. One thing to consider is to not take total number of hours and divide it by 52 weeks or number of weeks in a school year. Some activities are seasonal, so if you were to divide it by 52, then it doesn’t look like it is very substantial. As an example, my daugther was the chairperson for her senior prom. It took up a lot of time and it was an important leadership role, but she was only busy for 2-3 months, but during those months she spent a lot of hours meeting with vendors and administrators.</p>
<p>If your kid does tutoring, say 2-5 hours a week, take into consideration of prep work. For every hour my daughter was tutoring she may spent the same amount of time to prep, so include that.</p>
<p>I would NOT include the commuting time in the hrs/wk on the EC activities. I don’t know anyone who does (I advise students and help them create activity resumes that do note hrs/wk and wks/yr) and neither of my kids included commuting time.</p>
<p>I have to say that my own two children put in a LOT of commuting time daily to their many ECs as we live in a rural area. I know that I put 100 miles per day on my car as did my husband. While some activities were more local, many daily ones were anywhere from 25 - 50 miles away on a regular basis and that is not counting the many actual events (such as sports events) that were even further away. My kids spent a great deal of time daily and on weekends commuting to activities. We used to kid around that our car was a study hall, a restaurant, a changing room, etc. But they never noted these hours when listing activities. </p>
<p>I do recall, however, that D1, in one of her main personal essays, she centered it on her well roundedness and the many facets of her life and in the story she told, it came across how she would change from her sports gear into dance clothes on the 50 mile commute between activities or changed from ski racing garb into recital clothing on the 90 mile treck from her ski race to All States Music auditions, and so on and so forth. It may have been mentioned (but I only have a vague recollection at this point) on my girls’ guidance counselor report about how they traveled to all these activities around the state on a daily basis.</p>
<p>I’m with Soozievt - for the college apps, I had the kids put hours per week/weeks per year and only put their major “stuff”. For the high school (which has a community service required hours component for graduation) I told them to just put actual hours without commue time.</p>
<p>Please, let’s not encourage our kids to parse the truth in order to pad their resumes. We all know both the actual question and the spirit in which it was asked, How many hours spent on activity ‘x’, period.<br>
My son commuted 3 hours a day (scenes out of "Planes, Trains and Automobiles’!) for 10 weeks this summer for summer research. Does that make him any more dedicated than the girl who commuted 5 mins.? Perhaps. Does that make his contribution any more valuable? Absolutely not. I would certainly try and bring it up in an essay or interview if I had the chance, as I consider it a strong indication of committment, but he won’t.
Kids know what fair play is, please don’t encourage them to ‘stretch the truth’ and ask for reaffirmation in doing so!</p>
<p>I assure you that there is nothing underhanded in my question. </p>
<p>"My son commuted 3 hours a day (scenes out of "Planes, Trains and Automobiles’!) for 10 weeks this summer for summer research. Does that make him any more dedicated than the girl who commuted 5 mins. "</p>
<p>In your case, txrockate, there is no “perhaps” about it, yes he was more committed, 3 hrs a day sounds brutal and less committed people wouldn’t have bothered. My question pertained as to whether the colleges are measuring the “commitment” or the “contribution”. When admissions officers at an info session say that they want to know how the kids spend their time outside of school, the answer didn’t seem obvious. </p>
<p>I understand from the responses so far that they are clearly measuring the contribution.</p>
<p>While it is the contribution and time spent in the activity that counts (and ONLY compute the hours AT the activity when listing hrs/wk), one way to show the amount of commitment involved in terms of long distance commutes is when requesting recs from those who supervise the EC endeavor, in your letter requesting the rec, ask that person to comment on what you do in order to participate. Same with the guidance counselor. It may also come up in the interview when describing your life outside the classroom. As well, on the annotated activity resume, in the annotation, you might comment on how it is worth the one hour drive each way to do X, etc. because…</p>
<p>Thank you for being so gracious, I was grouchy and rude! </p>
<p>In the end, what the admissions guys should be interested in is what our kids learn from their experiences, about the subjects and themselves. Hopefully they first and foremost learn to contribute, as and where they can. </p>
<p>My son learned that he NEVER wants to live more than 10 mins. away from work, whether that entails walking, driving or teleportation Maybe that’s why he doesn’t want to talk about it!</p>
<p>I think this is a question a lot of folks have, and usually for honest reasons. In several information sessions I’ve attended, adcoms have suggested that they’re interested in knowing how much time ECs require since this puts in perspective not only the seriousness of the student’s commitment to those activities, but also the student’s academic performance in light of the time s/he has left for schoolwork. The implication is that the kid who gets straight A’s with less available time is more likely to be smart and efficient than the A student whose only EC is homework. So I don’t think this issue is as clear as some seem to believe. That being said, I agree with the consensus expressed above, and think soozievt gives good advice about how to let colleges know about an exceptional commute.</p>
<p>Here’s a similar scenario: My D travels an hour round trip to the YMCA several times a week to lift weights or do cross-training (sometimes rehab) in order to excel in her sport. We have no space in our small home for exercise equipment, and though there are closer workout facilities, this is the only health club we can afford. Doing this is not mandated by the high school coach, and she knows of no other girls on her team who do it with the exception of one who uses equipment in her own home. Therefore, D wouldn’t think of including this time in the hours spent on her school sport, since they’re not part of official practice. Nonetheless, it can take 5-6 hours or so away from her studies each week, which is not small peanuts when you’re a three-season athlete with all AP classes and your track meets last 7 hours each weekend. Someone suggested D consider this activity a hobby. Makes sense, but there is no good spot for it on the common app. since it would hardly be an important EC. Hence the temptation to lump it in with her sport and the reason why it’s not a clearcut issue.</p>
<p>And also sports-related, the cross-country team (and other teams) gets a summer workout schedule to do. Some kids do it faithfully and some don’t, but there are few mandatory official practices with a coach present until late August. All the same, getting in that mileage base over the summer is expected and important. Should she count this as official hours for x-c even though school isn’t in session yet?</p>
<p>I think you could mention your commute in an essay illustrating your volunteer experience, however- the fact that you chose a volunteer project that would require “commuting” to allow you to participate does not make your participation more meaningful than someone who chose the same project but could walk it in 5 min.</p>
<p>Coming from a sustainable standpoint, a long commute sounds like bad planning and wasteful of resources.</p>
<p>My kids and students compose annotated activity resumes, even if filling out the little chart on the applications for ECs. I find that chart inadequate to show what was truly done in many of the activities. </p>
<p>In such a case, if I were helping your D with her activity resume, I would list “weight-lifting/cross training” as an activity and the number of hours she is at the activity (not including the commute) and in the annotation, explain what she does, what she gets out of it and why she does it. </p>
<p>For the summer sports workout schedule, I would include that. There are two ways I would consider including it. One way would be when listing cross-country team, I would list hours/week, weeks/year during the school year that the team requires and then putting separately hours/week, week/year that the summer requirements/training take. I have had a child who broke it down to hours during the school year separately than in the summer for an activity (example…theater productions in the summer were more hours per week than during the school year and she listed it as such). The second way your D could do it (if doing an activity resume) is that one section on such a resume should be “Summer Experiences” where she lists what she did each summer and with each activity, provides hours/week and weeks/year and so there she would list cross country training and the hours she put in and which summers she did it. </p>
<p>ECs are NOT only during the school year. Further, ECs are NOT just ones associated directly with the school.</p>
Maybe that’s why he doesn’t want to talk about it!</p>