Before drafting your UC activity descriptions, answer three questions: what you did, how long you did it, and what impact you had. List your important experiences in a document or spreadsheet, including finished and short-term activities, before selecting, drafting, and ordering entries.
Start with Your Responsibilities
Draft a sentence around an action, your responsibility, and a result, then add any context the reader needs to understand the work. Make the activity's name and purpose clear without assuming that admissions officers know your school's abbreviations.
Explain the Process Through Specific Actions
Focus on actions, effort, and results; an activity description does not need the storytelling or reflection of an essay. Use verbs such as organized, analyzed, or designed to explain how you worked, including the data analysis, planning, or programming skills you used. You can explore personal reflections in response to a suitable essay prompt; see our essay guidance page for help with the writing process.
Support Your Impact with Reliable Numbers
Time spent, the scale of an activity, and measurable results can help admissions officers understand your involvement. For awards, explain the selection criteria, and include applicant and recipient counts only when reliable records support them. Use numbers you can substantiate and explain how you arrived at them. For team achievements, identify your responsibilities without claiming the entire organization's results as your own.
Check Consistency Across Your Application
Compare dates, roles, time commitments, and results across activity descriptions, essays, your resume, and other application information. Check that your hours per week, weeks per year, and years of participation reflect your experience, then review spelling, abbreviations, and formatting. Do not add activities to fill space or substitute a program description for your own contribution. Check the section instructions, categories, and length limits for your application year; this guidance does not replace the application's rules.