Spike. Well-rounded. Spike again. Passion project.
I’ve always hated these terms, because the terms always get debased. “Passion project” is the worst of them, and it’s the worst because both halves are wrong in the way people use them. “Project” sends kids off to build something. “Passion” sends them pointing at whatever they’re already best at, or whatever they got a head start on, which is a known problem and not the same thing at all.
But we need a word. So we’re keeping this one, and here’s what it means for the rest of this piece: the thing your kid would keep doing if no college would ever see it. That’s a test, not a label. A head start is exactly the thing a kid stops doing the minute nobody’s watching.
Where this matters, and where it mostly doesn’t
This is a highly-selective-school problem. Under roughly a 30% admit rate, the numbers get a file looked at and the person gets it admitted, and this is what the reader is looking for. At moderately selective schools it’s mostly not a thing; the numbers do the work. Unless a moderately selective school is a reach for your kid on GPA or rigor, in which case the personal side is where the file gets rescued, and everything below applies.
At the schools where it matters, here’s the problem. Everyone thinks it’s about the project. It isn’t. It’s about the passion. A college is buying your kid’s next four years and betting on the person, not the résumé; the whole personal side of the file is a search for someone they can’t say no to.
A kid who will do anything to get into one of those schools will try to be whatever they think the school wants. And a lot of the least pleasant work in an admissions office is sorting exactly that out: the performative, box-checking version of a person. The people doing the sorting say so on the record.
Hannah Mendlowitz, Associate Director at Yale: “Did you really put in 700 service hours tutoring ninth graders in math because it was really meaningful and important to you, or did you just want to make sure you could hit that big number on your application?”†
Mark Dunn, Director of Outreach and Recruitment at Yale: “It can be easy for admissions officers to separate out a student who is exceptionally passionate about something from the students who are really just trying to play this game, essentially like, we can see this from a mile away.”‡
Jeff Schiffman, then Director of Admission at Tulane: “We’re kinda turned off when the resume is ten pages long (or every single box on the activities section is filled out).”§
The project that exists for the app
There’s a genre of activity every reader knows by sight. A one-year club with one real purpose — college applications. A senior founds it in September. It has a name, a logo, a mission statement. The senior graduates in June and it stops existing. The next September a different senior at the same high school founds it again. Same “Founder” line, same school, every cycle. Not passion. A loop.
Dunn again: “It has amazed me in my years of reading applications how many of the same organizations have been founded and refounded year after year after year. These things typically show up as the first item on a student’s activities list… they usually have a lot of quantified things.” And: “The ones that were founded by the students a year ahead of them, they never survive after the student goes to college. That’s a cycle that I don’t think does a lot of good for the people who are the beneficiaries of these organizations.”‡
The rules, one at a time
The reel’s version in quotes, then the answer.
“You need a passion project. Put it at the top of the activities list.”
Yes, it goes on the list. That’s where it lives: position, organization, description, real hours. It’s one line out of ten, not the list’s organizing principle. It goes at the top only if it’s true that it’s the most important thing your kid does; the Common App’s own instruction is “in order of importance to you.” If it’s the only entry with a description, that’s the tell.
“Your club leadership is your passion project.”
Almost never. A school club is the school’s. It met Thursdays before your kid joined and it’ll meet Thursdays after they leave. Run the test: would they keep doing it if no college would ever see it? Sometimes yes, and then the description should say what actually happened there, the year of asking that got the cafeteria to switch to paper straws. Most of the time, a club is a club. It belongs on the list as what it is. Dressing it as a passion project is the part that reads.
“If you don’t have one, start one.”
No. Six weeks from Nov 1 is when the loop above gets founded. If it didn’t exist before this article, don’t start it. The passion is already on the list. It’s usually the entry with the most hours and no description: the job, the sport, the six families they’ve been sitting for since eighth grade. Jobs and caregiving count fully. Even the reels agree on that one. If your kid already started one in September, keep it if it’s real, and write the real start date and the real hours. The reader sees September either way.
“Give it a title. Founder. President. Executive Director.”
Titles can be useful, if you do them right. The real role — informal ones included. What the position field is not useful for: dressing up a hollow entry with impressive-sounding words. Dunn has already told you what a founder line with quantified things and nothing under it looks like from his chair. Fill the position field with what the kid actually did. Put the Tuesday in the description.
“Quantify it. Revenue is the first metric.”
Numbers when they’re true and they show scale. “$4,000 in 149 donations” says something. “Revenue” as the first metric is something a reel made up, and Yale’s 700-hours question above is what over-quantifying earns you. No number is not a failure.
“It has to match your major.”
No, outside a few impacted programs that say so. A lifeguard who wants to study economics isn’t a contradiction. An economics club founded in September to match the major is.
“Your passion project has to be your Common App essay.”
Almost certainly no. It’s not usually the story you want to tell, and you certainly don’t want to tell it in résumé format. In a few cases it shows up because it’s inevitable: the passion got there first and the project is just where it happened to land. If the essay is already written that way, that’s the test to run: is the project the subject, or the setting?
“And in the supplementals.”
Almost certainly not, at least not in résumé format. But supplementals often work in parallel to the project. They explain the why, the what next, or, occasionally, the how. The project is the evidence. The supplemental is the reasoning.
“Put the link in Additional Information. Get a teacher to mention it. Lead with it in the interview.”
Additional Information is for things the rest of the application can’t hold: a gap, a circumstance, a course the school doesn’t offer. A link to the project is a résumé in a trench coat. Don’t ask a teacher to mention it; a recommendation is about the classroom, and a paragraph they were asked to write reads like one. In the interview, yes, when they ask what your kid does outside class, and only the way a person would talk about it: what happened, what went wrong, what they’d do differently. Not the pitch.
Why the feed sells it
People sell all of this online because, well, people are selling families stuff. We sell families stuff too. We’re the barber telling you that you need a haircut. The one thing we don’t sell is certainty.
College admissions feels uncertain because it is uncertain. Dartmouth’s dean, Lee Coffin: “The work we do is informed subjectivity. It’s not random, but it’s not predictable.”** Anyone who tries to sell you certainty is selling a lie.
Uncertain isn’t the same as unnavigable. The machine isn’t broken; it’s built, and once you can see how it’s built, the list stops being a guessing game. Ten boxes. What your kid actually does. The thing they’d keep doing if nobody were watching, described like it happened.
Colleges have to be desperate. You don’t.
Good luck, good hunting,
Jacob
† Hannah Mendlowitz, Inside the Yale Admissions Office, Ep. 47, Feb 13, 2025.
‡ Mark Dunn, same episode.
§ Jeff Schiffman, Tulane admissions blog, “Apps 101: 9 Tips for the Activities Section,” updated Jul 9, 2021.
¶ Matthew McGann, College Admissions Process Podcast #384, Jul 20, 2026.
** Lee Coffin, Admissions Beat, S9E3 (rebroadcast of S7), Feb 2026.