The Common App activities list: what counts as an activity is broader than you think

Some students struggle with their Common App activities list. They falsely assume the only activities that count are academic pursuits.

Here’s what admissions readers like me really want to know: How did you actually spend your time outside of school? That stretches past clubs and varsity sports. A part-time job, watching your younger siblings, and going to the gym — they all count.

Most students think they have nothing worth listing because they’re only thinking about “official stuff.” That’s the wrong approach. The fun part is figuring out which ten things represent you.

Some students look at the ten slots on the Common App activities and start to hyperventilate. Ten things? I don’t have ten things. I’m in two school clubs and have a job.

I’ll plant my flag right here. You have ten things, and I know you do without meeting you.

The panic about not having ten activities almost always comes from one wrong assumption: you can only list academic stuff.

So, don’t hunt for filler to plug empty slots. I want you doing something more fun. Figure out which 10 things best represent you (the actual you) and put them down. That’s the whole ballgame.

Students mistakenly assume their Common App activities are only for academic stuff. The club with a sponsor and a meeting time. The varsity sport. The honor society. If it didn’t come with a sign-up sheet, it doesn’t count.

Trust me, it does.

If you watch your younger siblings every day after school so your parents can work, that’s an activity. If you act as a translator for parents who don’t speak English at the doctor’s office or bank, that’s an activity, and a serious one.

Running a lawn care business in your neighborhood counts. So does showing up at the gym five days a week for two years and tracking your own progress. I keep a running list of these non-traditional activities and work through it with students because nine out of ten times they’re sitting on something real and have talked themselves out of it.

I’ve found the most interesting line on a student's Common App activities list is often the one they almost left off.

See also: 100 Best Common App Activities Examples

Once we know what counts, the next question is which of those things will actually land.

I define impact as one word: memorable.

Would an admissions officer reading two thousand applications remember yours?

When a student tells me about an activity, I ask four questions:

• Did you change something?
• Did you build something?
• Did you lead something?
• Did you grow something?

If the honest answer to all four is no, the activity might still be worth a line, but it won’t be the line that does the heavy lifting.

Also, whenever you can, put a number on activities. “Volunteered at a food bank” is a sentence anyone can write. “Logged 200 volunteer hours coordinating weekend shifts for 14 people and distributing meals to 300 families a month” is so much better.

This also answers a question I get constantly: yes, listing volunteer hours on your Common App activities list is worth it, as long as the number is real and you can say what those hours produced. Quantify the people you helped and the money you raised. Numbers make your impact legible.

At the same time, the impact doesn’t always have to point outward. Some of the most honest things a student can claim are internal. Real personal growth. Building a skill you didn’t have, whether that’s leadership or patience or the ability to run a meeting without falling apart. Those count too. In fact, some of them count most.

If you’ve stuck with one thing for three or four years, that says something a pile of recent sign-ups can’t. It shows you cared about something before it was strategically useful.

But let’s be honest: who does this really describe? Not most students. Plenty of you found the thing you love junior year — and you’re just getting started. That’s fine, too. More than fine. If you picked up something last month and have thrown yourself into it, put it on the list.

See also: How to really impress admissions with your extracurriculars

Here’s a hot take I’ll happily own: your student doesn’t need to be well-rounded.

In fact, the whole “well-rounded” student idea is backward. Schools aren’t building a class of well-rounded students. They’re building a well-rounded class of students who each went deep on something. 

Every class needs a researcher, a founder, a poet, a kid who can actually fix things. It doesn’t need thirty students who did a little of everything.

There’s another problem with the well-rounded student: nobody is excellent at everything. Expecting a sixteen-year-old to be a standout athlete, a published writer, a robotics captain, and a community organizer is a fantasy. So my advice to students: Pick a thing. Go deep into it. And let the rest be ordinary.

The strongest applications I’ve seen all have one thing in common: there’s a narrative running through them. I define the narrative as a theme that connects activities, interests, and the essays.

You don’t need every activity to be about the same topic. The student interested in public health can run cross country and work the register at CVS. The theme isn’t the subject: it’s the thread a reader can follow. When all the pieces of your Common App activities list point in the same direction, it stops being a list and starts being a person. That’s what gets remembered.

This is the most practical thing I can offer, and it’s the filter I want every student using before they commit to a new club or summer program — whatever’s being dangled in front of them.

First question: How does this support my narrative, and how would I actually talk about it on an application? If you can’t answer it in one sentence, the activity probably belongs to someone else’s story, not yours.

Second question: What tangible skill will I learn or strengthen here? Not “what looks good.” What will I be able to do at the end that I couldn’t do at the start?

If an opportunity answers both questions, it’s worth your time. If it answers neither, it’s a slot you’re filling for the sake of filling it — and we’ve already covered how that goes.

One last misconception, because it causes a lot of needless stress. Students think they need to be the president of everything they touch. So they collect titles.

The title matters far less than what you did with it. I mean far, far less. “President of the Environmental Club” tells me nothing. “Member of the Environmental Club,” who personally organized the river cleanup and pulled 40 volunteers and 600 pounds of trash out of the water tells me everything.

Admissions officers know a title is just a word on a page. What they’re reading for is the work underneath it. So, be the person who did the thing. It’s the thing that counts at the end of the day.

None of this stuff is complicated to understand. It’s hard to build, and it’s hard to build alone, on a deadline, while also being a teenager with homework.

A fourteen-year-old doesn’t stumble into a published research paper or an app 100,000 people download. These kinds of activities or passion projects that show real depth get created purposely, over years, with someone helping your student see which thread is worth pulling.

That’s why I joined Empowerly: to help students build a list of activities that stand out.

I’ll give you a few examples.

Our Research Scholar Program pairs students with PhD mentors from elite schools to produce a publication-ready research project. At the same time, our Startup Internship Program drops students into one of our partner startups, giving them actual professional experience for their Common App activities list.

We give motivated students the structure and time to build depth into their activity lists. Time is the piece families underestimate most. Depth takes years, and you can’t buy them back once they’re gone. The best moment for us to start helping your student was before they entered high school. The next best moment is right now.

More than clubs and sports. Caring for younger siblings or holding a part-time job counts. If it’s real and it took commitment, it belongs on the list.

No, actually the opposite. Schools build well-rounded “classes” out of students who each went deep on something different. Pick a direction and go far into it rather than spreading yourself thin.

No. What you did matters far more than the title you held. A member of a club who organized or did something quantifiable beats a club president every time.