How to write Common App activities that lead with results

RReaders in Stanford's admissions office, the office we learned from, moved through activity descriptions at speed, and the habit most students bring to those boxes, telling the story in order, is the one most likely to hide their best result. A typical entry reads like an honest history: ninth grade, second violin; tenth grade, section award; eleventh grade, concertmaster of the school orchestra and most improved musician; twelfth grade, principal chair in the all-state orchestra.

The most impressive fact in that entry, the all-state chair, sits in its final words, in a box a reader may not finish. The cost is invisible to the family, because nobody reports which line went unread. There is a shorter version of the same entry, and it reads very differently.