Estimating hours for the application activities section

I’ve been working with a lot of people finishing up applications for early November deadlines, and the same question has come up a few times: how am I supposed to estimate the time I spent on an activity? The Common Application itself gives very little guidance: “For each activity you’ll hours spent per week on the activity, and then the weeks spent per year. If you can’t remember the exact details, like the time spent on the activity, it’s alright to give your best guess.”

Here’s why the hours per week of the activity section is difficult: very few people, including high school students, consistently spend the same number of hours per week on any activity. If you were to ask me how many hours a week I work, I would have a very hard time answering you. Some weeks I work a lot; some weeks I work little. Some years I take more clients, some fewer. There’s no “typical” week for me, and a lot of students are in the same situation, with few typical weeks.

Let’s take a simple example. If you tutor from four to six in the afternoon every Tuesday from September to December, then that seems easy. Two hours per week, 16 weeks. Except you probably don’t actually tutor every Tuesday—there are holidays and other schedule conflicts. And you also covered a friend’s shift on a few Thursdays. And there was that four-hour Saturday session. And some of the sessions went longer than two hours, but a few were shorter, but you’re not sure they balance out.

Even that simple one is weird, and most activities aren’t that simple. What if you’re in school plays? In the run-up to the play, you have rehearsals every day, four days a week, for two hours. But the two weeks before the show, you’re at the school for five hours a day. You spend 16 hours the weekend before the show working your butt off, and the show weekend itself involves being at school for six hours after school on Friday and six hours on Saturday. There’s a wrap-up for two hours the Monday after the show completes, and then there’s three weeks off before you begin rehearsals for the next show. How do you accurately capture that? You’re trying to estimate the hours per week of being in the theater club for three years, with its wild ups and downs of time spent.

First I want to point out that good descriptions of your activities will help minimize this problem. If you don’t just say that you are in the theater club, but also mention how many plays you part of, what jobs you did as an actor, director, and/or technical crew, and any awards or recognition you received, then the number of hours won’t be as big a deal.

The approach that I recommend is focused on honesty and consistency. I don’t want the people I work with spending too much of their limited time and energy going through their calendars and memories trying to come up with some sort of typical week for an activity that has no typical week. That time and energy can be spent on the writing portions of the application, or studying to keep their grades up, or spending more time with their friends and family.

So give a quick and honest estimate and move on. For the tutoring example, I’d say to the student “it’s basically two hours per week, right? There were a few weeks with more, but also a few weeks with none. Just put two hours per week for 15 weeks (because you didn’t tutor the last week of December) and move on.” If that feels honest to the student, then they can use that estimate and move on. To the theater student I’d say “you start with eight hours a week. There are a few weeks off here and there, but they don’t compare in intensity and growth to the few weeks and weekends where you spend a lot more. So how about 10 hours a week—does that feel honest?” If they feel that’s honest, then they can go with that. If they feel it needs adjusting, then we can talk through how much to adjust. The discussion for each activity, whether with someone else or just yourself, need not be more than a few minutes per activity. Get an estimate that’s honest—don’t only count the busiest weeks and multiply those as if every week were that busy, but don’t sell yourself short—and make sure you’re being consistent with how you estimate. Then let it go. If you’re honest and consistent, then you can explain your method to anyone who asks you how you got to that number.

This approach may not work for everyone. You may think that with some extra time you can come up with something that’s not just honest but also more accurate. Maybe you don’t trust yourself to be either honest or accurate without doing some more work. My approach may feel too fluid or lazy for you. I understand. If that’s the case, then let me point you to my friend Admission Mom and her formula for getting accurate hour reports (scroll down to section 8). Even better, her example involves zombie hunting!

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, here are three easy things you can do:

1. Share it on your social media feeds so your friends and colleagues can see it too.

2. Read this related post:

   Choosing, and explaining, your extracurricular activities

3. Ask a question in the comments section.

Apply with Sanity doesn’t have ads or annoying pop-ups. It doesn’t share user data, sell user data, or even track personal data. It doesn’t do anything to “monetize” you. You’re nothing but a reader to me, and that means everything to me.

Photo by Zoe Herring

Apply with Sanity is a registered trademark of Apply with Sanity, LLC. All rights reserved.

Choosing, and explaining, your extracurricular activities

A few weeks ago I had a great opportunity to talk to students at a local high school about school clubs, activities, and extracurriculars. It was voluntary; students weren’t forced to go and listen. That meant I had a good crowd, eager to listen and ask really good questions. This is a summary of the things we talked about.

Before we even begin thinking about the activities list on your college applications, it’s really useful to understand why colleges ask about your activities at all. And to be clear, many of them don’t really care that much. Many public universities (and some private ones) use basic formulas for GPA, rank and/or test scores to give automatic acceptance, regardless of your extracurriculars. The activities list really matters most when schools use holistic review for applicants, whether that’s a school who uses holistic admission for everyone or a school that uses holistic admission just for the student who don’t meet their initial formula for auto-acceptance. And of course what you do with your time matters to you and those around you, regardless of college applications.

Colleges ask about your activities for two reasons: they’re interested in making their community as vibrant as possible, and because what you do in high school is the clearest indicator of what you’ll do in college.

Universities aren’t just honor societies for students who did well in high school. They are actual people working together toward common goals, not just walking-and-talking GPAs working toward their own individual goals. Colleges want people who are going to be active and make the campus a community. They want people who are going to do interesting things outside the classrooms, people who are going to join groups and people who are going to be leaders. They consider their campus a community, and they want people who will contribute to that overall wellbeing of the community.

