ACTIVITIES 

​​The changes that have occurred within the Activities section of the Common App are indicative of an increasingly competitive and subjective college marketplace. Colleges are looking for “leaders” with generous extracurricular activities and they are placing much less emphasis on traditional work.  What’s more, as so-called “objective” measures of students such as standardized tests decline in importance, the Activities section has grown in importance.  To stand out on an application, students must demonstrate not just participation but leadership within activities.  

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When we begin to look at the Activities section in 2007-2008 there were six slots to list “your principal extracurricular, community, and family activities and hobbies in the order of their interest to you”. The applicant was instructed to indicate the activity first, then the grade levels in which they participated in the activity, then hours per week and weeks per year, and then note  if there were any “positions held, honors won, or letters earned” and if they wished to pursue the activity in college. There was also a separate “Work Experience” section for the applicant to detail the principal jobs they held during the past three years. Finally, there was a short answer question in the Writing section that asked the applicant to “Please briefly elaborate on one of your activities (extracurricular, personal activities, or work experience)” in 150 words or fewer. 

 

Today, the Activities section has changed in small but significant ways. The short answer question was removed in the 2014-2015 application, there is no longer a Work Experience section, and the applicant is told that “examples of activities might include clubs, extracurriculars, family responsibilities, hobbies, work, or volunteering”. Moreover, the section is now optional and there are ten slots for the applicant to fill with their activities. Most notably, the composition and wording of each activity slot has changed. The applicant is no longer asked to list the activity name first, but their “title/leadership role.”. These small but noticeable changes are indicative of the changing priorities of admissions committees in higher education.

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 Firstly, the elimination of the work experience section shows how it has grown less commonplace for high school students to work a job alongside their studies, a declining importance placed on work experience, and “higher” expectations being placed on students. 

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The proportion of teenagers engaged in the workforce has declined significantly, dropping from approximately half to about one-third of the population, marking a notable decrease of 17 percentage points since 2000. However, present-day adolescents are by no means idle; they demonstrate greater dedication to their studies and have fewer leisure hours compared to previous generations of teenagers. Lauren Bauer, a researcher at the Hamilton Project and Brookings Institution states, “High school has become more intense. We have increasing demands on what it is that high schoolers need to be doing and how much time that takes.” 

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Even outside of applying for colleges, high school has demanded more time and effort from students. There are more graduation requirements that include extracurricular activities such as public service and athletics. From a mere statistical vantage point, there is less reason to include a Work Experience section because there are fewer applicants who would have something to write down. But even more than that, there is a declining importance placed on work experience both in and outside of college admissions.  Eric Greenberg, president of Greenberg Educational Group, states in reference to teenagers that “The perception out there is that the more things they do, the better.” According to college preparatory sources there is a mixed view as to how work experience is viewed within an application; some say that it is a total must, while others claim that it is considered, but is not very important. Regardless, it is widely agreed that work experience must be combined with other scholarly, athletic, creative, and volunteer activities in order to achieve a strong application. As Greenberg says, there is a general perception that a minimal amount of activities outside of school is seen as less impressive than a full resume. In Princeton College Consulting's guide to the activities section, the applicant is instructed to “focus on prestigious and unique activities,” which could include work experience, but work experience is never directly mentioned in the guide. 

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The changing structure and language within the Activities section demonstrates the growing emphasis on leadership, individuality, and the bar for being average is constantly being raised.

Common App asks questions in a certain way to extract the specific information that colleges care about. So, we can see through the changes in the Activities section that admissions committees are searching for leaders and those with individual roles among a group -- an applicant who stands out in a sea of people also trying to stand out. This quest for leaders and students who have surpassed their peers fosters a sense of competition and hyper-individuality; there can be no leaders if no one is willing to be a follower. Studies say that the first follower is as important as the initiator. There can be only one captain of a team, but the existence of the captain does not devalue the leadership potential of the team members. Seniority, athletic ability, and amount of time spent on a team are just some of the non-leadership related factors that go into the election of a captain. The emphasis placed on leadership in the college process and within the activities section tells the student that it is not worth being a part of something if they are not going to someday lead it or gain a certain amount of status within it. Their interest as the individual is more important than contributing to the goal of the group.

 

These increasingly complicated “leadership” qualifications have grown in emphasis as more and more colleges no longer require or even accept standardized test scores. Certain tests once required by the College Board are no longer being offered, and many high schools are removing their AP curriculum. Admissions boards are seeking “well-rounded applicants,” -- as the instructions to the Activities section often mentions -- and well-rounded is a very loose term. The Activities section is one of the best ways for admissions committees to get a so-called well-rounded sense of who the applicant is and what their interests are. As more and more objective data (standardized testing, AP tests and classes, etc.) have been slowly phasing out over the past fifteen years, the Activities section has grown in weight in terms of making an application stand out. It can show that the student is athletic, but also artistically inspired, and a champion debater on top of it all. But it seems as though if the player isn’t captain of the team, they don’t excel in terms of that interest. Participation is no longer enough; the student must stand out within the organization. The emphasis placed on leadership roles, titles, and organizations within activities are an objective way to attempt to  measure subjective data.