Common App Question

[Anonymous]

For the Honors/Awards section of the common app, can we include dance awards/honors? One is tied to school,(honor society for dance arts), and one was a national arts competition. No space in activity section for these. Also, regarding "Additional Info" section, hs counselor is telling my kid to put a lot of things like their research projects, and some summer academic programs and job shadowing that does not fit in activity section. Is this good advice?

[Anonymous]

1. Those are honors and I’d list them.
2. Don’t muddy the story with more activities. Main EC plus anything interesting plus paid work plus anything that takes a ton of time.

So
EC hydrogen research project
EC chemistry medal
EC future female chemists
EC instagram page What’s Hydrogen?
EC dance team captain
EC paid summer job at cvs.

Adding NHS or MUN member freshman year or can food drive volunteer just dilutes the whole thing. For sure don’t need to put it extra info. That could be link to research project paper. But that’s it

[Anonymous]

I have heard the same for the additional information section. For Honors/Awards, we have been advised to prioritize those that align with our DCs intended major and that show initiative and impact. A national award is wonderful so you would want to include that toward the top as well.

[Anonymous]

What about independent research projects, can we include a few sentence description in additional info?

[Anonymous]

We were told to use additional information only if it is truly new info, not reflected anywhere else in app, and very impressive or impactful. If it’s fairly ordinary or just another “special” thing you want to add, it looks a little desperate and actually annoys AOs who already have a ton of info to digest in your app among thousands of others. Don’t add extra work for the AO just for the sake of trying to add one more thing saying “look what I did”. Unless it’s exceptionally unique, it just looks dumb.

[Anonymous]

OP- I worry about annoying the AO. HS counselor told my kid to add a bunch of stuff to 'additional info' section. I think the research makes sense but maybe the summer programs should be left out?

[Anonymous]

check admityogi.

these kids are attending top tier schools and their additional info sections are often overflowing with info about their special research projects

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For the Honors/Awards section of the common app, can we include dance awards/honors? One is tied to school,(honor society for dance arts), and one was a national arts competition. No space in activity section for these. Also, regarding "Additional Info" section, hs counselor is telling my kid to put a lot of things like their research projects, and some summer academic programs and job shadowing that does not fit in activity section. Is this good advice?

I thought the Honors Awards section was for "academic" achievment. Doesn't it state academic on the Common app in this section? YOur child's first award would go there because it was tied to a school competition/class. And the other would go under Additional info or in activities section.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For the Honors/Awards section of the common app, can we include dance awards/honors? One is tied to school,(honor society for dance arts), and one was a national arts competition. No space in activity section for these. Also, regarding "Additional Info" section, hs counselor is telling my kid to put a lot of things like their research projects, and some summer academic programs and job shadowing that does not fit in activity section. Is this good advice?

I thought the Honors Awards section was for "academic" achievment. Doesn't it state academic on the Common app in this section? YOur child's first award would go there because it was tied to a school competition/class. And the other would go under Additional info or in activities section.

Think you can put national level ECs here

Check Reddit