How much detail to write for each Common App activity

RReaders in Stanford's admissions office, the office we learned from, judged each activity on two scales at once: how impressive it was, and how widely understood. Where an entry falls on those scales should decide how much the student writes about it, yet most applicants give every entry the same treatment, either all terse or all elaborate.

The result is a page that spends its words in the wrong places, explaining a varsity captaincy every reader already understands while leaving a selective national program unexplained for a reader who has never heard of it. The strongest honor on the page can end up reading as the weakest. The fix begins with the entries that need the least help.