Lakeside School

In August I wrote about the necessity of shifting our culture away from focusing on awards, titles, and credentials, and retraining our students to search for meaning in what they do. 

Since then, I’ve received similar questions from many parents and guardians: don’t college applications instruct students to list many credentials? Isn’t the “activity section” of the Common Application (an electronic platform accepted by 1,000+ colleges) asking students to input their resume? Don’t students need credentials to differentiate themselves in highly selective applicant pools?

The answer to each question is “no.”

Admissions to highly selective U.S. colleges has become a topic of great intrigue, so it’s understandable that families are often bombarded with (mis)information about college admissions. “But I read in the paper…,” I often hear. Or “My neighbor who’s a Stanford alum told me that…” Or even, “I’m positive my older child got into their top choice college because of their impressive resume.” But none of these anecdotes, including the final parents’ speculation (this truly was no more than speculation, since they hadn’t been told this by an admissions officer), are from credible sources. 

Below, I break down the structure of the Common Application, focusing primarily on the activities section. In doing so, I hope to dispel much of the misinformation families may have heard about activities. Our objective is to help our students be highly compelling applicants, and we use our expertise to guide them in making informed choices grounded in current admissions practices rather than myths. After we wipe the slate clean and let go of those prior perceptions, we can begin reshaping our understanding of how students can successfully address their activities in their college applications. 

The structure of the Common Application

There are seven sections to the first half of the Common Application (see image on right), only one of which focuses on activities. The first four sections, as well as the last, ask for basic information about the student. Some questions ask students to select from pre-chosen options, not even allowing for elaboration. The open-ended questions require direct responses with extremely limited character counts (e.g., What is your city of birth? What is the size of your graduating class? List the titles of your senior year classes.). I often tell students these are many “blank lines to fill in.”

The only sections that allow for elaboration, thought, and nuance are “Activities” and “Writing.” The writing section prompts students to enter an essay of a maximum of 650 words (about one page single-spaced). While there are some circumstances where writing about an activity (or multiple activities) is wise, colleges always advise not repeating information from other sections. Since there is a section dedicated to activities, we advise most students to write about topics other than their activities (though occasionally, writing an essay about an activity, specifically if it allows the student to deeply explore why they find meaning in it, is a good option). This brief essay is a precious opportunity for your student to write about their identity, values, unique point of view, or important moment that impacted them; it would be a waste to use it otherwise. 

The other half of the Common Application contains the “college-specific questions,” where each college has unique prompts. Sometimes, a college asks students to elaborate on a meaningful activity in anywhere from 100-250 words. Aside from this prompt, activities rarely arise in this portion of the application.

Let’s do the math. If activities are one-seventh of half of the application, it’s fair to conclude that their role isn’t as large as many families think.

The Activities section

Granted, this is very rough math. Despite being one-seventh of half the application, the Activities section is one of the lengthier components (not long, just longer, as you will see). Students can share up to 10 activities; these include school year co-curriculars, summer and school break commitments, jobs, internships, family commitments, hobbies, and anything else that consumes their time outside the classroom. 

But there is limited space to elaborate on each activity. Below is an image of the student interface for one activity filled in: 

The final field in the left image is 146 characters, a visualization of the maximum space to describe an endeavor. When I consider the extensive hours students dedicate to activities, there’s is no way a student can capture the specific details of each. That’s okay! The extensive details don’t interest colleges.

Note that the instruction for this field asks for an activity description, including accomplishments and recognitions. It’s healthy and worthwhile for students to include a distinction, perhaps the most notable one. But the field does not say, “List your credentials, awards, and accomplishments below.”

When students fill this space with credentials, they miss an important opportunity to share more about themselves. Let’s examine the examples below, which are from a PDF output (what it looks like on the college side) of a fictionalized example of a Common Application:

In the first activity, colleges learn nothing about what role the student played in raising funds. Did they canvas door-to-door? Design a website to market the organization’s efforts? Write letters to potential donors? Moreover, colleges don’t learn why this cause is important to the student. Is a family member or friend a breast cancer survivor? Were they inspired by an article or book they read, or something they learned in school?

For the track and field activity, the race times for the 1600 and 3200 are meaningless to an admissions officer unless they’re familiar with the sport. (Are you wondering what a “PR” is? So will many admissions officers. A PR is a track acronym for “personal record.”) If the student is an extremely talented athlete, college admissions officers expect their coaches to recruit them. Otherwise, college admissions officers aren’t in the business of assessing athletic talent.

In this student’s case, they have external recognitions (all county and state qualifier) that suggest they are talented. But listing both is a waste of space. By qualifying for states, they self-identified as one of Washington’s best, including within King County. That they were recognized county-wide is implied.

“I want to know what makes the student tick,” an admissions dean told me at my summer conference (see August’s article). Neither activity description above does that.

Okay, Ari, you’ve wiped the slate clean and told us what our students shouldn’t do. But what should they do?

In subsequent pieces this year, my colleagues will share how students should incorporate activities into their applications. At Lakeside, we have college counselors who worked in admissions and read applications for Barnard, Haverford, Pomona, Stanford, and Washington University in St. Louis, and who offer Lakeside an extensive network of admissions colleagues through conferences (see my last Inside Lakeside piece for an example) and professional associations. The knowledge they’ll share is drawn from both their own experiences reviewing college applications and the routine communications they have with admissions colleagues. 

Finally, let’s remember, too, that decentering credentials is about more than being a strong college applicant. It’s also about teaching our students to find purpose in their lives and commitments, which leads to greater happiness and life satisfaction.

Ready to rethink the role of activities in the application? Stay tuned for upcoming editions of Inside Lakeside.

Ari Worthman is Lakeside’s director of college counseling. Reach him and other members of the team at info@lakesideschool.site.