Ask below and we'll reply! An activity is anything you’ve spent time on outside of class. Deadlines are not suggestions. But this can be shorthand to help orient an applicant's family background. Here is Pt. I mean it—you'll see literally everything in my application. The Common App is essentially a standard form that allows an applicant to input basic information, which will then go directly to university admissions.Some sections of the Common App are In my complete analysis, I'll take you through my Common Application, Harvard supplemental application, personal statements and essays, extracurricular activities, teachers' letters of recommendation, counselor recommendation, complete high school transcript, and more. But again in the interest of transparency, here goes: I'm still cringing a bit. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe … Because this is invisible to you, it looks like talent is what distinguishes the two of you, when really it's much more often diligence. All rights reserved. Just like extracurriculars, there's a quick dropoff in value of each item after that. The reader would be right. Remember, there are thousands of orchestras and bands in the country, each with their own concertmasters, drum majors, and section 1st chairs. You can see how there's so much more information than appears in my brief list of activities. We cover everything from application timelines and strategies to tips on financing your child's education. The Common App: most college’s standard application form. We combine world-class admissions counselors with our data-driven, proprietary admissions strategies. Receiving an admissions decision: Admit, deny, or waitlist. Learn more about PrepScholar Admissions to maximize your chance of getting in. If you're a notable minority, this is where you'd indicate it. A 1400 on the SAT IS going to put you at a disadvantage because there are so many students scoring higher than you. It worked for me, but it may be totally inappropriate for you. Second, I knew in high school that I wanted to go into the medical sciences, either as a physician or as a scientist. I'd expect that if both my parents went to schools like Caltech and Dartmouth, there would be even lower numbers here. So when I suggest devoting a lot of time to developing your Spike, it's not necessarily the Spike in itself—it's also spending time on foundational work leading up to what will be your major achievement. My dad got a Master's at a middle-tier American school, but my mom didn't go to graduate school, and these sections were marked 2 and 3, respectively. Looking back I don't mind this much because I generally enjoyed my musical training and had a mostly fun time in orchestra (and I had a strong Spike anyway). Built by Harvard grads and SAT full scorers, the program learns your strengths and weaknesses through advanced statistics, then customizes your prep program to you so you get the most effective prep possible. I need to make one very important point that stresses a lot of students and parents out. The more experienced and trustworthy the teacher, the more meaningful this is. Finally, I co-founded and run a company called PrepScholar. She was also a younger teacher, and this helped her relate to kids more closely. Harvard lets you submit letters from up to two Other Recommenders. By far, the biggest academic honor I had was competing in the US National Chemistry Olympiad, where I ranked #6 in the country in junior year, out of roughly 11,000 students who took the first round test. The purpose of the recommendation has shifted to the specific: colleges probably found that one counselor was serving hundreds of students, so the letters started getting mushy and indistinguishable from each other. Applying to the right number of colleges. At the end of the day, I believe the safest, surefire strategy is to develop a Spike so big that the importance of the Personal Essay pales in comparison to your achievements. Let's go to the final recommendation, from the school counselor. Now let's look at this essay's weaknesses. Boy, oh boy, did I fuss over this one. Page by page, word for word, you'll see everything exactly as I presented it: extracurricular activities, awards and honors, personal statements and essays, and more. Extracurriculars, I was pretty good, but definitely nowhere near world-class. hbspt.cta._relativeUrls=true;hbspt.cta.load(360031, 'c8b8e502-c285-4182-9589-5f8ae230e78a', {}); Drilling down into more details, here's an overview of my application. There's no question that my work in science was my "Spike" and was the strongest piece of my application, but my Personal Narrative included other supporting elements, especially a description of my personality. You are given 50 characters for the title/position of your extracurricular activity, and 150 characters for that activity's description/your responsibilities. I don't take life too seriously. Now, the dreaded personal statement. This was how my application worked. Follow these pointers for crafting a rich and memorable Common App activities page. Even though the specific details of what you'll do are different from what I did, the principles are the same. With just 650 words, I could have made the essay more cohesive by keeping the same theme from beginning to end. This article provides tips for how seniors should go about completing the activities list for the Common App and other college applications. 2 of my WHAT I PUT ON MY COMMON APP video, and I focus on the top 10 activities that Common App makes you list on your application. I know this is intimidating if you don't already have a prestigious honor. My research work took up the next two honors, one a presentation at an academic conference, and the other (Siemens) a research competition for high school researchers. Frankly this personal statement is really embarrassing. To do this, start each line with an action verb (rather than “I”), using the present tense if it is something that you’re still participating in (e.g., “lead”) and the past tense if you are no longer involved (e.g., “led”). Some application readers would argue that it also happens to be the section that applicants most often overlook and under appreciate. You can see that this was the only activity my admissions reader circled. Check out our top-rated graduate blogs here: © PrepScholar 2013-2018. To state the obvious, an application strong enough to get you Columbia will get you into UCLA handily. Then we'll go into the Harvard supplemental application. Deadlines. For most top colleges like Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, and so on, you will need to complete a supplemental application to provide more info than what's listed on the Common Application. The result? But this didn't add much to my application. This is the same application I sent to every school I applied to, including Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford. In the long run, both predictions turned out to be wrong. But this was still a national level honor, in a well-known competition. There are great resources for this type of training, like. Essay Example #1 - Japanese Puzzle (You can tell I love the concept of the vehicle in essays.) In the letter, he focused on the quality of my work and leadership. Despite all that, this essay was WAY overdramatic and overwrought. Admissions officers are going to be particularly interested in seeing how you have been involved in leadership positions and that you have dedicated a significant amount of time and energy to your activities. It used to start with: "Please write whatever you think is important about this student. There are other distinct ways to impress, like: Therefore, DON'T worry about copying my approach one-for-one. Top schools are generally looking to see that you fit in the top 1 percentile of the country. Schools really do care about your background and how you performed relative to expectations. The reader gets most of the recommendation value from your teacher recommendations—these are really supplementary. Now, the letter. Here's a sampling of our most popular articles: How to Get a Perfect SAT Score/Perfect ACT Score—Learn the strategies I used to get a perfect 1600 on the SAT, and a perfect 36 on the ACT. – We are going to prove you wrong by two vivid examples … Interestingly, at the time I was "absolutely certain" about my vocational goals, which clearly took a detour once I left medical school to pursue entrepreneurship to create PrepScholar... Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points? A final note before reading my actual teacher evaluations—you should avoid getting in the mindset where you get to know teachers JUST because you want a good recommendation letter. Common App Activities Section Examples. Starting from sophomore year, I started thinking about whom I connected better with and chose to engage with those teachers more deeply. Note that this is just one of many ways to write an essay. I happen to think the activities list is one of the most underutilized spaces on the college application. He said that I had a strong focus in my work, and my research moved along more reliably than that of other students. Admission officers will value anything you share on this topic, and they will treat your personal story with respect and confidentiality. Overall, this letter is very strong. So you see how the snooze button acts as a vehicle to carry these major points and a lot of details, tied together to the same theme. Ask questions; get answers. In particular, having an above average GPA and test scores goes the majority of the way toward getting you admission to those schools. This, again, is why being well-rounded is so deadly—mix ten different paint colors together and you end up with an unappealing, indistinguishable mess. So my Chemistry Olympiad honor formed 90% of the value of this page. This is the currently selected item. If you want detailed advice on how to interact with teachers earnestly, check out my How to Get a 4.0 GPA and Better Grades guide. You get a surprisingly clear picture of what I'm about. This section asks for your parent information and family situation. This is what I call your PERSONAL NARRATIVE. She was fair in her policies (it probably helped that science is more objective than English). I also found individual lines funny, like "All right, so I had violated the divine honor of the family and the tenets of Confucius." I scored a perfect 1600 on my SAT (the SAT changed to a 2400 scale in 2005, and it's changed back to 1600 in 2016), a 36 on my ACT, 800's on all but one SAT Subject Test, and seven 5's on AP tests. So I listed both in my Common App to build onto my Personal Narrative. For some students, the 10 spaces for Common App activities are just not … I ranked at the national level, before the US selected their final team—a study camp of 20 students. The higher the admission rate, the more emphasis will be placed on your scores. Teacher recommendations are some of the most important components of your application. This makes me think that the less prepared your family is, the more points you get, and this might give your application an extra boost. She had a kind personality and was universally well liked by her students, even if they weren't doing so well. So it seems higher numbers are given for less prestigious educations by your parents. There are probably some cases where a well-rounded student writes an amazing Personal Essay and gets in through the strength of that. The 75th percentile is a 1600, and the 25th percentile is a 1470. The earlier you are in high school, the more time you have to prepare and implement the right strategies to build a strong, distinctive application. You don't say "I'm passionate about X," you describe what extraordinary lengths you took to achieve X. By point #2, I meant to say that I wasn't 100% hardcore science geek and was competent in other aspects of life. The number of state to national rankers is probably at least 20:1 (less than 50:1 because of variation in state size), so if there are 2,000 nationally ranked students, there are 40,000 state-ranked students in something! Posted on July 23, 2018 July 23, 2018 by AdmissionEssayCom. For the Common App, you'll need to reflect on what you have learned from your activities and how they have helped you develop. I had a lot of teachers who really just phoned it in and treated their job perfunctorily—these people are likely to write pretty blasé letters. I think this essay was probably neutral to my application, not a strong net positive or net negative. By pointing this out and showing how my interest took on a life of its own, I wanted to distance myself from that stereotype. You can tell that the updated Common App places a great emphasis on personality. This single honor probably contributed 90% of the value of this page. From your high school work thus far, you should at least be leaning to something, even if that's likely to change in the future. It does not represent all your complexities and your 17 years of existence. The research staff were mainly high school students like me and a few grad students/postdocs. For the Common App, you have 5 slots for honors and awards, and 10 slots for your extracurricular activities. There's likely a standard code for different types of occupations and schools. If you're hoping to see an acceptance letter like this in your academic future, I highly recommend you read this entire article. The truth is everyone who achieves something of note puts in an incredible amount of hard work. Once again, as you read this letter, think: what are the hundreds of micro-interactions that would have made a teacher write a letter like this? Again, it's a numbers game. If I were to guess, I'd say that the numbers add to form some metric of "family prestige." Download it for free now: As co-founder and head of product design at PrepScholar, Allen has guided thousands of students to success in SAT/ACT prep and college admissions. I didn't have a sibling with a debilitating illness! But as I point out below, a lot is conveyed about you through just a few questions. [CDATA[ This is the application guide I wished I had when I was in high school. Take a breath and dig in. You'll learn what it takes to build a compelling overall application. You are a movie director, and your application is your way to tell a compelling, cohesive story through supporting evidence. This guide tells a story about one person and presents one archetype of a strong applicant. College Admissions, Read my How to Get a 4.0 GPA for tips on how to interact with teachers in a genuine way that'll make them love you. I did appreciate music as a diversion to round out my academic focus. In this popular guide, I explain: If you have the time and are committed to maximizing your college application success, I recommend you read through my Harvard guide first, then come back to this one. Back then, we had a set of different prompts: I chose to write on a topic of my choice. Notably, the letter writer didn't underline anything. Finally, finally, we get to the very last piece of my application. 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. But really the best approach is to be honest. There are a few explanations for this. First, notice the circle around my email address. Note also that point #2 is probably the weakest, least unique part of the Personal Narrative. //