How to Organize Your Activities List
Tips to ensure your college application stands out
In some sense, the activities list on your college application will write itself. You have already done or are currently participating in the activities that will appear on the list. While the content is known, how you portray it isn’t necessarily set. You still have a few things to consider, like how to write your descriptions or how to decide the order that your activities occur. Keeping these things in mind when you are working on your activities can make a big difference in how you come across to admissions readers. By reading hundreds of applications and working with dozens of students’ activities lists, I have a systematic way that I approach them that guarantees they will showcase you in your best light.
Choosing Order
First impressions are lasting impressions, and the same can be said for your activities list. One of the most important things to decide is the order in which your activities are presented. You decide which goes first and which goes last. That means that you should be assessing which of your activities are the most meaningful and most impressive.
Granted, this process is rather subjective, and you might order it slightly differently from the person next to you giving you advice, but there will be some more objective factors to guide your decision. I view these as: leadership, prestige, duration, and major significance.
I tend to place leadership roles toward the top of the list. It immediately sets the tone that you are an above average student committed in your involvement who takes on responsibility. As an example, if you are the leader in any club, this should be toward the top of your list. It’s impressive that you’re the President of Student Council or the Editor-in-Chief of your school newspaper. Don’t hide these gems!
Prestige is often a culmination of many factors. If you have a prestige item, you might know what it is immediately. This might mean that you’re the leader of something you’ve been involved with for a while or you have an item that is significant to your future major, like having a research paper published or working in a lab at a university. This will be different for each person, but it should be something that calls attention to your list as a whole.
Duration is another way that I assess the order things should come. Those that you have done for a longer amount of time will likely automatically feel weightier and more significant. Often this should go closer to the top, especially if they overlap with leadership roles. That said, you might decide that being a lab assistant feels more impressive than being a general key club member for three years of high school. Each is significant, but being a lab assistant shows how you are beginning to explore your potential career, while being a general key club member might feel, well, more general, even though it will still introduce how you are committed to community service. You begin to calculate how each will serve your overall story.
Major significance I tend to think of heavily when deciding order. Ultimately, they are choosing you to go to an academic institution, so how much thought and action have you given into pursuing this career? What skills or knowledge might you already be coming in with? Generally, I will place these items closer to the top, and often timed grouped together per my next subheading.
Common Groupings
Grouping activities that are similar to one another can be beneficial in a number of ways. For starters, it can give you a sense of cohesion when filling out your application to help decide the order that otherwise might feel very arbitrary. Creating groupings to go together can also help to show a narrative within your activities, versus allowing them to read in isolation. The reader can more easily draw connections between your actions and how you are exploring various facets of your interests, from academics to community service to hobbies. Admissions readers go through applications quickly, so it’s important to make information easily digestible and unified.
Let’s say you hope to major in Biology and have these ten activities:
General Member of Biology Club (4 years)
Community Greenhouse Volunteer (2 years)
Choir Member (4 years)
Varsity Tennis (4 years)
Clean Rivers Volunteer (1 year)
Newspaper Section Editor (3 years)
Pianist (7 years)
Summer Pre-College Biology Program (1 summer)
Biology Lab Assistant (1 year)
President of Environmental Club (3 years)
While typing, I wrote them randomly. If you listed it this way, sure, all your information would be there, but in some cases you’re burying information that’s actually pretty unique and important to highlight.
Considering common grouping and the order suggestions from above, I would order them:
President of Environmental Club (3 years)
General Member of Biology Club (4 years)
Biology Lab Assistant (1 year)
Summer Pre-College Biology Program (1 summer)
Community Greenhouse Volunteer (2 years)
Clean Rivers Volunteer (1 year)
Newspaper Section Editor (3 years)
Varsity Tennis (4 years)
Pianist (7 years)
Choir Member (4 years)
To walk you through how I ordered them, I first looked at activities that revolved around the major Biology and then assessed their importance based on leadership, duration, and type. President immediately stands out, so it goes right to the top of the list. I placed Biology Club second due to duration, but perhaps the Biology Lab Assistant actually led to a published research paper or some very involved work at a prestigious university. I could easily see that sliding into spot two. But because it’s a shorter duration, but still important, it comes in as third followed by the Pre-College Program. All of these activities showcase deeper involvement and seeking new ways to explore what biology has to offer. Then I introduced the community service that was still neatly tied to biology with the Greenhouse and Clean Rivers Volunteer, deciding their order on duration.
As a note, often times general community service like this might fall a little later in the list, in this example after the Editor and Varsity Captain. This is some of the subjective work — do you want to keep everything biology related together? Or would you prefer to introduce all your leadership first? For this example, because the community service felt tied into Biology, I liked it remaining in the group, but if it had been, for example, Volunteer Tutor or Key Club Member Volunteer, I would definitely place them after Editor and Varsity Captain because they are more general, but I would keep them together as community service.
After I decided how the major grouping should look, I look at what else felt the most significant. Being a Newspaper Editor takes commitment and responsibility, so I placed it next. In my own personal assessment, I tend to place sports, music, and arts at the bottom UNLESS it is specifically important to your narrative. If you’re the captain of your varsity soccer team and you’re planning on playing in college, move it to the top! For many though, these types of activities feel more like excellent hobbies that show who you are as a person, but may not carry the weight of major activities. They’re important so admissions officers can see who you are but may not be the sparklers on your application.
Meaningful Description
To some extent, clubs might speak for themselves. Admissions officers will generally know what happens at a school newspaper or biology club, but this is your chance to describe it and showcase any particular achievements and responsibilities within the club. Use active verbs and precise nouns to get your point across. The more than you can use specific examples versus a general blanket description, the more it will tell your story, and not the person next to yours.
As an example, for Biology Lab Assistant, a general description might read: Assisted in a biology lab at Emory during the summer. Worked alongside professors and college students to further research.
It’s okay, but a little vague. What exactly did you do in the lab? What type of research? Could you namedrop a professor, especially if you worked closely with just one person and they have prestige in their field?
A better way to write it would be: Assisted Prof. X at Emory in a biology lab researching growth of cancer cells. Worked alongside college students to collect data and synthesize results into a research paper pending publication.
You can see how the second has more specific information that begins to depict precisely what you were studying and some of the skills you might be acquiring along the way. It turns it from a general experience into your experience, which helps to reveal more about you on your application.
For fun, here’s another example:
General: Played the piano since second grade; performed in multiple competitions and school performances.
Precise: Studied piano since first grade and achieved certificate. Participated in multiple competitions, resulting in awards a, b, and c. Performed in school theatre and band.
Like I mentioned, to a point the activities can be a bit subjective. If you feel strongly about certain activities and they’ve had a major impact on you, then they might be well-suited to go toward the top of the list. It is important to note that items toward they bottom aren’t less significant — all the activities you place on the list will help them to get a picture of who you are and what you spend your time doing. It tells them a lot about your interests and passions and your developing knowledge and skillsets. Keeping in mind the order you present them can make it so that they tell a narrative of growth and exploration. You’re in charge of how they will read, and since this is one of the major components of the application, take you time to ensure you’ve ordered them thoughtfully and given them informative descriptions. With that in mind, you should be set!
Still want some help on the activities to be sure they present well? Reach out for a free consultation to set up a program to review your activities list or other elements of your application.