The Common App, which is an application that allows applicants to apply to many colleges at once, includes an activities section, which requires you to list your high school activities  in detail. The Common App activities section allows you to showcase the activities most meaningful to you throughout high school. The more you can demonstrate your uniqueness, the more a college may see you as a way to round out their class.

There’s no doubt about it: This is one of the most important sections of the Common App because it gives you an opportunity to distinguish yourself from other applicants. Describing your activities on the Common App will be one of the keys to your admissions success. The activities section gives admissions officers a look at the flavor you might bring to the incoming class. It makes you look like more than just your GPA and transcripts — you’re human, after all!

For example, if you spent a summer on a National Geographic expedition as the assistant to a biologist on board the ship, your application should reflect that experience. If you assisted a local law firm through a summer internship program and want to study law in college, you should definitely include that in your activities section.

You get the idea! But what if you feel you don’t have any standout qualities to put on your application? Your experiences make you who you are, so represent them honestly, accurately, and in detail. 

Our team at Campus to Career Crossroads will work through an overview, tips on how to describe activities on the Common App, and an example of how you might want to structure your Common App activities section.

Common App Activities Section Overview

Let’s take a quick look at what the Common App activities section looks like, including what qualifies as an activity, character limits for descriptions, and the providing the best information you can offer.

It is an important section. Beyond your grades and test scores, admission officers will zero in on your extracurricular activities. Comparing applicants with similar academic backgrounds and activities can distinguish the  differences between applicants.  

For example, let’s say that two applicants look like this, side by side: 

Applicant 1: 

• GPA: 4.4 on a 4.0 scale
• Test score: 32 ACT
• Activities: 

Intern, Cambridge Pets

Cared for all animals at the clinic, ran the clinic’s boarding and grooming, filed paperwork, named employee of the year.

Student Director, Change for Mental Health Awareness

Spearheaded first-of-its kind organization at Cambridge High School to combat mental health challenges among the Cambridge student population.

Applicant 2: 

• GPA: 4.4 on a 4.0 scale
• Test score: 32 ACT
• Activities: None listed

Which applicant might have a better chance? Obviously, there are no guarantees, but this example highlights how the activities in Common App can boost your credentials.

What the Activities Section Looks Like

Let’s take a look at what the activities section of the Common App looks like. Knowing how it is laid out can help alleviate the stress of the unknown, especially prior to filling it out. The activities section has four sections:

• Activity type: You will select the activity type in a drop-down menu that fits the description of the activity you are listing, such as arts or music, clubs, community engagement, family responsibilities, hobbies, sports, work, volunteering, or other meaningful experiences.
• Position/leadership description: Next, in fifty characters or less, you can describe the position or leadership position you had at the activity. Now, what exactly is a “character”? A character is a single visual object used to represent text, numbers, or symbols such as punctuation marks. For example, you can type “intern” in this part, like in our previous example. Whatever you do, avoid repeating information from any of the boxes. 
• Organization name: You have room to input the organization name in 100 characters or less in the next section. For example, you will input “Cambridge Pets” like in the previous example of the organization name. What happens if the organization does not fit in 100 characters? Organizations may have really long names! Do your best to fit the entire name in the section.

Describe the activity: Next, describe the activity with what you have accomplished and recognition you received, like this: Cared for all animals at the clinic, ran the clinic’s boarding and grooming, filed paperwork, and named employee of the year. The Common App allows you 150 characters in this section.

What Qualifies as an Activity?

According to the Common App website, you can share information about work, hobbies, clubs, and community engagement. You can even mention family responsibilities, which might include caring for your own kids or younger siblings, assisting grandparents, and taking care of household tasks (cooking, cleaning, running errands, working to provide income for the family and other regular tasks).

You can add up to 10 activities on your application, but you don’t need to add 10 total. If you’re involved in more activities than that, pick the activities that can best tell your story. 

