<p>I have a concern regarding the extracurricular activities section on the Common Application. I have listed Competitive Tennis as my number one activity with a commitment of 40 hours per week for 45 weeks of the year. Most of this time is spent during the summer in which I am traveling for national tournaments and always practicing. I was advised to factor in travel time, leading to the 40/45. </p>
<p>Even though I practice year round including indoor practice in the winter, does the 40 hours/45 weeks raise a red flag? I hope not because I am very dedicated to tennis. Also I decided to leave out the “laundry list” of tennis accomplishments in the additional information section. I also did not include it in my essays as I believe that my time commitment shows my dedication. </p>
<p>I also have other activities that I included as participating in 50 weeks a year. I am also very dedicated to these activities (volunteer position at hospital, research position, and job), but should I explain further that this is in fact my time commitment?</p>
<p>I already submitted my Common App and I wrote about my volunteer position and my job for the essays</p>
<p>The other activities I have (besides summer programs) are: </p>
<p>2/50 Hospital volunteer
10/50 Job
4/25 Research
18/22 Tech competition
2/30 NHS
2/20 French Club
20/12 Swimming</p>
<p>Well, it would raise a red flag for me. If you spend 40 hours a week during the summer, that is not 45 weeks/year – more like 10-12. I am not an expert on how to fill out the Common App, and there might be better places on CC and better people to advise you on how to fill this out. But I would be more inclined to say 40 hours for 10 weeks, or whatever you do during the school year.</p>
<p>When I’ve looked at applications and seen these numbers, I am skeptical. There are only a certain number of hours in the day, and you have to sleep and go to school for at least 15 of them.</p>
<p>I’m confused. Do you spend 40 hours/week during the summer and then much less during the school year such that at your highest you spend 40 hours/week but do tennis for 45 weeks/year? If so, I would probably put 40/week for 10-15 weeks and then either mention somewhere you do less during the school year or put a lower number for 45 weeks in the year that averages out to the same amount total.</p>
<p>In the summer, I do more that 40 hours per week because I play every day and I was advised to count travel time. Since I do many tournaments that span up to 5 days, I was advised to count 24-hour days. Multiplying it out, 40/40 would equal 1600 hours a year. This is many in the summer where I have many “24 hour” tournaments as well as school breaks. </p>
<p>Sounds like terrible advice. Do you not sleep or eat when out of town? Was this advice given to you by a lawyer who triple-bills the same 15-minute increments?</p>
<p>take out travel time, add together total number of hours divide by 52=x. on common app, write x/52. at least i hope this works. i have an activity i do for 25 hours/week during the summer and only 2 for the school year. I think i averaged it to like 5/52.</p>
<p>Since you’ve already submitted your Common App, I’m not sure what you can do about this unless you are able to do a revision. If you can’t resubmit, you’re stuck. I suppose you could send a letter/email to admissions departments clarifying (although make it clearer than your paragraph above, which made little sense to me – “this is many in the summer” is not grammatically correct so I have no idea what you mean). </p>
<p>And I don’t think you’re supposed to figure out total hours for 12 weeks and then average them out over the year.</p>
<p>I hope you uploaded a resume as a supplement which would give a clearer picture of your activities. The resume is a nice way to show your whole EC picture, since the Common App only allows for 10 activities. If you did not send your resume, you could try to email one as a separate document.</p>
<p>Since I play year-round, I did not want to put x hours/10-12 weeks for the summer which would disregard my commitment during the school year. That is the reason I averaged all my hours together and divided by 40. </p>
<p>I did not include a resume for my tennis accomplishments, because I did not want to have a laundry list of items. I used the additional space to include other ECs that are not as important as the 10 I listed in the Common App. </p>
<p>Taking away travel time I would have 40/12 for the summer and varying from 1 to 4 hrs for the remaining 40 weeks. </p>
<p>How should I calculate the x hours/x weeks now?</p>
<p>Also, would an email correcting this error and providing a mini-tennis resume hurt my chances? I am also applying to other Ivies.</p>
<p>They give you a little section underneath each activity to discuss it. You could have used this area to clarify.</p>
<p>It looks like you already submitted your application. You don’t necessarily need to send a clarification. Did you contact the coach about playing at Brown? If so then you probably do not need the extra list of tennis stuff.</p>
<p>In that area, I put “Playing since 2002, 20 time medalist [regional tour], 6th in State Championship” and ran out of room. </p>
<p>I did not contact the coach, but I intend to try out as a potential walk on. I am debating whether or not to send in my tennis resume this late in the game (my stats two summers ago wouldn’t have been good enough, therefore I did not contact the coach…then I spent all my time working on the actual apps for college this summer…sighh).</p>
<p>Should I send in the resume then? For clarification, how should I go about explaining?</p>
<p>I dont care what the Texas A&M thing says. The idea that you would count sleeping or eating dinner/resting at the end of the day during a multi day tournament as hours spent on an activity seems ludicrous to me. Yes, travel time makes sense but you were going to sleep and eat that day whether or not you were in the tournament.</p>
<p>I’m not sure that there is anything you can do that won’t just attract the wrong kind of attention to yourself. It’s always possible that the hours won’t be looked at very closely and the reader won’t notice – unless you point it out to them with a follow-up.</p>
<p>I would make a new version of your Common App for any applications you haven’t yet submitted.</p>
It was a honest mistake, and if I send in corrections, I hope the admissions office would not take it the wrong way! </p>