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How to Write About Extracurriculars on College Applications
One of the trickiest parts of the Common App is understanding how to make the most of the extracurricular activity section. You might have a ton of activities—or not very many—and be wondering how you should write about your activities to impress college admissions readers.
If you’ve felt stumped by what you’re supposed to do in this section and how to make the most of your very limited space, read on.
In this guide we'll talk about:
- How many extracurricular activities you should list
- How to choose which activities to list
- How to write about your extracurriculars
But before we get into that, you may be wondering...
Why Do You Need Extracurricular Activities in the First Place?
Colleges love to see that students are active, contributing members of their communities. Even more importantly, they love to see students who are developing their talents and passions.
When a student is actively involved in the community and other activities in high school, there is a good chance they'll stay involved in college. Universities like to be known as hubs of activity, charity, and culture, and it’s largely the students that make them that way.
Because of this, the activities section of the Common App is very important. It’s your chance to show the admissions officers how you will become an actively contributing member of their school community.
Remember that almost anything that you are actively and productively involved in can be considered an extracurricular activity. This includes things like having a job or taking care of family members.
For the Common App, you'll need to reflect on what you have learned from your activities and how they have helped you develop. 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.
You know why you need extracurriculars and what the admissions officers most want to see. But do you know how many of them you need for your application?
How Many Activities Should You List on the Common App?
It’s time to seriously start looking at the application and what should and shouldn't be included under the activities section.
The Common App gives you room to write about ten of your activities.
But What If You Don’t Have 10 Activities?
That’s absolutely fine. You don’t need to panic or try to make up activities just to fill in the blanks. In fact, college admissions advisors would prefer to see a few activities that you've made a significant dedication to than several activities that you've had lesser involvement in.
Choosing a few activities and getting super involved in them is known as the admissions spike technique . It can boost your admissions chances, especially at competitive colleges!
It would be much better to show significant involvement, leadership, and personal development in two or three activities than it would be to write about ten activities that you were hardly involved in because you spread yourself too thin.
A great looking application could have between one and three activities showing significant involvement (depending on the number of hours dedicated to each), and a few other activities with a lower level of involvement. These would likely either be from your earlier years in high school before you figured out what you were really passionate about, or a lesser interest that you have dedicated a couple hours a week to.
What If You Have Too Many Activities?
This will only really be a problem for a few people, though many might initially think it’s an issue.
Admissions officers only want to see the activities that you have been engaged in significantly.
There’s no hard and fast definition for what “significant involvement” looks like, but most people can work it out. If you helped out at your church’s pancake breakfast one year, that really doesn’t need to go on your application. But if you have volunteered at the hospital for 10 hours a week every week for four years, that definitely counts as significant involvement.
In other words, you need to be looking for quality over quantity. Instead of aiming to fill each blank with something inconsequential just to have it filled, make sure that everything you include reflects a significant time investment and an experience that you learned from.
You can often combine multiple activities under one heading if none of them is individually significant enough, or if you need to save space. Let’s say you play volleyball. You've been on the JV team at school for four years, you play club volleyball in the off-season, and every summer you both do volleyball camps and help coach camps for younger players. If you are running out of room, feel free to lump all of those together on the application as one activity.
Finally, make sure you're not confusing academic awards with extracurricular activities. For example, many good students are accepted into the National Honors Society every year. If you've been accepted and that’s the extent of your involvement, list it as an academic honor. On the other hand, if you've been accepted, got elected as the president of your school chapter, organized weekly meetings, and planned several volunteer activities throughout the year, list it as an activity.
What if you legitimately have more than ten activities you have been significantly involved in, and you feel your application would be incomplete without them?
Never fear! The Common App does have an “Additional Information” section, and this is the place to let admissions officers know about these really important things that you couldn’t fit elsewhere. Just make sure they really are important! They’ll be rolling their eyes if you insisted on filling out this section to talk about the one hour you spent working at the pancake breakfast three years ago.
Still not quite sure how you should choose from among your many activities? Read on for a step-by-step explanation of how to pick what activities you should write about, and how you should list them on your application.
Step-by-Step Guide to Choosing Your Activities
This part of the application is difficult because you have to convey a lot of information in a relatively small space. It’s important to brainstorm ahead of time to make sure that you'll be able to make the most of this section.
Step 1: Write Down Your Activities
On a piece of paper, write down a list of your activities. These can be almost anything that you have done in high school , from sports, to organized clubs, to outside hobbies and interests, to work or community service.
For each activity, make sure you write down:
- The name of the organization where you did the activity (if applicable).
