Students, and especially their parents, are often wondering – Do I have enough activities? Will they ‘look good’? These are actually the wrong questions to ask in building a strong resume or activities list for the college admissions process.
Instead, these two words can change everything about how you present your involvements in your application:
So what?
Yes. Really. We want you to ask yourself, so what? Read on for how this simple question can change everything –
First of all – what is an activities list?  
While parents are often thinking about their child’s resume, the admissions process tends to focus on a specific component of the application: the activities list. There are a few different formats for this, depending on the application you are submitting; however, the version almost every applicant is sure to complete is found in the Common Application. In the Common App, the activities list consists of up to 10 entries to capture a picture of all of the ways you’ve spent your time from the summer before 9th grade up to senior year. Each entry gets just 150 characters to describe your involvement. You read that right, not 150 words, 150 characters. To be clear, 50 characters are allotted for naming your role, and another 100 for stating the organization you are a part of, but once those pieces are provided, everything you want to say about your involvement must be conveyed in just 150 characters.
Though some colleges will accept a resume in addition to the activities list, this short-form list is the most frequently used and is highly valued by the admissions reader in quickly assessing a student’s involvements and what they add to the full story of the applicant. In fact, unless you have significantly more involvements than the 10 the activities list allows for, it probably does not add value to your application to provide a resume that duplicates the content already requested.
What is an admissions reader looking for?
Since you get so few words to tell your story, there’s no room for fluff. The admissions reader uses the activities list to understand what you’ve done with your time when you aren’t doing the required stuff of high school. They look to this application component to see evidence of involvements that align to your stated areas of interest, and to understand your values and personal qualities, what you are passionate and curious about, how you have led and contributed in your family, neighborhood, school, or communities, and what impact you have had on those around you. By reviewing the entries on your activities list, an admissions reader should be able to see a picture of what it is you care about.
How do you make the most of this piece of your application?
Ask yourself so what?
With each entry in your activities list we encourage students to review and revise the description until it gives a satisfactory answer to the question “so what?” You were involved in FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America) So what? Why should your admissions reader care that you were part of this club? What is it that you brought to that group? What impact did you have on your local community? How did you grow as a leader or support others? What skills did you develop, and most importantly, how did those positively contribute towards a goal, experience, or outcome for the people you came in contact with through FBLA? In just those two words – so what? – you are getting to the heart of why it matters that you spent your time in this way. The same question can be applied to your basketball team, theater performance, summer job, or the babysitting you do for your siblings after school. There really aren’t objectively ‘good’ and ‘bad’ activities. The value of what you include has much more to do with how you convey why your activities matter in the bigger picture of your life, story, and application.
It isn’t an easy task to pack meaning into 150 characters, but if you continue to refine your very brief responses in this way, you will build a compelling activities list that gets at something much greater. Whoever you are, whatever you love and spend your time doing, how have you added value to those around you? And what do others’ value about the ways you show up and engage in those experiences? In this way, you are crafting an activities list that shows your reader how you matter to the people you’ve come in contact with in high school, and help them understand the ways you might continue to matter in your college community and beyond.
This is the fourth in a multipart series on mattering in the college process. Read part one Think Grades Get You In? Think Again part two, Want to do something that matters? Just begin and part three, What Really Matters in the College Essay?. Check back in the coming weeks for our final installment on how mattering can shape a student’s high school experience, prepare them to thrive in college, and create the foundation for the kind of application that sets a student apart in the college process.
TBU Advisors are experienced in supporting students to navigate their college choices and personal best fit. If you’d like to explore working with a TBU Advisor, get in touch here. We look forward to connecting with you.
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