How to Write an Activities List

When filling out your Common App (or any other college application), you will be asked about what you have done outside the classroom. This is because school, while a major demand on your time, is not the only thing you do, and colleges want to know how else you spend your time. 

To this end, the activities list exists, in various forms across different college applications. In this article, we’re going to explain how these lists work, and how you can best tell colleges about the activities you have participated in. For more information on the kinds of activities colleges like to see, see our article on the subject here; in this one we are going to focus on how to tell colleges all about what you have achieved. Let’s get started!

Figuring Out Your Activities

The first step to writing an activities list is figuring out which activities you’ve done. This can be harder than it sounds at first, especially for things you did early in high school, or for things which only lasted a week. Draw up a full list of these, and then consider asking your parents or another family member if they can remember other things you participated in, to help jog your memory. 

This, of course, leads to an important question: what counts as an activity? This is actually a more expansive category than most students realize; here are the things colleges consider activities, and want to hear about if you’ve participated in:

• School activities. From clubs to team sports to the play, if it happens at school but isn’t one of your classes, then it counts as an activity.
• Sports. Whether done through school or otherwise; for information on getting recruited for sports specifically, see our article here.
• Volunteering. Even if you’re only doing it to fulfill a graduation requirement, this counts as an activity.
• Other organized clubs. Even if they aren’t associated with your school at all, they still count.
• Work and Internships. From working at a restaurant to babysitting, doing work counts as an activity.
• Family obligations. If you have to devote significant amounts of time to helping around the house, from cooking to caring for siblings, that also counts as an activity. 

Your first step is writing all of these down, so you get a sense of how much you have accomplished. Once that’s done, it’s time to figure out what story your activities tell. 

Organizing Your Activities

How many activities you’re able to talk about depends on the application. The Common App allows for ten, along with five honors. This is enough (often more than enough) for most students. If you have more than ten meaningful activities, you can cover any leftovers in your additional information section, see advice for doing so in our article here. 

Do not worry if you can’t fill every space on your activities list; colleges don’t expect you to, and you won’t be judged harshly for it. What they do judge and evaluate is what your activities say about you; who you are as a student and person, and where your priorities lie. Thus your job with your activities list is to tell the story of who you are. 

Begin by determining what categories your activities fall into by interest. For example, you may have a bunch of activities related to robotics, or a significant number involving basketball. What these categories are depends on you, but you should group similar activities together on your list. Reading about four different things you have done involving biology in a row is far more impactful than having them scattered about. 

This should also be done in grouping activities by type. If, for example, you’ve done a whole bunch of different volunteering activities, you should put them next to each other. Within each group, put the most important and impactful activity at the top, and then continue down. The most impactful ones are usually, but not always, the ones you have devoted the most of your time to. 

Finally, if you have a few too many activities, you can move some to the honors list. A very common one for this is National Honors Society. This is an impressive accomplishment, but unless you are incredibly active in the society itself at your school, it can be safely moved to the Honors section, to leave more room in your activities list to discuss other things you have done. 

Actually Writing the Activities List

First, you need to figure out what exactly you did for each of your activities. Begin by writing down a list of everything you accomplished. Try to use accurate numbers wherever possible. If you raised money for charity, how much did you get? If you ran an organization, how many members did you oversee? Details like this are important, because they let admissions officers put your accomplishments in context. 

How to write about your activities varies by application; we’ll describe how to do it for the Common App here, and then discuss altering it for other application portals below. The most important thing to be aware of is length; the Common App only allows you 150 characters for each activity description. 

This means that your activity descriptions are written unlike anything else, including essays. You want to cram in a lot of detail while still being coherent. This means that these entries often lack things like proper grammar, and often use abbreviations. Here is an example of what one of these looks like: 

President, Applied Chemistry Society, ‘23-24

Set agenda, raised $5000, directed experiments, coordinated with school/safety officials. Demonstrated before Junior-Senior classes (500 people)

This isn’t a proper sentence, and an English teacher would look askance at it if you used it in an essay, but it does do everything an activities list is supposed to do. It lets readers know what you did, how you did it, and when you did it. 

Finally, note that you should not repeat any information from the name of the activity in the title. If the title was “Student Body President” then you don’t need to open your description by saying “As President” you can simply jump right into discussing what you actually did in the role. 