- A description of what you did. Feel free to go in-depth and fully explain your involvement. Did you attend meetings? Classes? Did you organize any activities?
- Write down any leadership roles you had – meaning any time you were responsible for the actions of other people, or had responsibilities beyond just being a participant. These do not need to be official. If you ran the meetings but didn’t have an official title, still write it down. Also include any achievements or special responsibilities you had.
- Were there any special projects that you did or were in charge of? If so, what specifically did you do? This can be a one-time thing (like organizing a food drive) or something more long-term, such as running a tutoring clinic throughout the school year.
- What were the dates that you participated in the activity? How many hours per week did you do?
Your examples might look like this:
- Soccer Team: Member of my high school's soccer team, played forward position. JV team two years, Varsity team two years. Lead goal scorer my junior year. In charge of spring fundraiser that raised $800 to cover team travel costs.
- Animal Shelter Volunteer: Freshman through junior year. Volunteered 10 hours a week taking care of cats and dogs, cleaning cages, feeding animals, and interviewing potential owners at my local animal shelter. Received "Volunteer of the Month" award in May 2017.
- Outdoors Club: Member for four years, vice president my senior year. Attended and helped run weekly meetings as well as weekend events. Responsible for planning over 15 outdoor-related events that helped students experience the outdoors and get to know one another better.
Step 2: Number Your Activities From Most Important to Least Important
Base this off the amount of time you dedicated to the project, your leadership in the activity, and how important the activity has been for developing a passion or pursuing a future goal.
Important note: Make sure that the order you put them in is the order of importance they have for you according to your passions and interests. Don’t just try to guess what the admissions officers want to see, because the whole point is to show off what is important to you.
Why is this important? This is going to the be order that you list your activities on the application. It’s important that you put what’s most important to you at the top of the list so that you make it as obvious as possible to the college admissions officers. Don’t make them hunt through your list to see what your best contributions and activities are!
Step 3: Have Your Parents or Friends Read Over Your List
This is not only to check that you've remembered everything correctly, such as the dates and time commitments, but also to make sure that you haven’t missed out on anything important. Maybe that three hours a week you spent as a peer counselor slipped your mind. Always get someone to check it over and ask for anything they can contribute.
Another reason it’s important to check in with someone else is to make sure that what you've written makes sense. Maybe you're used to certain acronyms or assume that everyone knows what the Quill and Scroll Club does!
Step 4: Understand Your Story
Now that you have your list, it’s important to reflect on it and try to think about how the admissions officers are going to see your activities . Do you think that the activities, as you have listed and described them, tell a story about who you are as a person? Is it a good representation of how you've spent the past four years outside of the classroom? And does it show what kind of contribution you will be making to a college community?
At this point, it’s important to consider how you're presenting yourself. You may have heard that admissions officers are looking to create a well-rounded student body. While that’s true, that doesn’t mean that they are only looking for well-rounded students.
Some students are “pointy." They have fantastic achievements in a certain area – and don’t have a lot outside that area. For example, imagine all your extracurricular activities are related to biology. You’re the president of the biology club at school, you’ve participated (and won awards) at various science competitions around your state over the past four years, you’ve worked with a professor at the local community college on some biological research, and you volunteer five hours per week as a bio tutor.
Though you haven’t tried a lot of different things, you can still turn this into a great story about having a strong passion in one area.
Admissions officers tend to like “pointy” students because their great focus shows that they have potential to make a big difference in the future of a certain field. A lot of “pointy” students with achievements in different areas will together make up a diverse student body.
But realistically, most applicants aren't going to have such massive achievements in just one area. Well-rounded students also help make up a well-rounded student body, so try to think about how your diverse activities tell your story. You've probably learned different but valuable things from each experience, and having a diverse range of interests shows that you're not afraid to try new things – another thing that will be viewed positively by admissions officers.
Also keep in mind that unusual activities often will stand out. Many students are involved in quite generic activities. While that isn’t bad, something different will definitely get you noticed, so don’t be afraid to include something a bit unorthodox on your list – especially if you’ve had a good achievement in it and it’s an important part of your story.
So now that you know exactly what you’ll be writing about, let’s get into the details of how to actually fill out that application.
How to Write About Your Extracurriculars: AKA Putting Your Twitter Skills to Use
Let’s go through the Activities section of the Common App step by step.
When you click on the Activities page, you’ll see a brief description of what’s expected in this section, and you can choose whether or not you have any activities that you would like to report.
Click yes. Then press “Continue.”
Next, click on “Activity 1."
