Non-academic activities within same organization

[Snake]

While filling out the non-academic activities, would you suggest to break up different roles within the same organization?

For example, I volunteered at a summer camp for 4 years, the first year as kitchen crew, the second year as counselor in training, the third year as counselor, and the 4th year as senior counselor. Since I have quite a few other activities to fit into these categories too, I was thinking about putting kitchen staff and counselor in training together in service ethic, and putting counselor and senior counselor together in leadership. Would they still see this as a 4 year commitment, or do I risk them only recognizing them as 2 separate 2 year commitments? 

Any advice or explanations on how you did similar activities would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[TARS]

You might risk adcom only recognizing them as 2x two year commitments. It seems logcial, otherwise, you'd double dip and make it look like you had 2x four year commitments by doing 2 entries for one organization IMO.  If you had two different roles at the same time in one organization, that might be worth considering as two entries, but this doesn't seem like the case.

I had similar cases in my app, and I ended putting them as one entry because I could show long term commitment, which seems to be one of the most important factors to strong NAQ, and it also shows progression, initiative, and growth through my shift in my roles and responsibilities. I felt that this was a safer choice as I did not want to risk adcom not counting this as long term commitment, and for them to think I was resume padding.

[alexmonaghan]

TARS, 100% agree with what you said. I wouldn't advise putting them as separate entries unless you think each position has something distinct that's important for you to highlight in your application.

I held 4 very different positions at a summer camp and actually put each of those as a separate entry, because each position was very different and I couldn't capture that in the character limit you have for one entry. You put down the organization title and date range for each activity, so I figured I wasn't running too much of a risk of adcom not seeing that it was a continuous commitment to that one place.

But yeah, if you're worried that things like kitchen crew and counselor in training are too similar, I'd agree with your choice to pair those up. You can specify the timing of those roles in description (e.g. As kitchen staff (<year>), I... As a counselor in training (<year>), I...) or something like that.

[gogoup]

I would leave the 4 years at the summer camp as one entry, and agree that the progression / growth aspect (quality) trumps splitting them into two different roles (quantity). If it were me, I would focus on on growth and progression into leadership roles in the description rather than simply stating what each role encompassed.

[1more]

Hey OP, 

I don't think any of us can say for sure whether an entry that shows a 4 year long commitment is better than 2 entries that address different roles and responsibilities. Here are some points to consider:

1. If you have a bunch of long term commitments and few strong leadership and service ethic examples, split it. Conversely if you really lacked long term commitment examples then keep it together. 
2. If this was a particularly important activity to you that you spent a lot of time in and learned a lot from, split it and use the extra space to write about what you did. 
3. Overall, look at the rest of your application and see if splitting it or combining it would look better in an overall picture.

Personally, I was with an organization for 6 years and did so many roles with them. I had like 5 entries related to my work with that organization and some were only a couple of months long (like if I organized a big conference that comes once a year). My application was successful with UBC.

[lostandmaybefound]

8 minutes ago, 1more said:

Hey OP, 

I don't think any of us can say for sure whether an entry that shows a 4 year long commitment is better than 2 entries that address different roles and responsibilities. Here are some points to consider:

1. If you have a bunch of long term commitments and few strong leadership and service ethic examples, split it. Conversely if you really lacked long term commitment examples then keep it together. 
2. If this was a particularly important activity to you that you spent a lot of time in and learned a lot from, split it and use the extra space to write about what you did. 
3. Overall, look at the rest of your application and see if splitting it or combining it would look better in an overall picture.

Personally, I was with an organization for 6 years and did so many roles with them. I had like 5 entries related to my work with that organization and some were only a couple of months long (like if I organized a big conference that comes once a year). My application was successful with UBC.

Thanks for sharing this experience. In terms of verifiers - did you use someone different for each role?

[1more]

I did try to use different verifiers if they were more relevant to the role I was in. For my 6 entries, I had 3 different verifiers.