A note on Acronyms

Using acronyms to save space on activities lists is quite common, and we recommend doing it. You have to be careful though, as admissions officers are not omniscient, nad may not know every acronym you use. We advise only using widely known acronyms, in both your activity titles, and the description. 

For example, MIT is a widely known acronym, and if you attended one of their summer programs, you can simply refer to the school as MIT. If you participated in the Youth American Grand Prix, then you can’t assume people will know what you mean if you abbreviate to YAGP, even if that is commonly done in the ballet community. 

There is some need for your own judgement here, but we recommend being cautious when you aren’t sure. 

Apply California’s Activity List

The most used application, after the Common App, is Apply California, which is used for the entire UC system. In contrast to the Common Application, the Apply California application allows for 20 activities and awards combined, in the following categories: Awards, Educational Preparation, Extracurricular, Volunteering, and Work.

• Awards and Honors provides 250 characters to describe the criteria for winning the award, and 350 characters to describe how you won the award.
• Educational Preparation and Extracurriculars both provide 60 characters for a title, and 350 for a description.
• Volunteering and Work give 60 characters for the name of the organization, 250 to describe the organization itself, and 350 to describe your contribution.

However, just because you have additional space for the word count doesn’t mean you have to fill the entire description. At the same time, though, you should avoid simply copying directly from the Common App without adding any more detail and information. Merely copying and pasting descriptions from one form to the other will stand out to UC schools, suggesting to them that you didn’t put as much effort into applying as you could have.

Here is the same Common App entry from above followed by an expanded entry for the UC application.

UC entry:

President, Applied Chemistry Society, ‘18-19

Set meeting agendas, planned the year’s activities, directed chemistry experiments researching pollutants in freshwater sources, and raised $5,000 through community sponsorship. Coordinated with school leaders and the fire department for safety during experiment demonstrations held before 500 students in the Junior and Senior classes.

As you can see, the overall activity description isn’t much longer than the Common App, but nevertheless contains more information that gives greater context for what the student accomplished.

Some ways to expand this section include the following:

If an activity was extensive enough to go into the additional information section on the Common App, then this can all be added back into the description for UC application.

More detail and examples should be provided for each activity. Rather than repeating yourself, though, use the extra space to go into more depth. In the above example, the author adds how much money was raised during fundraising efforts, giving concrete evidence of their accomplishments. This gives the readers a better sense of the scale of their accomplishments.

Each activity should be expanded, giving more examples of your involvement. In the example above, further active verbs were included and more details of their involvement provided. The added depth gives insight into what they actually accomplished, offering a more complete picture of their involvement.

Finally, you can and should use proper grammar in the UC Application. There’s enough space for it, and it will make your application look more thoughtful.

A Note on UC Activity Categories

The UC application requires that each entry be grouped into a category. This allows you to present yourself in an organized manner. Below are descriptions of these categories and what activities should be placed under them. This built in categorization allows you to show either in-depth commitment to a single activity or wide and varied interests. 

Description of categories

Award or honor: This category is a direct parallel to the honors section in the Common App. The honors you list there can be brought over with the same expansions which were applied to other activities.

Example: 

Educational preparation programs: This category describes programs you participated in that were academic or educational, but which occurred outside of a standard school environment.

Example: 

Extracurricular activity: These are the activities you’ve participated in outside the classroom that don’t fit better in one of the other categories. They include hobbies, sports, clubs, and everything else you participated in outside the classroom.

Example: 

Volunteering / Community service: These are activities you’ve participated in to help your community, regardless of financial compensation. 

Example: 

Work experience: This area is for activities in employment or internships, either paid or unpaid. Jobs you have had, or internships you’ve participated in, go here. 

Example: 

Final Thoughts

Writing your activities list shouldn’t need to be a daunting task, but colleges rarely clearly explain what they want, leaving students to struggle through on their own. This is just another stressor, in the middle of an already stressful time. We hope that this article has given you clear insight into how an activities list works, and how you should go about composing your own.

Of course, this is just one small aspect of college applications. If you are looking for further advice and guidance, and want to talk to an expert, reach out today to schedule a free consultation. We’ve helped hundreds of students get into amazing colleges, and are always happy to hear from you.