Character/Word Count Limit for Each Activity

As mentioned above, you have a strict character count (not words) for each activity, which means that you want to carefully plan out what you are going to write and make it as dynamic as possible. 

• Position/leadership description: Max characters: 50
• Organization name: Max characters: 100
• Description of activity: Max characters: 150

The dangerous part of this exercise is that you might type something in, get cut off, and then stop. However, it is more important to be intentional and creative with every word, which we will walk through how to do in the next sections.

Information You Can Provide

The Common App will also ask for other details, beyond the activity type and description. It will also ask for the grade levels in which you participated in the activity, when you participated in them (whether during the school year or on breaks, for example), hours spent doing the activity per week, and the number of weeks spent doing the activity per year. The Common App also wants to know whether you intend to continue the activity in college.

17 Tips for How to Describe Activities on the Common App

So, how do you make your activities section awesome? How do you stand out among a crowd of potentially thousands? If it seems like a tall order, you are right. However, it is important to be as thorough as possible with your activities section.

Tip 1: Keep track of all your activities.

One of the best tips to describe activities on the Common App – track it! Keep a running list of activities throughout high school. Start a Google Doc your freshman year and keep adding to it as time goes on. If you do not keep track of your activities, you may feel at a loss to know how to categorize and organize them when you apply for college. 

However, not everyone is that organized, and you aren’t in deep trouble if you don’t do it. Here’s how to gather a summary of everything you did, starting freshman year: 

• Brainstorm with your parents: Your parents likely have a very good memory of the activities you did, because they may have been the ones driving you from one activity to another.
• Have your friends help: Your friends are often in the same activities, and if one friend is pretty organized or another has a stellar memory, you can start from there.
• Talk with organizations and clubs at your high school: Organizations and clubs often keep records of when certain trips occurred and other activities.

Ultimately, putting together a résumé early on can really help you up your game for keeping track of your activities and accomplishments.

Tip 2: List and organize your activities in advance.

Before you even start putting your activities together on the Common App, write them out and organize them. What happened when? What accomplishments did you achieve with baseball or football? What accolades did your club members give you? The list of accomplishments and activities that you have kept throughout high school will help you get started. 

Are you missing activity opportunities that could enhance your application narrative? Listing your activities from a 50,000 foot view will help you determine opportunities and if you are too heavily weighted in a certain activity such as sports – high school team, club team, etc.

Tip 3: Track your time commitment.

It’s important to understand how long you have spent in an activity, and don’t be shy about it. You can also calculate travel, practice time and other extras that go into dedicating your time to the activity. You may need to do some simple math to determine the hours and weeks spent doing a specific activity, and all that is worthwhile and valid.

Tip 4: Rank your activities in chronological order.

Ensure you don’t write about activities in a haphazard fashion. If your activities are in the wrong order and have different themes, admissions committees will have trouble reading your application.

You can use the arrow key on the Common App to move your  activities up and down. It’s important for you to showcase your activities in the best order of impact. Place your most important activities at the top and use the preview button to review. One way to determine “the most important” item is to ask yourself, “What am I most proud of and does it most closely relate to my major?”

Think through it chronologically to start, and if your activities become more advanced over time, such as being on the student council as a member your first year, then becoming student council president by the time you’re a senior, you’ll want to lead with that.

Tip 5: Know the importance of leadership skills. 

Naturally, if you have leadership positions, put them on the activities section of the Common App. You may not even realize you have leadership positions among some of your activities, but if you think carefully about your activities, you may realize that you were a director of training on your debate team or that you led the other peer tutors. Even the second-chair trumpet role shows that you had a leadership position in the band.

Consider the leadership positions you have had among all the activities in high school:

• Academic teams
• Theater, band, choir
• Athletic teams
• Community service/volunteering
• Jobs/internships
• Peer tutoring/advising
• Political organizations
• School newspaper, literary magazine, yearbook, etc.
• Student government

Tip 6: Family responsibility counts!

