“Your intellectual life may extend beyond the academic requirements of your particular school. Please use the space below to list additional intellectual activities that you have not mentioned or detailed elsewhere in your application. These could include, but are not limited to, supervised or self-directed projects not done as school work, training experiences, online courses not run by your school, or summer academic or research programs not described elsewhere.”
Surely this can already be answered by listing your activities and utilising the space for additional information on the Common App, which I would much rather do because then I do not have to repeat this information for multiple universities?
If a highly rejective school gives you the opportunity to tell them more about yourself by elaborating on your activities or hobbies, etc, you should consider doing so. Do you have another supplemental essay you could repurpose here?
I was just answering this in my application. I listed some additional courses (had much more than 5), and then three summer programs I did that were not in my application. It says “list” so I don’t think they want an extra essay. I would definitely fill it out, but I don’t think they want a huge block of text disguised as an essay, otherwise it wouldn’t have said “list.”