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will this water down my sketch?


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I'm looking to see what the general consensus (sp?) is with regards to putting activities on the 48 item sketch. I've got a lot of items from high school activities/awards/etc... that could easily go above and beyond the 48 allowed. Obviously I'm going to include ALL of the things I've done in university as a priority, but I'm wondering whether I should be selective as to which of the High School things I include. I'm afraid that if my sketch is roughly 2/3 High School entries it might make the person evaluating the sketch overlook the university items or think I didn't do much in University. The reason for the skew is that I did a lot of acting and got a lot of awards upon graduation from High School, and it is these entries that tip the scale so much towards HS items (if you ignore these, it'd be ~50% for each). Do you think it would be better to omit some HS entries and not fill up the 48 spots? I'm mostly afraid of watering down my EC's and volunteer work by including so many HS awards... any thoughts?

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It kind of depends on what the high school things are. If you think they are very significant, then put them in. From what you described (disclaimer here!), you seem to have a whole lot of points that really revolve around one major activity (acting) in high school. Can you condense it to put into a few points rather than many? Also, can you pick the biggest and best of these? In addition to skewing your application to high school stuff, you might also end up skewing your application to one activity as well.

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I think the schools expect verifiers for anything that reasonably needs a verifier (and i do have verification for everything i've listed). I'm a recent university grad, so 4 years isn't that long ago. I just remember reading over my own 48 item sketch last year and once you've gone through so many points that sound similar ie. Algebra Geometry Award, Chemistry Award, Biology Award etc... you sort of become numb to what you're reading and stop paying attention. I'm afraid that listing all these awards will make the reviewer overlook other activities simply because there are so many items on the sketch... is this silly? Is omitting some similar-sounding things and having a sketch with around 30-35 items better than including them and having a sketch with 48?

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This is my own perspective, but what I would make sure is that everything from university is in your sketch, then add from highschool what you think is important and contributes to your effort to sell yourself.

When I applied, I put in major awards (governor general's medal, athlete of the year, and some others) but left out the awards for each individual course. I think it ended up being 35 items or so, but descriptive of me.

As another point, when I was doing interviews (not evaluating apps) for incoming students, the number of points that people completed only seemed excessive in one case, where the applicant had left their undergraduate studies off in order to put more awards... we had to ask where they went to school

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As another point, when I was doing interviews (not evaluating apps) for incoming students, the number of points that people completed only seemed excessive in one case, where the applicant had left their undergraduate studies off in order to put more awards... we had to ask where they went to school

 

Hahaha brilliant!

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