How to Make Your Application Better Using Just the Activities List

Source: Tufts University 

When I was little I thought the Clean Plate Club was a real club, complete with weekly meetings. I thought it was akin to Girl Scouts or my town soccer team, but more exclusive because it required an entrance exam. The exam was, of course, finishing your whole dinner, and I could never pass (in my defense, I was set up to fail; no child can be expected to eat that many peas). I wanted to be in that club more than anything.

This childhood aspiration should tell you something about my dad. Will Reynolds is one of those dads who doesn’t like to waste anything, hence playing up the Clean Plate Club like it was the cast of Zoom  or something (for those who don’t know: Zoom is the best children’s TV show there ever was or will be). If we bought something at the grocery store, we were going to eat it. As it turns out, life lessons from the Clean Plate Club can be applied to many things, including (you guessed it!) college applications. In filling out the Common Application and Tufts supplement, you are given a very limited amount of space to tell us the complete story of you. So let me give you some advice as a Clean Plate Club hopeful:

You should use every bit of your application to tell your story, just like I was expected to eat everything on my plate growing up. In my opinion, the vast majority of college applicants are wasting one huge opportunity to maximize their space, and it is in the “Activities” section of their Common Application. So in the spirit of staying transparent in this process, here are four things you can do to use the Activities section to its absolute fullest potential. This will not only make your application a more comprehensive introduction to you as a person, it will also make it more powerful and more compelling.

1. Order Matters. List what you consider to be the most important/meaningful activities first. I don’t say this because I won’t read to the bottom (I will always read to the bottom, I promise). I say it because the way you prioritize your activities tells a story about you. If you see yourself as a funky jazz musician first and foremost, why would you bury “Jazz Ensemble” three quarters of the way down your list of activities, under that one year you participated in Relay for Life? If you think part of what makes you unique is that you’re both the captain of the football team and the LGBT club, why wouldn’t you put those two things next to each other at the top of your list of activities? You have control over what I learn about you when. Don’t make me guess what’s most important to you. Tell me.
2. Write in Your Own Voice. Even in this seemingly documental space, your voice should be present. I once had an applicant write, in the “Details” section under his role as a youth basketball coach: “I chase ten-year-old boys around a gym and try to teach them how to dribble without falling over.” I immediately began laughing. Already I had an image of this applicant and I hadn’t even begun reading his essays. If you’ve been class president three out of the four years you were on student senate, or you’re so good at chess you beat your own dad, which in your house is like a coup, or you won your school’s talent show, which just so happened to have 47 contestants spread out over three nights, tell me this. All of it. Be specific, tell a story, and do it in your own voice.  You’re painting me a picture of your life, and it starts here.
3. Don’t Leave Anything Out. When I get to your guidance counselor’s recommendation, I should not have to go back to your Activities section and write, “Her Guidance Counselor adds that Sarah balances a part-time job.” It was your job to tell me this. If you pick your younger brother up every day after school and make him a snack while he does his homework, include that in your list; it is an activity. It accounts for some of your time, and it tells me why you couldn’t join the chess team that meets right after school. Family responsibilities, paid jobs, foreign exchange trips, conferences – these all add to my mental image of you going about your day. Do not leave them out. On the flip side…
4. Do Not List Just to List. Just because you can list as many as ten activities on this list, does not mean that you should. Maybe for one week in 9^th grade you volunteered at a soup kitchen. I’m happy you did this. It’s thoughtful, and hopefully it got you excited about giving back in the future. But that does not make it something you should include in the “Activities” section of your Common Application. Instead, you should be focusing on what I’ll call meaningful activities (that is, meaningful to you – volunteering at a soup kitchen is obviously meaningful, but clearly it didn’t stick for you). Meaningful activities are things that you sustained over a period of time (i.e. not a couple of weeks three years ago). Meaningful activities are also things that require teamwork, leadership skills, specialized knowledge, or a significant amount of time or energy. Six of these meaningful activities can be far more impressive than ten “far-fetched” activities, like going on sunny vacations with your family or joining that club for a hot second in tenth grade before you made the dance team and promptly quit. So before you add “playing video games” to your list, ask yourself if it’s meaningful.

That’s it! Four easy steps and you’ve made the most of this tiny space in your Common Application! Welcome to the Clean Plate Club, my friends, I’ll see you at the meeting next week. Please bring extra snacks, we never have leftovers.