How to Write Great Descriptions for Your Activity List

How to Write Great Descriptions for Your Activity List

“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter,” said Blaise Pascal, a 17th century French mathematician and philosopher. This quote, commonly misattributed to famous persons such as Benjamin Franklin or Mark Twain, holds a resonant truth that has kept it alive for over 350 years: Less is More.After all, time is money, or rather, in the case of admissions officers who spend sun-up to sun-down reviewing thousands of college applications, time is sleep.The Common App activity list understands this truth. Students can highlight up to 10 activities. Each activity slot allows 50 characters (note: characters, not words) to describe the name of an organization/extracurricular and any positions/titles you hold.That’s not so tough, but then—here’s the tricky part—you get just 150 characters to detail all responsibilities, achievements, and awards related to an activity.Have no fear! Here are 5 tips for writing great descriptions for your activity list.

1. Ignore Character Limits (at First)

Like writing strong essays, crafting 150-character descriptions of your activities comes from multiple drafts, with freewriting and brainstorming in the beginning stages and refining in the latter. So, when you sit down to begin, pay no attention to the character limit.Make a list of your high school activities and include hobbies, piano lessons, school clubs, tutoring your cousin in math, you name it. Let yourself write freely about each one. You can describe why you joined, who you impacted, how your responsibilities grew, awards you won, and so on.If you have more than 10 activities, you can note the extra ones in the Additional Information Section. Read more about important factors for selecting your top 10 activities here.

2. Sift for Gold

After you’ve done this, begin the process of trimming to find the gold. With a highlighter in hand, or using the highlighter tool in your word processor, begin to identify the strongest parts of your descriptions.Typically, these are your day-to-day responsibilities, awards, special recognitions (such as being the youngest member of a team or the first person to accomplish X).Remove details that are obvious or repeat something already said. For example, if your position is “Chef,” then there’s no need to write, “I cook for people,” as it does not give readers more insight into what exactly you do as a chef.

3. Don’t Write Full Sentences

Next, refine the descriptions to fit the 150-character limit. Because the point of the activities list is to be succinct, you don’t have to write in complete sentences.Instead, we recommend starting with strong action verbs, similar to how you would compose a resume. Avoid the use of clunky adverbs like “very” or “extremely.” You can also try to think of synonyms for words that are particularly long, like replacing “classmates” with “peers” or “children” with “kids.”The idea is to cut where possible, so you make room for more details of substance. For example, rather than this long description:

• I started the first coding club at my high school. The club has 5 members. We meet every day afterschool, and I teach them JavaScript and CSS.

You can shorten it to:

• Founded school’s first coding club. Teach 5 peers JavaScript and CSS daily.

There is much more room now to write about other achievements related to the coding club. How would you trim the example below?

• I am the person who coordinates many volunteers at the local library and am responsible for scheduling their shifts every week.

4. Specify Who, What, When, Where

Since admissions officers read hundreds and sometimes thousands of applications, you can imagine they come across popular activities like Model UN or Key Club quite often.While it is perfectly accurate for you to write, “Debate global issues,” this does not do much to differentiate you from the hundreds of other applicants who also participate in MUN. Specificity helps to make for descriptions that standout.Don’t tell admissions officers that you tutor kids on the weekend, but that you teach math to sixteen 8- to 14-year-old disabled kids every Sunday at the community center.Don’t say that you do research on the value of education, but that you run correlation analyses on SPSS using census data from 5 Western countries to study education and social mobility.As you refine your activity list, ask yourself: can I get more specific? The more you dig into the particularities, the stronger your descriptions will become.

5. Quantify, Quantify, Quantify

If you have ever drafted a resume, you will know that using numbers is king. The same is true for your activities list. Why? Because the person on the side reading your application does not know you very well.  If you say you’ve helped many people, they won’t know what your definition of “many” is. Maybe your definition drastically differs than that of your admissions officer. But if you say that you helped 50 people, you eliminate all ambiguity.So, when you write your descriptions, note whether you entered 1,000 data points into a spreadsheet or 10,000; whether you increased club membership by 20% or 200%; and whether you assisted 7-year-old children or 70-year-old senior citizens.Add numbers where appropriate and make an educated guess if you do not have the exact measurement.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

It’ll take time to write an activity list that fully captures your accomplishments over the past three years given the character limit, but remember, less is more, so do not be afraid to trim down extraneous details to capture the most noteworthy parts.The expert admissions consultants at Wise World Prep have helped hundreds of students maximize their potential of being admitted to their top choice colleges and universities. Over 20 years, we have successfully guided students through each stage of the application process – from choosing competitive high school courses to building an appropriate college list to drafting winning essays to writing persuasive update and appeals letters. We would be happy to answer your questions and partner with you to create a successful admissions roadmap.Ready to get started? Schedule a complimentary 20-minute conversation today!Want to stay informed? Subscribe to our newsletter.See what others are saying about us