You’ll have a drop-down menu where you’ll be able to choose what kind of activity you’re going to talk about. Choose whatever best describes the #1 activity from the list you made previously.
In the next box, you can put the Activity Name.
You have 50 characters to fill out this section.
The main rule for this is to be as detailed as you can within the character limit.
This is because you want to save as much room as possible in the next section, where you have to describe the activity.
Let’s say your activity is that you have spent the past four years playing the violin. You're the first chair violinist in a community orchestra, you're the soloist in your school’s concert band, you won local awards for your playing, and you've been taking lessons for 12 years.
The bad way to phrase this would be:
The great way to phrase this would be:
Award-winning soloist/first chair violinist
If you do this, you're making the most of your first 50 characters, and you can then use the Activity Description to elaborate on the points you have already raised in the Activity Name.
Let’s move on to the Activity Description.
In this box, you can use 150 characters to talk about details of your activity.
While that may have been a challenge for older generations, it should be a breeze for anyone who is familiar with using Twitter!
Look at your activity list that you wrote earlier. Choose the most important things for each activity – leadership positions, initiatives you ran, important contributions you made.
What you should not write in this space is a general description of what the club or group does. Make this all about you and your role in the activity.
Don’t try to use a full sentence here. Use action words and small phrases to describe what you've done. It’s ok to use symbols and abbreviations (&, /, etc.) in order to save room.
Be specific! Emphasize the numbers of what you did. How many people did you lead? How many people joined the club because of you? Exactly how much money did you raise for that cause? The more specific you are, the better picture you are painting for the admissions officer about what you actually achieved.
Don’t exaggerate or lie about what you’ve done, but also make sure you aren’t modest. This is your time to shine and be proud of what you've accomplished.
What if you don’t have room to write a complete enough description?
Almost everyone will feel like they could write more, but try to refrain from doing so unless you really feel that something very important cannot be described well enough in the space given.
If that’s the case, this is where the “Additional Information” section comes in.
You’ll find this under the next section on the Common App, labelled “Writing.”
If you do choose to use this space, make it clear that you are referring back to the Activity section. Continue to be brief and highlight the important things that you feel cannot be left out.
Back on the Activities page, check the boxes for the years that you have participated in your activity, and also select if you participated in the activity during the school year, during breaks, or all year long.
Next, fill in the number of weeks per year that you did the activity, and the hours per week.
Finally, check if you would like to do something similar in college. You don't have to check “Yes” unless you really want to do something similar in college. It’s fine to want to explore new interests, but it’s recommended that you have at least one activity that you would like to continue in college.
Feel free to repeat with up to nine other activities.
Congratulations! You have now completed one of the most difficult sections of the Common App!
What’s Next?
Trying to get inspired? Check out our guide with four amazing extracurricular examples. These will be sure to help you stand out from the crowd!
Looking for more extracurriculars to participate in? Here's a list of hundreds of extracurricular activities you can choose from.
Now that you know more about how to write about extracurriculars, check out the number one thing colleges wish students knew .
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Mary Ann holds a BA in Classics and Russian from the University of Notre Dame, and an MA from University College London. She has years of tutoring experience and is also passionate about travel and learning languages.
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How to Write a Stellar Extracurricular Activity College Essay
What’s covered:, what is the extracurricular activity essay, examples of extracurricular activity essay prompts.
- How to Decide on an Extracurricular to Write About
Tips for Writing the Extracurricular Activity Essay
- Where to Get Your Extracurricular Essay Edited
In the college admissions process, one of the most common supplemental essays asks you to elaborate on an extracurricular activity. While it may seem straightforward, students often struggle with which extracurricular to pick, what details to include, and how to format the essay.
In this post, we’ll be going over all of these topics, so you can write a strong essay response to this classic prompt.
As a supplemental essay, the Extracurricular Activity prompt asks you to describe a meaningful non-academic activity of yours. The goal of this essay is to better understand your passions and how you might contribute to the college community. It provides an additional way to show colleges what’s important to you, and through that, who you are.
In order to stand out in admissions officers’ minds, you will want to choose the right activity and make your essay engaging. Not only that, but a well-chosen extracurricular will also allow you to demonstrate personal qualities that might be hard to express in other parts of your application. It can also be a powerful way to talk about your future on a university’s campus.
To learn more about common essay archetypes, check out our posts on other such essays, like “ Why This College? ”, “ Why This Major? ”, and the Extracurricular Activity essay .
If you’re applying to about 8-12 colleges , chances are you will likely encounter the extracurricular activity essay. Here are a couple examples of prompts from some top schools:
Georgetown : Briefly discuss the significance to you of the school or summer activity in which you have been most involved.
