Where a university tells you how much your activities count
Nearly every U.S. university publishes a Common Data Set. Section C7 lists how much each part of the application matters — in the school's own words.
Families ask us how many activities a student needs. Five? Ten? It is the wrong question to plan around — and you do not have to take our word for it, because the universities publish the answer themselves.
What the Common Data Set is
Most U.S. universities post a document called the Common Data Set on their own website every year. It is a standard reporting form: enrollment, admission, financial aid — and, in section C7, how much weight each part of the application carries.
To find it, search the university's name together with the words "Common Data Set". It sits on the school's own site. You do not need a consultant to read it.
Four labels, eighteen rows
C7 lists roughly eighteen items — academic GPA, rigour of secondary school record, standardized test scores, the essay, recommendations, extracurricular activities, the interview, and so on. Each row gets exactly one of four labels.
- Very Important
- The school says this carries the most weight.
- Important
- It counts, below the top tier.
- Considered
- It is looked at.
- Not Considered
- It plays no part in the decision at this school.
The bottom label is the one worth sitting with. Some universities mark extracurricular activities Not Considered. That is not a rumour circulating among parents — it is the school's own form, filed the same way every year.
What we take from it
If a student's list contains one university that does not count activities and another that rates them Very Important, then "how many activities" cannot be the planning question. The number does not survive the difference between those two schools.
What does survive is direction — whether ten lines read as one person with one clear interest, or as ten unrelated errands. A list that reads as one person is legible at both schools. A longer list is not.
The question is not how many. It is whether the lines read as one person.
SourceCommon Data Set 2025–2026, section C7. The ratings are each university's own published wording; the reading that follows is IPE's judgment.