When planning extracurricular activities, start with what you already do and consider how you could become more involved. We look at activity depth through sustained involvement, growing responsibility, and impact. Alongside the time you have spent, consider what you have taken on and what has changed because of your work.
Review Your Time and Sustained Involvement
Look back at when you began, what you do, and how consistently you have participated. Keep notes on specific experiences and reflections for future activity descriptions and essays. If you participated occasionally, describe that accurately instead of presenting it as a long-term commitment.
Trace How Your Responsibilities Grew
Consider whether you moved from attending a club to taking a central role, organizing work, leading others, or solving problems. Describe the stages from joining discussions to proposing a project, managing a budget, or coordinating a team so admissions officers can follow that growth. You can examine work, research, and community service experiences in the same way.
Explain the Impact of Your Work
Along with your actions, explain whom you helped, what problem you addressed, and what you accomplished. Trace how you identified a problem, proposed a solution, gained approval, improved it through feedback, and put it into use to see whether you created something others could continue using. Use specific numbers when records support them; otherwise, describe the results accurately in words. For a team achievement, explain your own contribution.
If you plan to study economics, you could tutor classmates, investigate a question using public data, or prepare an analysis of a community survey. Let your courses, activities, and essays reflect your interest in economics. These three perspectives help you review your experiences; they cannot tell you how much an activity will change your chances of admission.