Vanderbilt : Vanderbilt offers a community where students find balance between their academic and social experiences. Please briefly elaborate on how one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences has influenced you. (250 words)
Harvard : Briefly describe any of your extracurricular activities, employment experience, travel, or family responsibilities that have shaped who you are. (200 words)
Unlike some of the other essay archetypes, it’s very easy to tell when a college is asking for an extracurricular essay. The prompt will likely use the word verbatim. Though Georgetown offers no word limit, these prompts are usually shorter in length, so it’s important to be strategic in approaching your essay, to make it as effective and impactful as possible.
How to Decide on an Extracurricular to Write About
Each school may phrase their prompt slightly differently, but for the most part, such prompts ask you to describe the extracurricular which was most meaningful to you or that you are the most proud of, and why it was so impactful.
Note that this prompt is not asking you to discuss the extracurricular in which you received the highest number of accolades or in which you held the highest leadership position. You have the rest of your application to highlight your various other accomplishments. Essays should be personal . Even if a prompt is asking you to speak about your accomplishments, you should speak about these accomplishments in terms of how they have shaped and motivated you, not how they’ve padded your resume.
Accordingly, when choosing an extracurricular to write on, think deeply about which of your activities has had the greatest impact on your growth or development. Writing about an extracurricular you’re truly passionate about will not only make the process of writing easier, but also ultimately make your essay stronger. It’s always better to write about the activity you care about the most than to write about the activity you think “looks” the best!
Here are some other ideas of activities to write about:
- The activity where you have shown the most commitment. Commitment is an intersection of the amount of time you spend on this activity, how long you’ve been involved, and the intensity of your involvement. The more time and intensity, the better. For example, an activity in which you are a top-level performer, or on which you spend lots of time, is stronger than a job where you just go through the motions on the weekends.
- Clubs or groups you founded, or in which you held a leadership role . Not only do they demonstrate ambition and leadership skills, they also show that you’re passionate enough about a certain pursuit or subject that you’re willing to take initiative to gain experience in the field.
- Activity that relates to a personal aspect of your life. Describing how your participation helped shape who you are on a personal level can also give admissions committees a unique perspective on your personality. For example, a student with a family member who suffered from cancer may choose to write about how she organized and led a Relay for Life team.
- Experiences that relate to your future goals. Any activities that set a foundation for your professional plans are also highly-relevant, as they show that you’re serious about those plans. A prospective nursing student might write about his volunteer experience at the local hospital to demonstrate his passion for the field and some skills or lessons he’s already acquired.
- Extracurricular that you haven’t had a chance to address in other parts of your application, or an activity that merits more discussion. This is especially helpful for activities that aren’t as common, like hosting a podcast or selling pottery online. The essay gives you an outlet to delve deeper into how you got involved in this activity and what your role is.
It’s important to remember that your essays should be a portfolio of the different aspects of who you are. You need to look at your essays not only individually, but as a whole. It can be helpful to ask yourself what personal qualities you want to highlight in your application, and think about which activities best embody those qualities. Just remember that you don’t want your application to be repetitive. For example, if you’ve already written about playing tennis in your Common App essay, don’t write about it again in the extracurricular activity essay. But, if you want to highlight your creative side and it isn’t really represented in your application, then you might choose to write an essay on one of your creative activities, like starting an art class for kids with disabilities.
1. Make Your Essay About You and Who You Are
The biggest mistake you can make is turning this essay into yet another extracurricular description like the ones included in your activities section. Rather than focusing purely on the extracurricular, use it as a platform upon which to speak more generally about your ambitions or personal experiences.
In balancing your description of the extracurricular with your explanation of why it’s important to you, we recommend aiming for a 1:2 ratio. For example, if your word limit is 300 words, try to spend 100 words describing the extracurricular, and 200 words tying your accomplishments in that activity to your personal goals and aspirations. This again places the focus on you, not the activity, and will ensure you’re allowing yourself to most effectively show who you are to admissions committees.
2. Share an Anecdote
To make your essay more vivid, take the reader to a specific experience that stands out in the arc of your extracurricular. Maybe it was auditioning for the lead role of a play for the first time and the nervous excitement you felt. You can also choose to narrate something more mundane but equally important, such as your daily soccer practice and the thoughts in your head as you dribble.
The vital thing to remember is to incorporate reflection into your writing, not just to tell a story. It’s easy to get caught up in the details of your anecdote without showing how the extracurricular shaped you. Let us know what skills you’ve developed because of the activity, what personality traits have been strengthened, and whether the activity impacts the way you live other parts of your life.
