What position title to use on the Common App activities list

RReaders at selective colleges, including those in Stanford's admissions office, move through activities pages at speed, and the position title is the first thing they meet in each entry. Many students copy that title exactly as the program issued it, on the theory that anything else would be lying. The result is entries like Youth Civic Engagement Associate, Summer Pathways Initiative, Office of the District 4 Councilmember.

It is accurate, and to a reader it means almost nothing, so a summer of real work passes as a line of bureaucracy. Students make the opposite mistake too, reaching for words that sound bigger than the work. Between those two errors runs a narrow path, and it starts with one word that appears on almost every page.