I am planning on putting my 3.5 hours of dance per week on my application. However, I spend a total of 2 hours walking to and from dance per week and was wondering if I can mention that on my application, given it does show a heightened commitment to the activity.
Your mode of transportation isn’t that interesting.
Here’s the thing. I treat dancers and others. They practice 25-40 hours a week. Not sure if 3.5 hours is that impressive. But the spin is that you have to walk 2 hours, why? No car? Can’t afford the bus fare? That is the question and that you have a problem and figured out a solution to make it work even if that means walking 2 hours, backwards, up a hill both ways, in 10 inches of snow… Got it?
What shows heightened commitment is doing it for more than 3.5 hours per week. The fact that you walk (which begs the question of why) may be part of a larger topic that you have not shared here.
Exactly… I smell a possible essay topic ?
I feel some implied criticism here among some posters may not be warrented. Many people don’t live in a community that offers pre-professional dance classes (or have the money to afford them). We don’t know OPs circumstances or where he/she lives. We don’t know anything about OPs other activities. You seem to be taking for granted that the “heightened committment” of taking more than 3.5 hours of dance is even a possibility for this student.
I live in a small town. My daughter took ballet from the age of three until the present. The BEST studio in town (and I mean the classes taught by people with some credible training) had other full-time jobs and offered only ballet classes of 75 minutes twice per week in the ADVANCED classes. For several years we enhanced this schedule by driving 90 miles over twisty mountain roads through fog, high winds and snow to the closest studio that approached pre-professional standards (around 15 hours per week at age 13, including the local classes she could get). We spent every weekend in that town, for rehearsals as well. Went to summer intensives, the whole thing. She didn’t do homework well in the car, got carsick, I was terrified of the slippery/black-ice conditions in the mountains driving at night, and it all became too much. We would have had to leave home (and her dad) to keep up with ballet peers. That’s a LOT For an EC, when there’s no intention to make it a career.
Right now, my daughter takes classes…twice per week (ONLY in the winter/spring because her marching band schedule conflicts with the only days those classes are offered. Her technique is WAY above the others because of her past, but she does it for fun anyway.
REAL dance studios (that offer 15+ hours per week, let alone the 25-40 hours per week, @Knowsstuff talks about) usually only exist in large metropolitan areas. Don’t know what kind of dance OP is talking about, but pointe shoes alone cost $100 a pop, and a pre-professional dancer can go through a pair of these in a few days (a professional, one or two per day/performance).
I felt sick for months when we had to give up daughter’s ballet. I railed against it, and the fact that my husband accepted a tenured job in a small town away from cultural opportunities. But, you know, my daughter is happy as a clam with marching band and small-town school activities. I have a lot more time in MY life.
We’re always talking on CC about countering elitism. We’re always saying how student ECs should be what THEY enjoy, what enhances their lives, that ECs should be a choice, not a race to impress colleges, that high school should not be a time of high anxiety. OP said nothing in this post about getting into T-20-schools or dance programs, so we shouldn’t assume or imply that s/he is somehow sub-par for enjoying 3.5 hours of dance and walking to the classes.
@inthegarden. I will respond since you singled me out. (that’s perfectly fine). I answered her question honestly and I truly think there is a better story to be told here. No AO is going to be impressed with dancing 3.5 hours a week. But I understand what you are saying and 100% agree with it mostly. If that is her main EC then she needs to put it in better context. At least to me it reads that she loves dance so much she is willing to walk 2 hours to get there to do it. To me, that is the deeper story. As a reader that doesn’t know her history on CC. I want to know why. That to me makes her interesting, unique and personal. Those are my 3 main criteria for a great essay. So my suggestion was to help this student. I think a really cool and introspective essay can come out of this and how it relates to dance and then how it relates to what type of student she will be in college and what she can offer the college by taking her.
But 3.5 hours dance alone is just 1 EC. Now if she won some dance competition with just 3.5 hours a week then that would be impressive.
Assuming dance is twice a week, the two hours of walking implies a 30 min walk each way. My kids walked to school 20-25 minutes each way - I would describe this as a short walk. Perhaps outside of cities people don’t really walk? But I think the 3.5 hours of dance is a good EC.
3.5 hours is fine for an EC and I don’t know why folks think it needs to be more, to be valid. OP isn’t applying to join a dance theater. Of course, adcoms will appreciate it, as an activity.
In the past, on CC, when getting to an activity takes time (eg, the kid who rides an hour each way to a metro youth orchestra,) we allowed some of that time to be included. But it can misrepresent to call OP’s dancing 5.5 hours when it’s 3.5. She needs to think carefully.
But to borrow skieurope’s phrase, calling it 3.5 versus 5.5 won’t be what gets her an admit or not.
She could say, 3.5 plus an hour getting there. This point is not a showstopper or major tip factor. Be honest. If it were, say, robotics and getting home took an extra hour on the late bus, you wouldn’t add an hour to the robotics demands.
The reason why the emphasis on the hours in dance was the way it was originally phrased. This is an Ec. And a fine one. Don’t understand why or how someone gets there matters. I might be sensitive to this since 3.5 hours is like an afternoon after school for the majority of my patients. My kids took trains to busses to get to school daily like 40 minutes each way daily. It’s just a normal thing for a lot of students in cities that have mass transit. I just don’t think that, that stands out on its own merit unless like someone said the OP is in a rural area and this is a big deal. Without context it’s hard to know and understand. On its own its not getting her rejected or accepted anywhere.
I did not say it needed to be more to be valid. It’s a fine EC and 3.5 hours may be fine in context to other ECs, although probably not if it’s her main EC. My comment was based in OPs terminology of showing heightened commitment. As with many things, it’s all in context (which she did not share). 2 hours travel for once a week might be a lot, while 2 hours spread across 3 times a week is probably less than it takes to walk to and from school.
Some people commute 2 hours to work, others 5 minutes. It’s what you do while at work that counts, not how long it took to get there.
Colleges aren’t looking for an accounting of every waking hour. Same with an activity.
Ski, it was a reply to, “No AO is going to be impressed with dancing 3.5 hours a week” and the further comments it would need to be 15-25-40 hours/week.
Since when?
OK. While that was someone else, I kind of understand that point. I do think that posters who ask for chances use words like “impress” (or in this case, “heightened commitment”) a little to freely. So I would agree that 3.5 hours will not “impress” unless the poster uses a different definition of the word than me.