Extracurriculars

The Common App activities section is an opportunity to demonstrate to the Common App colleges your talents, skills, and specific examples of extracurricular activities you’ve participated in over the last few years.

What’s the purpose of extracurriculars? “Extracurricular activities can be a great opportunity to see how an applicant has self-directed their passions and interests,” says Jorge Delgado, Associate Director of International Admissions at Brandeis. “There are only so many hours in the day so seeing how a student has involved themselves outside the academic arena is a great way of understanding their potential fit for a university campus.”

Activities colleges care about

Leadership

Being student government president or a founder of any club, project, profit or non-profit organization will look great on your application since all colleges want to accept only the most ambitious, the most dedicated applicants

Excellence

Being the best at whatever you do proves that you are a hardworking person who is always pushing his/her limits. You play football? Ok, fine. You're 3 times champion of local football league? Our university definitely wants to see you in our football team.

Commitment

Colleges care about activities that you have committed yourself to and that means spending a good amount of time doing them.

WOW factor

WOW activity often has to do with the idea of it being something that not every high school student is doing. Wow examples may include qualifying for top competitions or rising to the top of something that is unconventional. Pursuing something that would be impressive even for an adult can also be a wow factor. Try to think of ways that you can be creative and push the envelope and that you can do something that a normal teenager wouldn’t do. If you can do that, you’re going to really stand out to colleges.

How to improve your activities list

In Uzbekistan, number of opportunities for activities is very limited especially if you are not from some fancy private school or lyceum. Student magazines, student media organisations, MUNs, TEDs, learning second language, sports are very common activities for uzbek applicants. But there are some easy tips that will make your activities list look great!

Want proof? Compare these two:

Art

Created art and organized club.

Founder, Art Honors Society

Organized and ran meetings, set up field trips, brainstormed and created group art activities, wrote and sent newsletters to members.

Most students write a pretty good activities list description and then they stop there. But it doesn’t take long to up-level an activities list from pretty good to great.

Here are three tips for doing that:

1. Use stronger verbs. I’ll define “stronger” in a moment, but in short: Are you describing your activity in the most dynamic way possible? Most students aren’t. Why? Because they’re using just-okay verbs.
2. Develop better (and perhaps a bit more) content. Have you included a wide range of responsibilities? Most students forget to include solving problems, gaining skills, and making tangible (and even quantifiable!) impact.
3. Demonstrate skills & values. Are you communicating what you learned or how an activity changed you? If not, you may be leaving money on the table.

A stronger verb … is more specific.

Example: “taught” is fine, but did you coach, mentor, train, or demystify?

A stronger verb … often provides more information.

Example: “organize” is fine, but did you arrange, catalog, compile, or systematize?

A stronger verb … just sounds better.

A few examples I like: mediate, publicize, administer...

You have only 150 symbols to describe your activity. Use them wisely.

1. Don't use full sentences
2. Use abbreviations
3. Don't restate your leadership position in description section

1. Leaving out significant activities
2. Using too strong/not strong enough verbs
3. Not using numbers. Numbers help to adequately assess your activity so always try to include them
4. Forgetting to mention awards. Participated in the MUN? Not bad. Got the best delegate award? Wow, that's great!
5. Failing to include highlights/examples of your involvment in the activity. I know that space is limited, but it's a great idea to mention one or two (the most significant ones) of dozens of your contributions. More admissions officers know about you more reasons will they have to accept you.
6. Using inconsistent formatting and punctuation. Choose one format for the top line of the activity entry, and stick with it.
7. Using abbreviations that no one understands.
8. Listing activities in the wrong order. Start with the most significant activity and finish with the least important one.
9. Not proofreading activities before submitting. Ideally, ask someone to look through the activities list and give feedback. Turbo college application students can ask help from Firdavs or Me (Ulugbek). We will be more than happy to help you.