Do you have an important role in your family of helping your family members? That counts on the Common App, and colleges will view helping your family as an important role. You can select “family responsibility” on the drop-down menu on the Common App.

What are some examples? You might:

• Take care of younger siblings
• Help care for grandparents who live with you
• Assist your family with the family business
• Help disabled family members

Just remember that it’s valid and it’s important, and you should put it on your application.

Tip 7: Use active voice.

You want to use the most energetic, active language that you can when you fill out this section of the Common App. If the section starts sounding like the droning voice of your English teacher (snore!), note that this is the time to make sure all of the information you have accumulated in English class thus far gets applied now. 

So, just to remind you, active voice means that the subject performs the action.

In other words, you would consider the sentence “I played tennis in high school” an active voice because you (the subject) perform the action — playing tennis. Avoid passive voice (which in this context sounds kind of weird anyway), “tennis was played by me.” 

Active voice, put simply, is more direct and clear because it identifies the subject and emphasizes the performed action. If you have trouble identifying active over passive voice, reach out to Campus to Career Crossroads and we can help craft your activities with an active voice.

In the meantime, perfect using amazing verbs. “I volunteered at the animal shelter” puts people to sleep, whereas, “I donated 1,000 hours of my time at the Kickapoo Animal Shelter” is much more clear and more engaging.

Tip 8: Lead with your most impressive activities.

Consider grouping your items based on your potential major or intended college goals and then work your way down through your list.

For example, if you are applying as a music major, why would you lead with “entered a science fair project about bubbles” when you could lead with “took piano lessons for twelve years with Craft Your Music – Center for Young Musicians and led all holiday community concerts” instead?

Tip 9: Use present tense for current activities.

Do not forget to indicate that you are still working on an activity right now. For example, if you are currently still playing soccer, you can use present tense — “play striker for Cambridge High School girls’ soccer team” instead of “played striker for Cambridge High School girls’ soccer team.” 

Tip 10: Don’t embellish. 

Do not make up anything on your activities list. For example, if you are not sure how many volunteer hours you committed to the math peer tutor group you belong to, don’t make up the numbers. You never know what might happen — your advisor’s letter of recommendation may not match the hours you put on your activities list. 

If those hours do not match with what you have reported, the admission office may contact you and ask you why things fail to line up. Do not put yourself in that position. A college might rescind your admission offer if you falsify application details.

Tip 11: Edit, edit, and edit some more.

How do you make sure it is perfect? You edit it, step away from it, and allow time for revisions. Reviewing your activities the next day is an essential step in the editing phase. You may have gone over the character limit in an activity section. Editing it the next day can help you find the perfect wording to fit everything within the character count.

Tip 12: Make it interesting.

As soon as a character count shows up, you may believe it is impossible to get creative. You may think, “That is what essays are for, right?” No, you can actually do a lot to make your 150 characters interesting, and more than you might think. A few examples of words you can use that can illuminate your writing: 

• Activated the Future Dentists’ Club
• Traversed Europe with the Cambridge jazz band
• Pledged as an Eagle Scout
• Advocated on behalf for homeless kids
• Assembled a winning robot with the robotics club
• Collaborated with special education classes
• Dramatized “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” with the theater club
• Executed a new plan for new high school tennis courts
• Finalized plans for a new theater curriculum
• Kindled interest in bringing Russian to Cambridge High School
• Interacted with administrators 

Tip 13: Show yourself as a specialist.

Do not worry about being well-rounded during these record-setting application cycles. 

What does “being a specialist” mean? It means striving to involve yourself in a million different activities in high school. Some students try to get involved in four different sports and six activities, plus volunteering.

Colleges want to see how you connect to your passions and your intended major. If you want to major in physics, do a couple of activities on your list showcase your interest in physics? Show how everything comes full circle.

Tip 14: Create your own activities to better your community.

