150 characters

The activities section of the Common App forces you to tell a whole lot in very little space. You have 150 characters—letters, punctuation marks, and spaces—to describe an activity. You’re limited to 10 activities. You have 50 characters for your position and 100 characters for the organization. So if you’re creative with your use of space, you have 300 characters total to tell the story of your participation in an activity.

Remember that most colleges want to see more than just participation. That’s where “position” factors in. Were you vice president of the club? treasurer? active member? head of the outreach committee? food committee chairperson? social media poster? Use these 50 characters to show the level of your commitment.

Use the 100 characters of the “organization” to describe what the organization does. This way you can focus your “description” on the particular role you play. This is where you showcase your accomplishments and impact.

Use impactful, precise verbs

Ethan Sawyer has an “epic list” of activity verbs that you can google. Use strong verbs that zero in on your contributions. I recommend listing sentence predicates and joining the separate items with semicolons. 

Here’s a quick punctuation lesson: Use a semicolon to mark off distinct items and use commas within the items. Don’t write complete sentences. No need for the sentence subject (I). All you need is the predicate (that’s the part with the verb in it.) And forget about periods. Some people like to use bullets, but it’s the same idea.

Sample activities

Here’s what a full description of 149 (just under 150) characters looks like for a student in the math honor society, using commas and semicolons:

“demonstrate concepts, teach math to grades 3-5; organize elementary visits, design lessons, document visits; devise seasonal math activities for KIHS”

I have students brainstorm their activities first without worrying about the character counts. It’s fun to cut it down to only the essentials! 

Here are some revisions:

“I got first place in the debate competition in Washington, DC” (61 characters) becomes “earned 1st place in DC debate” (29 characters).

“I started a club to look for and observe local birds at school”  (62) becomes “founded birdwatching club” (25). 

My years as a newspaper adviser trained me well for fitting impactful words into small spaces, but my students get the hang of it pretty quickly.

Remember

The activities list is part of your unique story. Use the allotted spaces wisely and fully.

Photo by Allison Shelley/Complete College Photo Library