Most of the Time, Leave It Blank
Sometimes I work with students and parents who really want to get an A+. They want to go the extra mile, refine every word of every essay, do everything right. When they come across the additional information section, they often fill it out in its entirety and present it to me, eyes gleaming.
If the rest of your application already reflects your salient achievements and meaningful experiences exhaustively, you probably don’t need to write anything in the Additional Information section. In fact, most students leave this section blank. An important underlying principle to state here is: “You don’t want to overwhelm your reader.” Another principle is: “Admissions officers value concision.” Unless the information that you are considering adding truly cannot fit anywhere else in your application (and that even includes your personal statement), refrain from adding it. Let me explain what I mean about the personal statement covering the additional information here. If you talk about helping your dad run his law firm with increasing responsibility because retinitis pigmentosa eroded his vision over the years, do you need to add in the additional information section an extended description of the responsibilities you held at the law firm over the years? No. Because that wouldn’t be concise. And because that information, in this case, fits in a space provided.
Awards
One of the simpler ways in which the Additional Information section can be used is to supply a long list of awards. Here’s an example of exactly what a Harvard acceptee put into the Additional Information section:
Achievements:
Academic:
•Greenville Highschool Super Intendent Scholar (9th-12th)
•Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society (11th)
FIRST Robotics: 148
•World Championship Division Finalists & World Championship Industrial Design Award (11th)
•World Championship Semi-Finalists, 3rd in the World (10th)
•UIL State runner-up and Texas State Champions (9th)
•World Championship Division Finalists (9th)
•7 event wins with 15+ awards
VEX Robotics: 4148A & 4148Z
•3-time consecutive 5A UIL State Champions
•5-time consecutive World Qualifiers
•State-Level Excellence, Champion, & Skills Awards (11th)
•State-Level Design Award (10th)
•World Championship Division Semi-Finalists (10th)
•State-Level Excellence Award (9th)
•50+ total awards
Community Service
•Robert F. Lucas Outstanding Key Club Lieutenant Governor Award (11th)
•Top 5 Lt. Governor (11th)
•Top 5 Newsletter (11th)
•District Governor Runner-up (11th)
•2x Silver & 1x Bronze Presidential Volunteer Service Award (PVSA) (9th-11th)
•400+ Hours of Service
•Rotary Youth Leadership Award
As you can see, there are just too many awards to fit into the Activities or Honors section. If you only have 1-2 awards for a given activity, I recommend putting them in the activity description itself within Activities.
(Also, hot tip, each bullet point you see is a character, not a word processor formatting. So you can copy and paste it and it will show up in the actual CommonApp text box. It’s also typed using Option + 8 on Macs. It can be a nice touch. You’re welcome!)
What if the Information I have in the Additional Information Section is Covered for Some Schools in Supplemental Essays?
Good question. Here’s another hot tip. The CommonApp, in general, can be different for different schools. The hack is that exactly what is entered into the CommonApp is what gets exported as a PDF when you hit submit—for each school. Students usually think that the Personal Statement is set in stone. Sometimes (this is a rare occasion), a student will apply to distinct programs across schools, such as musical theater and bioengineering, AND they will write a personal statement that really only works for one of those programs well. Generally speaking, your personal statement should be something that is predominantly human—it should capture your value system and core character traits—so it should work across programs. But if you really were to have a reason to have different personal statements, you could paste one essay in, submit to musical theater at Elon University, and then paste in a different essay and submit to Johns Hopkins.
The same is true for Additional Information.
You can paste in a discussion of your engagement with journalism and then delete it if you go into depth about that extracurricular for a school whose supplemental prompts it. You can see what I’m talking about if you read this Additional Information section:
Additional Information
Before Journalism was a class at my school, I was spending three lunches per week attending meetings and filming for a video series I developed called the Weekly Slice. When our club successfully lobbied to establish a formal Journalism class, I became the Student Life editor. I wrote and edited articles, led club meetings, managed the newspaper’s social media, and continued producing Weekly Slice videos. Additionally, I helped develop the new class and taught one class per week, experimenting with what felt most instructive between presentations, reading articles, and testing.