Overloading yourself in school clubs may miss the mark, especially if you do not really enjoy it. Why not consider creating your own version of your contributions?

Maybe you want to major in information technology while helping underserved communities. What if you begin collecting routers and modems in your neighborhood to donate to showcase how you can intersect your activities with your desire to volunteer? 

Tip 15: Metrics rule.

When possible, in learning how to describe activities in Common App, track and incorporate numbers. Let’s say you help prepare and serve food for a homeless shelter. How many meals did you serve each time and how many pounds of food did you collect or cook? 

You want to make sure you get these numbers exactly right, because you would not want the college to question whether or not you inflated your numbers.

Tip 16: Don’t forget summer programs.

Did you attend any college summer programs during your four years of high school? For example, did you attend a business, leadership, art, or STEM camp during high school? Add these to your activity list. They can showcase the depth of your experiences and demonstrate how you will bring unique experiences to the potential class.

Tip 17: Skip modesty.

We often see applications in which clients are too modest.  The information you are providing is for your college application! While you do not want to brag, you want to ensure you are creating a standout application to be accepted when compared to thousands of other applicants.

Did you lead a fundraiser for four years? You may have raised thousands of dollars, so do not keep those impressive numbers to yourself!

Examples of How to Describe Activities on the Common App

Look at a Common App activities example and how you might want to craft your Common App Activities section. Remember that this is just a Common App activities section example and you will want to be scrupulously honest on your Common App:

Founder and President

Literacy website

Operate a successful literacy website with 22,000 subscribers to help dyslexic high school students learn how to decode classic books.

President

Computer Club

Teach other students proficiency in data structures and algorithms, database and SQL, integrated development environments, cloud computing and more.

First-Chair Violinist

Cambridge High School orchestra

Took lessons at a music school for nine years. Performed for the Cambridge Solo Festival for three years. Lead community lessons for second graders.

Assistant Instructor

Carleton YMCA

Trained young swimmers of all ages to develop proper technique and helped instill confidence while learning the butterfly stroke.

Bakery Assistant

King City Bakery

Greeted customers, processed orders, and sold treats. Boxed up bakery items for online orders and shipped them to 41 locations around the world.

Dishwasher

Catalina Diner

Cleaned all dishes in accordance with strict restaurant sanitation regulations. Versatile employee who also prepped food and bus tables when needed.

Create a Winning Activities List

How to describe activities on the Common App does not have to be daunting. In fact, Campus to Career Crossroads can streamline the process for you and even provide additional tips to ensure your entire Common App, including your essay, stands out to admissions officers. Our proven process ensures that you accomplish your application goals. 

We will make sure your activities list is comprehensive, impressive and makes you stand out at college to which you apply. Get in touch with Campus to Career Crossroads so you get one-on-one help with the Common App from start to finish.

FAQs

What are some more important questions to ask about how to describe activities on the Common App?

Are activities important?

Yes! Activities have become a big differentiator for admissions officials as many applicants have high GPAs and standardized test scores. This is a new admissions trend that many students are unaware of and which can significantly impact their admissions odds.

How do you write a description of a Common App activity?

Knowing that you only have a limited amount of characters in which to summarize each Common App activity, it can seem daunting to put together a great description in just a few characters. However, it can be done using active voice, exciting verbs, and a great list of activities. Sometimes, you just need to start with your résumé or activities list laid out in front of you to get going.

Does the order of my activities matter?

Organize your activities in order of most important to least important. You want the important activities to stand out and at the top of the list! You want to strategize your activities as much as you can on the Common App. Let Campus to Career Crossroads help you out.

How many words to describe activities on Common App?

The Common App allows you to input 150 characters for each activity description. Does that seem like a lot? Remember that characters are different from word count. You’ll always notice that you’ll run out of characters pretty fast. For example, this post is 3,000 words, but it has 21,000 characters! (See the difference?) Check carefully when you’re evaluating character vs. word count.