Here’s an example of an essay that balances out storytelling with substance. The writer brings us to a specific moment as they’re playing piano, but goes on to reflect on why the activity is important to them, and what it’s taught them:
My fingers raced across the keys, rapidly striking one after another. My body swayed with the music as my hands raced across the piano. Crashing onto the final chord, it was over as quickly as it had begun. My shoulders relaxed and I couldn’t help but break into a satisfied grin. I had just played the Moonlight Sonata’s third movement, a longtime dream of mine. Four short months ago, though, I had considered it impossible. The piece’s tempo was impossibly fast, its notes stretching between each end of the piano, forcing me to reach farther than I had ever dared. It was 17 pages of the most fragile and intricate melodies I had ever encountered. But that summer, I found myself ready to take on the challenge. With the end of the school year, I was released from my commitment to practicing for band and solo performances. I was now free to determine my own musical path: either succeed in learning the piece, or let it defeat me for the third summer in a row. Over those few months, I spent countless hours practicing the same notes until they burned a permanent place in my memory, creating a soundtrack for even my dreams. Some would say I’ve mastered the piece, but as a musician I know better. Now that I can play it, I am eager to take the next step and add in layers of musicality and expression to make the once-impossible piece even more beautiful.
3. Be Mindful of Essay Length
Since these essays tend to be short, you may not be able to actually share an anecdote. If the essay must be under 100 words, you probably won’t have space. If the prompt requires 150 words, you should still have room to write about a specific moment in your extracurricular, but you’ll need to keep it very brief, and your reflections will also have to be fairly straightforward. That’s totally okay!
However, if the prompt allows for more than 250 words, you’ll be able to get more creative. For these longer essays, consider incorporating 1 or 2 anecdotes. If your relationship with your extracurricular has an interesting backstory, feel free to use a longitudinal approach to share how your involvement with the activity has developed over time. That being said, make sure that the bulk of your essay is still a reflection on how the activity has shaped you, rather than just a narrative of the activity.
4. Polish Your Writing
Remember, essays aren’t just an opportunity for admissions committees to learn more about an applicant: they’re also a way to evaluate your writing skills and your ability to clearly and directly respond to a given prompt. We’ll say it again: be sure to address the prompt accurately and clearly!
Also always be aware of grammar and spelling conventions, vary your sentence structure, avoid the passive voice, and be creative (although not excessively gaudy) with your word choice. We always recommend getting a second pair of eyes—or three or four—to look over your essay to catch any errors and provide feedback. You can ask a trusted friend, teacher, or family member.
5. Show What You’ve Learned
Though it can be just as effective to demonstrate the difference that you were able to make through your participation in an extracurricular, this essay can also be a place to reflect on how engagement with an activity may have changed you. It’s a great way to demonstrate self-awareness, humility, and a capacity for learning and growth.
This can be particularly effective if your extracurricular is service-oriented, but it’s also powerful even if it’s not. Any activity, particularly a long-term one that you’re highly invested in, has the potential to change you for the better. By recognizing the ways in which it has, you demonstrate thoughtfulness and a readiness to make the most of your experiences. One powerful way to express this can be to describe the positive impacts participating in this extracurricular has had on your life.
6. Think About the Future
You are by no means required to continue all or any of your extracurricular activities in college, but if you do, this can be an especially valuable thing to mention in your extracurricular essay. It demonstrates commitment, true passion for the activity you’re describing, and it helps the admissions team envision how you will fit in and contribute to the campus community.
The way you imagine this activity showing up in your future doesn’t need to be a direct continuation, either. It could be related to lessons learned or experience gained while participating in your activity. Perhaps competing on the chess team gave you an appreciation for games of strategy, and you hope to join a policy group on campus to think about strategic solutions to current problems.
Final Thoughts
The extracurricular essay should be one of the easier essays you encounter because they tend to be short and they give you the opportunity to dive deep into an activity you love. Don’t get too caught up trying to tell a story you think admissions officers “want” to hear, and instead just truthfully recount your extracurricular and why it is important to you.
You have an entire application to show colleges what you’ve accomplished. Personal essays are intended to bring out the applicant behind the accomplishments: what are you truly passionate about, and how has that passion manifested itself in your high school career? Answer that question, and you’ll be on track for an effective essay on your most meaningful extracurricular.
Where to Get Your Extracurricular Essay Edited
Do you want feedback on your “Extracurricular” essay? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays.
If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!
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