I also like the flexibility as the 20 spots don’t all need to be activities per se, so you can include things that feel meaningful to you even if they normally wouldn’t fit well in any section of the application; for example, in addition to more standard ECs, part job job, and a few awards, my daughter also listed classes she had taken through Coursera and a subject she had worked on with a tutor - i.e. study that doesn’t show up on a transcript (classes with no grades and not for credit) and that wouldn’t fit into the Common App EC list, and yet in some cases provided meaningful experiences to the student and demonstrate specific interests and how the student sought out opportunities to explore topics of interest just because they wanted to learn about them, rather than because they were part of their high school curriculum. She filled up 4 or 5 spots with such classes she had taken for fun that wouldn’t otherwise have shown up in the app but which had been important to her.
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