Can you list a future activity on your college application?

RReaders in Stanford's admissions office, the office we learned from, saw an application as a snapshot of a student in motion, and they were glad to see where the motion was headed. Families tend to see the activities page differently, as a ledger of finished work.

Seniors fill it out in August, September or October, and anything that starts after the deadline feels off limits: the spring internship already arranged, the course enrolled in last week, the research project that begins in January. Leaving those off can hide the most interesting thing a seventeen-year-old has done, the thing set up in the fall of senior year, and many strong students are late bloomers. Readers in that office welcomed such lines on one condition, and it is where students go wrong.