When filling out my common application, I don’t know what I was thinking. Instead of thinking about the hours per week and weeks per year, I put down whatever I thought made sense first. My main EC which is my video editing business just has such an irregular schedule that I don’t even remember how many hours per week I dedicated to it. I remember some days were spent on my computer for hours and hours editing and probably others where I did nothing, but I put down 10hrs per week 48 weeks per year. Now that I think of it, there was definitely too many hours in terms of how it looks on the common app. I also have an additional info section that talks about a medical situation I had, and I failed to indicate that it was that I felt worse during the morning hours and I could still do EC’s on my computer at home. I dont even know what to do but I just realized this after stumbling upon a reddit mentioning EC hours, should I email some colleges before RD comes out? I already got rejected from vanderbilt ED2, and UVA EA, but accepted to UIUC GIES (easy to get in). I have a 1480 SAT and 3.94 UW. What should I do now?
My EC’s:
10 hr/wk, 48 wk/yr - Video Editing Business Owner - 9, 10, 11, 12
5 hr/wk, 48 wk/yr - YouTube Content Creator - 9, 10
3 hr/wk, 25 wk/yr - community service thing - 10, 11, 12
20 hr/wk, 6 wk/yr - Finance Intern - summer before 12th grade
3 hr/wk, 25 wk/yr - Freelance PC buisness 11, 12
3 hr/wk, 35 wk/yr - Founder of an online stock and Finance Community - 10, 11, 12
3 hr/wk, 35 wk/yr - Chess Club Member & Youth Mentor - 9, 10, 11, 12
30 hr/wk, 10 wk/yr - Retail Cashier & Sales Floor Associate - summer before 11th grade
3 hr/wk, 15 wk/yr - Youth Soccer Referee - 10, 11
12 hr/wk, 12 wk/yr - Soccer - 9, 10, 11
In my casual reading of your EC hours, nothing jumps out as being unreasonable. Some of the things overlap, like I would have just assumed your videos editing and YT content creation overlap some. Other stuff are not the entire year and some hours here and there. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong.
The 10 hours a week for your video editing, I would assume that could easily been one weekend day.
Your big hours are in summer so I don’t think “embellishment” stands out.
And you already have a fantastic admit - I wouldn’t use the word easy to get in but that’s me. Your two rejections are tough gets for all and not necessarily related to your concern here.
So sit back, relax, and see how the rest come to play.
It is fine. Plus your applications are in so stop re-reading and driving yourself crazy. Your time and energy would be better spent doing things you enjoy and being with friends and family.
But it seems like during 9th grade when I wasn’t feeling great, I pushed through soccer and also 10hrs per week of my video editing business? I should have probably put 6hrs per week for 40 weeks per year but I didn’t
I know. Just sucks to know you made as big of a mistake a writing 10hrs/wk, 48 wks/yr instead of 6 hrs/wk, 40 wks/yr for my first EC, and that may have made an AO suspicious. Honestly I hate the way the common app asks for hours, but Im just stressing lol and trying to decide if I should send an email saying that in context of 12th grade im doing less of my video editing buisness so the average should be more like 6hrs per week, 40 weeks per year. And thats true because I’ve been dedicating less than that many hours this year (but I didn’t know that when writing my application back then).
You are getting stressed out and starting to over-analyze. Let it go. In all likelihood this is totally fine and, regardless, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it now (no, do not contact admissions offices about this). Try to do fun things to distract yourself while you await RD decisions. It will work out, one way or another.
So even though I genuinely know that those hours are a mistake, I should just let it go. So email Upenn saying something like, I recently opened up my application and realized that the weeks per year for my first EC should definetly be 40 weeks per year and 6hrs per week, is not going to help me. Im stressing because I was just so stupid not to think about these hours when applying, I just eyeballed it totally incorrectly
AOs spend about 10-15 minutes reviewing an application. Nothing is egregious and nobody is going to take pen and paper to add up EC hours.
The schools you are mentioning are tremendously competitive in terms of admission. There are many more worthy candidates than spots available. If you don’t get in you will never know the reason why. So please stop torturing yourself and go out and enjoy.
No, it will not. At best, they will ignore it. At worst, they will be annoyed and think you’re flaky. You have nothing to gain by doing this at this point.
Believe me, folks on this forum have seen EC hours listed that were unbelievable. Yours were not.
Sample of one. My kid did the same EC during the school year…and the summer. The number of hours varied from school year to summer. It was very hard to note the number of hours, but the kid did the best he could do…sort of averaged the times.