What to put in the Common App additional information section

FFormer Stanford admissions officers treat the Additional Information box near the end of the Common App as one of the more consequential spaces in an application, and Stanford's own files, opened by students under federal privacy law, show readers paying it real attention. Most students either leave it empty or paste in awards that did not fit elsewhere.

Both choices waste it, and the cost rarely shows until spring, because nobody tells a family which question in the file went unanswered. One former officer reduces the box to a four-word rule, and it starts from what a reader does when something in the record looks odd.