Your Teen's Activities Section Can Set Them Apart.

"Honestly, I almost didn't buy this because I thought Marcus's list was too short for a course to fix. He's not a joiner. He works fifteen hours a week at a grocery store, takes care of his younger brother after school, and taught himself to edit videos on his laptop. None of that felt like 'activities' to us. The course completely changed how we saw his profile. By the end, he had nine entries, and every single one of them was real. He described his job in a way that showed actual responsibility and growth. He described the caregiving in a way that showed character. The video editing became a self-taught skill with a portfolio behind it. His applications looked nothing like what I expected when we started. He was admitted to Northeastern in the spring."

"I bought this for my daughter at the end of 9th grade, mostly because I wanted to understand what we should be thinking about. I wasn't sure a course made sense that early. What actually happened was that Priya watched the first module and came to me with a list of three things she wanted to change before 10th grade: she wanted to take a more active role in her family's small business, she wanted to turn her baking hobby into something she could actually describe, and she wanted to start tracking her hours and her impact in real time. She said, 'I want to have something to say about this later.' She's a junior now and her activities section is the part of her application she's least worried about. I cannot say the same for most of her friends."

"My mom bought this for me and I thought it was going to be like watching school. It's not. The videos are short and Robert gets to the point. The part that actually helped me was the Six Vital Signs Robert shared. Once I understood what each word in my descriptions was supposed to be doing, I went back and rewrote everything in like two hours and it was obviously better. I ended up with twelve activities. I definitely didn't think I had twelve. The one that surprised me most was that moderating my Discord server counted and that I could write about it in a way that made it sound like what it actually is, which is running a small community of real people."

"Sofia had what I thought was an impressive activities list going into senior year. Captain of the robotics team, three years of debate, volunteer work, a summer research program. I assumed the activities section would be the easy part of her application. What the course showed us was that every single description she'd drafted was generic. "Led team of 12 students to regional competition." Fine, but it said nothing about what she actually contributed or what changed because she was there. After going through the Language Tests and the Essential Edit, her descriptions were completely different. More specific. More her. The research program entry went from two lines about the program itself to two lines about what she discovered and what she did with it. Her college counselor read the revised version and said it was one of the strongest activities sections she'd seen. Sofia is attending Georgetown in the fall."

"I found this course six weeks before my early decision deadline. I'd been putting off the activities section because every time I looked at the Common App I froze. I did the whole course in three days — not a relaxed three days, but it was completely doable. The template was the thing that saved me. Instead of staring at a blank application, I was transferring finished descriptions from a document I'd already built. I hit submit on November 1st with an activities section I was actually proud of, which is not something I expected to be able to say. I got into my ED school. I still think about how different that application would have looked if I'd just guessed my way through it."

"When Tyler was waitlisted at his first choice school in March, his admissions counselor told us that his application was strong but that his activities section hadn't differentiated him enough from other applicants in his pool. I wish I could go back and find this course a year earlier. We bought it after that conversation, Tyler redid his descriptions, and we submitted updated materials when he was invited to reaffirm interest. He was admitted off the waitlist in May. I have no way to prove the rewritten activities section was the reason, but I know it was significantly stronger than what he originally submitted, and his counselor specifically mentioned it in the follow-up call. For what this course costs, it's not a question I would ever hesitate on again."