The Hidden Gem You Thought Didn’t Belong on Your Activity List

When I sit down with students to draft an activity résumé, we usually spend a long time working through everything they’re involved in. 

The conversation tends to follow predictable lines. We talk about sports, music lessons, jobs, internships, school clubs, competitive activities (like science fairs, Olympiads, mock trial, or Model UN), community service work, and journalism through the newspaper or yearbook. These are the categories students expect to discuss, and what they come prepared to discuss.

It’s interesting, though, what happens at the very end of these routine conversations.

Once we’ve worked through the obvious activities, I’ll often ask a simple follow-up question: “Is there anything else you haven’t mentioned? Do you spend time on any other hobbies or special interests that might be more unstructured or informal?” And frequently—sometimes sheepishly—a student will say something like, “Well, there’s this one thing I do, but I don’t think it really counts. It’s probably not worth mentioning, and I definitely wasn’t going to put it on my application.”

But when they tell me what it is, nine times out of ten, it turns out to be an absolute gem.

Why Students Hide Their Most Interesting Selves

Here’s the puzzle: Many students have a genuinely unusual interest, a quirky pursuit, or a hobby that sets them apart, and they don’t realize they should include it on their resumes. Or they actively work to keep it off their applications. 

Somewhere along the way, they’ve absorbed a message that college admission is about fitting in, checking the right boxes, and looking like the kind of student a selective college expects to admit.

This belief is understandable. Students hear so much conflicting advice about what colleges want. They look at older siblings, classmates, and online lists of “what got me into Harvard,” and they conclude that the safe path is to look like everyone else… only slightly better. 

The instinct is to round off the edges, hide the strange corners, and present a polished, recognizable version of themselves. The result is that the most distinctive thing about them never makes it onto the page.

What Admission Officers Are Actually Looking For

After years of reading applications at a highly selective university, I can tell you that admission officers are not looking for students who have done a perfect job of looking like everyone else. They are reading hundreds, sometimes thousands, of applications from students who all participated in student government, played a varsity sport, took AP classes, and volunteered at a local nonprofit. 

And all these applications begin to blur together.

What makes an admission officer stop and pay attention is a glimpse of a real human being with a genuine interest in something specific. The student who builds elaborate marble runs in their garage. The one who has been learning to identify every bird species in their county. The one who collects vintage typewriters, or restores old radios, or has spent two years teaching themselves a language no one in their family speaks.

These unique activities don’t need to be impressive in any conventional sense. They don’t need to involve leadership, awards, or measurable impact. They need to be real. And because they are real, they reveal something about how the student thinks, what they notice, and how they choose to spend their time when no one is grading them.

Quirky Is Not the Same as Inauthentic

I want to draw a careful distinction here. I’m not suggesting that students go searching for an uncommon hobby to manufacture distinctiveness. That defeats the entire purpose, and it risks being read as obviously contrived. 

What I’m suggesting is the opposite: Many students already have something genuinely unusual in their lives. They’ve just been talked out of assigning value to it.

If you are the student who has been keeping a detailed journal of cloud formations since seventh grade, or who has read every book by a particular obscure author, or who builds intricate model trains, or who has been quietly studying how to forecast weather, please understand that this is exactly the kind of thing that helps a college see you as a person rather than as a collection of credentials. 

Your “quirk” does not need to connect to your intended major. It does not need to be something you plan to continue in college. It just needs to be true.

What to Do With the Gem You’ve Been Hiding

If you suspect you might have one of these gems tucked away, here is my advice: 

• Write it down. Put it on the activity list. Find a way to talk about it in an essay or a supplemental response if the opportunity arises. 
• Don’t apologize for it. Don’t explain that you know it’s “strange.” And don’t try to dress it up as something more conventional than it is. Let it sit on the page as itself.

The students who stand out in the admission process are rarely the ones who tried hardest to stand out. They are the ones who had the confidence to let an admission officer see who they really are.

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After many years as an Independent Educational Consultant, I have spent countless hours helping students identify which aspects of their lives are worth highlighting in their applications. If you or your student would like personalized guidance in shaping a college application that reflects who they genuinely are, please contact me.