<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. 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>How many hours did you list for your other activities? While it’s not impossible to put 40 hrs./wk. into an EC it is a lot and you won’t want to look like you’re padding your resume.</p>
<p>I did the math, and as of your common app it claims that you do over 62 hours of EC activities per week, which means an average of about 9 hours per day. While unrealistic, I’m not sure if the adcom pays much attention to this.</p>
<p>However, only some of my activities overlap each other for a short duration. Also summer is the big factor here because when I travel for tennis, I have many overnight trips leading to many “24 hours”-a-day weeks. Most of my hours for tennis comes from the summer. </p>
<p>Do you think this raises a red flag and how should I clarify?</p>
<p>I personally wouldn’t count an overnight trip as 24 hours a day of an activity. If you’ve got enough lines to break it up, you might present it as playing / practicing time and as travel / away from home time.</p>
<p>I emailed the general admissions email at Dartmouth when I had to correct a mistake on my common app. I’m not sure if there might be a better way?</p>
<p>I assume that yes, they just put the new information on your app (I emailed Northwestern with my mistake and they said they changed/updated my application or something like that.) In my email, I asked for the school to please respond to it or redirect me to someone that could help. I believe Dartmouth’s admissions office is closed until Jan 2nd, so I guess we’ll have to wait to get confirmation. I don’t think it’ll hurt your chances.
Sorry for the late response!</p>