Okay, here is what my kids who had lots of activities did:
. .
- They “grouped” their activities. Like, one of my kids was active in Quiz Bowl, but she had a lot of different awards and activities over the years. So she created an activity called Quiz Bowl, put the hours/etc in, and said “See Additional Information” in the description,
- Then in additional information, she had a header called “Activities - Quiz Bowl”, and under that she put CONCISE bullets of her Quiz Bowl activities. She included her awards there, too – it seemed too scattered to put them in the awards section, made more sense to list them with the activity. I think AOs appreciate a concise, organized application, and they do read it all.
- So her bullets in additional info might have read something like this:
o Varsity Quiz Bowl team member for X High School (9 - 12)
o Attended ACE Quiz Bowl Camp (summers after 10 & 11)
o Top finisher at Snocat Quiz Bowl Tournament against 350 competitors (12)
o Team won Distriict 3 Regional Tournament (11, 12), went to Nationals (11, 12)
o Top ranked freshman at State of XX tournament (9)
o Finished 3rd individually in State of XX Rankings (12))
o Most valuable player award for high school team (11, 12)
o 3rd place individual finish in State of XX in National History Bee & Bowl (11)
Some of her activities required grouping and listing like this, and some didn’t. She put her most important activities first on the Activities list, of course.
This worked for her – she got in everyplace she applied, including one top 5 ranked national university.
So do what makes sense to you. Be sure you are clear, and you can assume that they WILL read the whole application. Let’s say you made a category called volunteering, and then in additional info you listed the bullets this way:
- Everfresh Food Bank - Volunteered to pack food from weekly farmer's market for 10 weeks (summer after 11th grade, 40 hours).
- XX Orphanage, XX, Thailand - Volunteered for 1 week to care for kids and build new bunk beds (summer after 10th grade)
etc
You might have an activity called Research, and then in additional info you’d have a line for each lab you worked in, and mention future paper publication (although you have to be careful here, papers can take YEARS to get to publication – my kid has been waiting for over 2 years since finishing research with the Los Alamos Lab during college for a paper that was coming “real soon now” to get published.) So don’t get too far over your skis there. Carefully state the status of the paper – maybe that the research is complete, publication is pending. Also carefully state that the presentation is scheduled for the future if you haven’t done it when the app goes in.
Here is what you shouldn’t do. Include an abstract or too much detail on your papers (AOs don’t care… the ONLY exception is a college that specifically asks for detail, like I think MIT might). Don’t turn the lists into essay or sentence format. Make your entries brief, easy to read, and don’t overload with too much detail. Just the facts in bullet form.
One other rule my kids followed is that they didn’t list anything they didn’t do after 10th grade unless it was related to their major or they’d won an award or it fit nicely into one of the categories/activities they were already creating.