Christopher Hunt

The Common App activities list — renamed “Activities and Experiences” for 2026-2027 — gives you up to 10 entries to record extracurriculars, jobs, family responsibilities, and independent projects. Each entry has a now-optional position title (50 characters), an organization name (100 characters), a description (150 characters), and hours-per-week and weeks-per-year fields. Strong descriptions start with an action verb, name concrete results and numbers, and use shorthand instead of...

BS/MD essays are the deciding factor in combined undergraduate-medical program admissions, where most applicants already have near-perfect academics. Every program asks some version of two questions: Why medicine (which must come from specific experience, not a childhood story or a desire to help people) and Why this program (which must argue for a match, not compliment the program's features). Brown's PLME — the only Ivy League BS/MD program, with a 2.19% acceptance rate — requires three...

Carnegie Mellon requires three supplemental essays of 300 words each: what passion or inspiration led you to your intended major, how you define a successful college experience, and what you personally want to emphasize that the rest of your application hasn't shown. Students who treat each essay as a separate assignment, picking a topic, filling the space, and moving on, produce three essays that don't build toward anything. The students who do this well map their whole application first,...