If you had the chance to have a ten-minute conversation with an admissions officer to explain everything you do that is important to you, what would you talk about? How would you sum up the way you’ve spent your life in high school when you weren’t in class?
You probably wouldn’t start with, “One time, I went to a meeting of the Spanish Club.”
It wouldn’t make sense to talk first about an activity that you didn’t care about or spend much time doing. Instead, you’d probably begin by discussing your most important activities—the ones in which you spent significant time and energy.
But, you’d be surprised how many students list their activities in no particular order when filling out college applications.
Listing an activity that meant little to you is like telling an admissions officer that the one week you attended a meeting of the “Ping Pong Club” was just as important to you as everything else you did in high school.
Share things that meant something to you, where you really dedicated time and energy. List them in order of importance to you. If something wasn't all that important to you, consider leaving it off. An admissions officer is a human being–he or she can only retain a certain amount of information that you present.
And remember that the key is to share things that are important to you, even if they may not seem overly impressive to someone else. I'm not saying you should be open about watching 6-hours of television a day. But if you write a blog that shares critiques of your favorite reality television shows and you've got several hundred loyal readers, that's something important to you that you should probably share.