Hi friends, welcome back. This is module two. We're getting into the how-to.
In particular, we're going to be looking at the activities list. First, we'll start with five tips for your activities and awards list. Then I'll show you the difference between an amazing list and one that's just really good.
And I'll show you what I mean by just really good. Some activities you may not have considered, why you should never ever stretch the truth, and a three-step process for up-leveling your activities and awards list. All right, five tips for the activities and awards list.
And by the way, this is in your course guide. This is just a really quick review. So active verbs, active verbs, active verbs. Rather than saying something like work to the clinic doing different things, I say try something like organized patient diagnosis notes, sterilized tools for surgeries, assisted with x-ray analysis. Notice how those verbs are giving me a little bit more information than something like worked at, right?
Or the student said measured vitals, made health recommendations, prescribed medicine. Sounds like she's like a legit doctor here. I think it sounded like she was doing some high level work.
I don't know what kind of internship this was, but look at the verbs. Measured, made, prescribed, provided. All of that is giving us more content so we can better understand exactly what you did.
Students sometimes skip over this thinking that they can fit, you know, thinking that they can't fit their tasks in. You totally can. Make sure your verbs aren't redundant.
So if you had, for example, instructing, helping, and teaching children tennis, we might wonder what's the difference? So instead consider something like instructed tennis students in proper technique, that's one thing, with the verb instructed, while imparting, different verb, lessons in sportsmanship, health, and integrity. Ah, so one of them is more about learning tennis, the other one is more about learning life, right?
So you can clearly separate those. So make sure the verbs are showing some kind of variety. Third, emphasize and if you can quantify any tangible measurable impact you had. So whom did you help?
How many people? How much money? Instead of raised money for children in Africa, raised how much?
3,000 bucks. To provide what? 18 uniforms and six scholarships. For whom?
The students at this particular school in this particular place. Okay, that's really important. If your role is simply member or participant, you don't have to name it again and again. You can just list the activity.
So instead of member this, participant that, you can just name the thing. Students are sometimes self-conscious about not having enough leadership stuff. You don't have to draw attention to the fact that you were just showing up for some of these things. You can just list the thing. And fifth, you don't have to put everything into your 150-character description on your activities list.
You can make selective use of the additional info section. For example, if you were the creator of three different tech prototypes, as this student was, you could list, for example, researched, brainstormed, and created three prototypes of a water cleaning boat, recognized statewide. See additional info for more. So that little thing at the end says to the reader, hey, this was huge. I can't fit it all here.
Bear with me. Check out more info over there. Now, the important thing when I say this is do this selectively.
So I wouldn't encourage you to just randomly put a bunch of stuff in your additional info and say see additional info for all of them. Having said that, if you have just like, let's say, three or four activities that you want to list and you want to really go in depth, then you could say see additional info. So use your best judgment here.
All right. So what is the difference between an amazing activities list and a really good one? Here is a really good list.
Peer tutor for AP bio teacher. Okay. Selected by AP bio teacher.
And by the way, if you were selected for something, it's worth putting in there, you know, to assist peers with difficult bio concepts. Provided feedback with student free response questions. Lovely.
Member of JV swim team. Participate in practices and meets. Good.
Assist in recruiting new members. Okay, cool. That's different.
Help raise funds for travel. Oh, nice. Swim anchor on four by 100 meter relay. Now, you may be thinking that I'm saying this is a bad list.
This is not. This is actually a really good activities list. And I'm getting some nice information about what the student has done. Mentor for Girl Scouts Troop 4321. Mentored how many?
10 young girls in arts and crafts. Spearheaded, love that verb, troop exhibit representing Italy at cultural community fair and brainstormed troop activities. These are all really solid.
AP Scholar Award. Granted to students who receive so the student just explains what that is, and superior at Miami Day Jazz Festival. Receive full marks from the judges based on style and interpretation, note accuracy and creativity.
What's cool about this is by using those words like accuracy and creativity to describe something that the student did, the student is actually sending the message to the admissions reader, hey, I am these things too, which is really cool. Okay, so this is really good. But what does an amazing activities list look like? It looks something like this. For example, inventor of the drone X2.
Patent number US8382029B2 was granted to me, the inventor and applicant, after a year designing and testing prototypes. See additional info. Professional wildlife photographer.
Worked with an international, and by the way, abbreviations are totally fine, award-winning filmmaker. Designed and sold calendar to raise funds for nearby school. developed prototype for improved lens.
Lead programmer Alphabots, designed and programmed original video game to be published this fall, quickly learned new programming language, demoed game at Comic-Con. These are real, y'all. Soloed at Carnegie Hall as winner of American Protégé International Music Competition and top 10 nationally and two-time New York champion in policy debate, Academic All-American. These were from the same student, by the way.
If you're not seeing the difference, here it is. A very good activities and awards list includes very good achievements told in a well-crafted way. And an amazing list includes extraordinary achievements told in a well-crafted way. And I would just add here that if your activities and awards are so extraordinary, you don't even have to tell them in a well-crafted way.
You can just kind of list them. My point here is that if you participate in activities that may qualify as extraordinary, then you have the potential to have an extraordinary list. Otherwise, your activities list might cap out. at just really good, okay? I hope that doesn't feel disheartening.
I hope that feels like I'm saying to you, like, you've gotta do the best with what you've got. And that's what I'm gonna show you how to do in the next module. Here's some good news. Here are some activities that if you haven't considered them yet, they might count. And I'm just gonna show you this list.
You can pause the video if you want to and spend some more time looking at it. But my goal here is to sort of ping for you ideas of stuff that you may not have thought about yet. Let's say if you've got just one activity listed and you're like, oh, it's looking a little thin. What are some other things you've done?
You know, some students have taken online courses to learn coding, for example. Others compose music. And they might not think of that as an activity. Something like this can count, you guys.
If you use a description to describe, you know, what you learned through it, what values you developed, it can really count. Here are some others, you know. Training pet goats, dogs, parrots to become therapy animals.
Juggling or unicycling. Yoga. These are things that you may not think, oh, that doesn't count. It's got to be academic. It doesn't, as long as you can explain a little bit about why it's important to you.
Here's why you should never stretch the truth. And by stretch the truth, I mean lie on your activities list. A quick tale. So I worked with a student a couple years ago who decided, and I didn't know that this person was doing this, to kind of pad the stats, which is to say, add a few hours here and there. You know, there were some other lies.
And I didn't find out until I got a call from the student's counselor. And this counselor said, hey, I heard from X, Y, and Z schools that there were some inconsistencies in this student's application. And I was like, what do you mean?
And the counselor said, well, she said that she was an officer in this particular club. And I was like, is that not true? And she's like, no.
And I was like, oh. And also, she said that she went on such and such trip. And I was like, did she?
And she's like, no. And I'm like, oh, that's bad. And she's like, yeah.
The student is basically rejected from all these schools and has to issue an apology letter to all of the other schools that she applied to. And it was just bad news all around. So why not do this?
It's not only are you potentially going to get found out and rejected, but it's just ethically bad news. So don't do it. Okay, sermon over. A three-step process for up-leveling your activities list.
Whether you think your activities are awesome or whether you think they're just okay. this is going to work for you and I'll share it with you in the next video.