Describing an Activity for University Admissions - Opinions Come Hither

Hello Everyone,

I am writing my application for university and would love to hammer down the technique for a strong essay. The following writing is to describe an activity. This activity is Toastmasters (public speaking) where I am the President and Founder. The question and my response have been included below:

Short Description for Activity 2* (maximum 50 words)

President of Toastmaster Club. This activity allows me to share my public speaking passion (science topics my favorite) and professional development upon others around me. I have learned mentor-ship and leadership through high and low member interest. Members have grown their confidence and speech-craft skills while working towards professional awards.

**Thank you everyone!

The last two sentences are kind of incomplete. It will be better to frame the sentences in another way as adding words will exceed the word limit.

Chris, I hope I can call you Chris since you feel like a friend to me already. I am going to show you how I would approach this within 50 words. By the way, does the description of the position count towards the 50 words? Here I go:

As President of the Toastmaster's Club, I indulged in my love for public speaking focusing on science, while pursuing my development as a mentor and leader in the club. I helped encourage other public speakers gain their confidence and speech crafting skills through our open speech activities and training seminars.

Sometimes, the improvement of the statement relies on the proper placing of important descriptions and knowing how to blend the important facts into sentences that can combine other information as well for a shorter, but more informative presentation. I hope my suggestion helps you out.

@Holt

Hello Holt. Yes of course, you may call me Chris!

That is impressive. You made that writing shine! Wish I had that incredible penmanship.

To answer your question, the description of the activity does count towards the 50 words. I can see how you tied in the science aspect and growth, very important. It is better to focus more on myself in these small writings or also throw a line to how others have been impacted?

Normally, the 50 word statement is too short for you to include anyone else in the description. So, yes, it would be better to simply focus on your activity. You were already able to include the others in your description through the inspiration you provide. It is not necessary to explain how they were affected by your mentoring as far as I can tell. Now, if the prompt requirement asks you to describe how your activity affected others, then you are obligated to do exactly that. Represent them as well. From what I can tell though, you just need to describe your activity and what you did in it. So referring to the effect of the activity on others is not a necessary aspect of the response statement. Feel free to edit the suggested text from me though. I won't mind if you want to change some things so that you will be able to better represent your "voice" in the essay. Mine is only a suggestion of how to approach the response.