And how do they know if you’ll contribute to their community? They don’t, but looking at how you contributed to your communities in high school gives them a pretty good idea. So asking you to explain what you currently do with your time outside of the classroom is how they try to predict what you might do outside their classrooms. It’s not a perfect predictor, but it’s the best they’ve got.

Understanding why they ask about your activities goes a long way to knowing how to choose and explain your own activities in high school. It’s not about making yourself look good or seeming impressive. It’s about being an interesting and interested part of your community.

So here’s some advice.

Anything you do just because “it looks good to colleges” is a waste of time. Don’t fall for this mindset. It’s unhealthy for you, because it encourages you to think of yourself as a product or brand to be marketed, not a whole person. And besides that, it doesn’t really work. For one, these admissions professionals have seen lots and lots and lots of applications. They can spot a faker. To be fair, spending 20 hours doing something you don’t care about is probably better for your application than doing nothing. But spending those 20 hours on something that is important to you is better for you and better for your application. They’re not looking at your activities list without context: they’re looking at it in the context of the rest of your application and your high school context. If you do things that are interesting to you and challenge you, that will look good to colleges. One-off activities or hollow honors don’t help anyone, they just waste your time and work against your own development.

Quality is always better than quantity. One club where you really do interesting projects, spend quality time with other people, and make yourself and others better will always be better than three clubs where you show up for meetings and do little else. The same goes for volunteering, organizations like Scouts, athletic teams, and religious organizations. The Common Application allows you to list up to 10 activities. Don’t think of 10 as the right number, just the maximum number.

If you are a member of an honor society, that’s great. But it’s not necessarily important. Focus on what you do as a part of that society. If your school’s chapter of an honor society doesn’t really do much except take on members and give them a stole to wear at graduation, feel free to not join that honor society. Don’t worry that you’re not being “impressive.” Doing something productive and interesting with your time is always more impressive than an empty certificate. However, if your school’s chapter is really active and enriches the school or greater community, then join with pride.

Think in terms of verbs. When it comes to activity, you necessarily have to think about action. When choosing activities, ask yourself what you want to do and what you need to do. When describing your activities, lead with the verbs and describe what you actually did. For so many high school students (and adults as well), the full extent of many activities is simply “attend.” No matter how long or seemingly impressive your activities list is, if you have trouble coming up with verbs beyond “attend” and “participate,” then it’s hard for anyone else to tell if you did very much.

Think back to all the activities you’ve been involved in, both in and out of school. Chances are, the Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, played out: 20% of the people did 80% of the work, and 80% of the outcome was based on 20% of the input. Your goal isn’t just to try different activities, or even take leadership positions. Your job is to aim to be in the 20%, whatever that requires. Look for strong and interesting verbs when choosing what to do, and don’t forget to use strong and interesting verbs when you describe what you do. This takes you back to quality versus quantity: you probably can’t be in the active 20% of many groups, and it’s better to spend your time on those than be in more groups where you’re in the inactive 80%. Founding a brand new club or organization where little happens ins’t nearly as important as being an active and productive member of the club or organization, even if you didn’t start it.

(The high school that invited me to come and talk to students? Two different administrators told me this is a problem at the school. Too many students trying to start new clubs that nobody participates in, because they think being a club founder will be impressive on college applications. Lots of founders and presidents, very few members. Too many activities, not enough action.)

Remember that everything counts. Your activities include official clubs and extracurricular activities that take place at school. They also include organizations and activities you’re part of outside of school. They include jobs and internships. They include working for pay. They include working without pay at a family business. They include caring for other family members like younger siblings or older relatives. They include volunteering a little or lot, even if it’s not a Volunteering Project.

I can’t tell you how many high school students have told me that they don’t have any activities to list, or not many activities to list, even though they spend a lot of time doing interesting and challenging things. Those students just thought that the things they spent their time doing “don’t count” because they’re not organized through school. They count! When choosing how to prioritize your time or which activities are the most important to list, let that be your guide: what have you done that’s the most interesting and challenging? Those are the things colleges would like to hear about, even if it’s not sponsored by a school or other major organization.

In fact, once you realize that quality counts more than quantity, and that everything counts, you may decide that school-sponsored clubs and activities may not be the best way to do what you want to do. That’s fine.

When it comes to time to explain your activities on your college applications, explain them well. You’re not just filling in some blanks and checking some boxes. Use as many of the 150 characters allowed possible to describe what you did. Think about your verbs, and don’t be afraid to use common abbreviations. 150 characters isn’t much, so work hard to get the full extent of your activities into those spaces! And focus on the verbs, did I mention that?

Bonus: talking about high school activities always reminds me of the “Yearbook Montage” from Rushmore. Enjoy!

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, here are three easy things you can do:

1. Share it on your social media feeds so your friends and colleagues can see it too.

2. Read these related posts:

   Should you join an honor society?

   Be a person, not a resume

   Do you need a “brag sheet?”

3. Ask a question in the comments section.

Apply with Sanity doesn’t have ads or annoying pop-ups. It doesn’t share user data, sell user data, or even track personal data. It doesn’t do anything to “monetize” you. You’re nothing but a reader to me, and that means everything to me.

Photo by Zoe Herring

Apply with Sanity is a registered trademark of Apply with Sanity, LLC. All rights reserved.