As managing editor this year, I currently teach about principles of journalism in class and hold additional roles of maintaining our calendar, enforcing deadlines, communicating with section editors, and leading club meetings.
To learn more, I designed an independent study during my second junior year semester during which I read from Reuters’ Local Journalism, the Decline of Newspapers and the Rise of Digital Media and interviewed local journalists while developing an in-depth investigative piece about the state of local journalism in Arizona. I finished the independent study giving a presentation to faculty, parents, and students, published on Youtube.
Last Summer, I attended the week-long Camp Cronkite at ASU where I attended daily classes on essential journalistic skills as well as electives on producing, on-air weather reporting, brand-making, writing for the ear, and anchoring.
So if you have an activity in your life whose description demands space that far exceeds what is available in the Activities section, yes, I condone your use of the Additional Information section. Try to be factual and concise and only focus on what you did. You don’t need to describe organizations you were involved with. Get into the nitty gritty but not so deep that a generally smart academic couldn’t understand what you were talking about with some careful reading and inference. You can also add a link for any portfolio or work you want to show them. It’s not guaranteed that they’ll take the time to look at it, but it’s not problematic to add it.
Course Conflicts
If you couldn’t take courses you hoped to take or your school was limited in course selection, you can add it here. The problem is that it usually sounds like a cop out unless you talk about something else you did. And then if you actually did that other thing, this information may be redundant. Consider this:
“I intended to enroll in both AP Physics C and AP Calculus BC during my senior year. However, my school scheduled both courses during the same period, making it impossible to take both. I prioritized AP Calculus BC and continued studying physics independently.”
I would say this is worth adding, but if there is significant physics-related activity represented in the Activities Section, then this may be redundant. It’ll be a judgment call.
When to Use the Challenges and Circumstances Section
The last major category of uses for this section of the CommonApp is providing information about unusual challenges and disruptions to your education. Think caregiving, extended illness, family emergencies.
Here’s a list of some topics for the Additional Information section:
1. Independent research: Details about original research, methodology, findings, publications, conference presentations, or projects that haven't been fully described in Activities.
2. Entrepreneurship: Revenue, customers, employees, product development, partnerships, investment raised, or measurable business impact.
3. Technical projects: GitHub repositories, software architecture, original algorithms, engineering prototypes, AI models, datasets, or technical challenges overcome.
4. Academic enrichment beyond school: University courses, graduate-level coursework, independent study, advanced textbooks, or self-designed curricula not reflected on the transcript.
5. Major extracurricular projects: A film, album, novel, nonprofit initiative, competition, or other substantial undertaking requiring more explanation than the Activities section permits.
6. Competition and award context: How selective a competition was, the number of entrants, qualification rounds, or what an unfamiliar award represents.
7. Unusual academic circumstances: Scheduling conflicts that prevented advanced coursework, unavailable AP classes, restrictive graduation requirements, or school policies affecting course selection.
8. Family responsibilities: Caregiving, substantial work in a family business, financial obligations, or household responsibilities that affected available time.
9. Educational disruptions: School transfers, extended illness, family emergencies, housing instability, or significant circumstances that affected grades or activities.
10. Collaborative contributions: The applicant's exact role in a laboratory, major engineering project, film production, community organization, or research team, especially where credit might otherwise be unclear.
11. Independent intellectual pursuits: Serious self-directed work in mathematics, philosophy, languages, computer science, or other disciplines, supported by specific outputs or milestones.
12. Portfolio and project references: A carefully selected link to original work, such as a research paper, technical demonstration, film, or interactive project, when the college permits and the material adds useful evidence.
Remember to respect your reader’s time! Be clear, simple, and concise, and it better be meaningful information!