Advice from Ivy Coach re not listing sports on college application
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Anonymous
OP, if your kid loves their sport than they need to play it, it's bigger than admissions. This advice is only helpful in ADDITION to playing it, sports for most is a passion. My kid still plays his year round as a rising college senior in intramurals. This PP probably wasn't an athlete and doesn't get it. |
Anonymous
I can’t find anything but this: https://copyright.byu.edu/00000179-9edb-dccd-a1fb-dfff6ff00000/ivy-coach-v-lehren-complaint https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/us/admissions-cheating-scandal-consultants.html |
Anonymous
It's as important as anything else for the average DCUM type upper middle class kid. Nothing short of insane superstar EC is going to move the needle, but you have to put something down. |
Anonymous
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Is your kid applying to "elite" colleges? If not then ignore all the advice from the article. Put HS sports on the application.
It says "we understand the power of a singular hook" for elite colleges. Does your kid have such a hook? If so then maybe leave the sports off, but with no singular hook you might as well leave it on. |
Anonymous
That's true. From an admissions standpoint, sports are an irrelevant EC for all non-recruitable students. But sports are obviously important for the applicants themselves - being part of a team, mental health, conditioning, self-discipline etc. I'd certainly put it down on an application. But all students gunning for the Ivies and other top 20 schools need to make the decision whether the time commitment for varsity sports is worth the opportunity cost. Junior year in particular is intense. There are only so many hours in a day. And sometimes stepping down to rec sports is the wiser course of action if their heart is set on gaining admission to a highly selective college. Harvard and Stanford really don't care if an un-recruitable applicant is spending 20 hours a week on crew or soccer. It's the rest of the app that matters. |
Anonymous
spot on. Colleges don't care about sports unless you're a recruit. As an extracurricular, they are less interesting to schools than dedication to an academically oriented extracurricular, especially one that you can draw that line from to your intended major or career path. For instance, if you ultimately want to become a lawyer, having been on the debate team makes sense. You may think it is unfair of colleges to discount the commitment and effort you put into sports, but colleges are first and foremost academic institutions; it's only reasonable that they are going to be more interested in people who showed an interest in academically-oriented pursuits outside just the required classwork, they're more likely to be people who learn for the enjoyment of it rather than just to get the grade. And college is also supposed to prepare you for your life after college, so colleges want to see someone who has spent some time exploring activities that will give them an informed idea of what they want to study there and what they want to do after, rather than someone just seeing college as the required next step. |
Anonymous
The advice makes sense. Parents don't like to hear it, but unless you're a recruited athlete, the sports ECs ( even if "captain") don't mean anything. But feel free to fill up the common app space anyways! |
Anonymous
| I don't think it's irrelevant, as a number of EPs have said. Also many schools do care, at least generally, about their club sports remaining vibrant. |
Anonymous
Abject, unmitigated idiocy. Participation in HS athletics is often the great differentiator for the exceptionally high-achieving students, and not just at the recruited athlete level. Think of the time commitment, resolve, and grit that are necessary in individual and especially team sports - we're seriously going to pretend that membership or participation in the NHS, the Key Club, SADD and a random Rubik's cube competition are the signals that AOs are looking for ... ? Student A: 4.00 unweighted, 15 AP classes, all 5s and 1 - 2 4s, 1600 SAT and/or 36 ACT, along with 12 - 15 ECs / awards that mostly align with their college major interests and help to achieve a cohesive narrative in their essays, plus they are a four-year varsity athlete who served as captain senior year and won a state title. Student B: 4.00 unweighted, 15 AP classes, all 5s and 1 - 2 4s, 1600 SAT and/or 36 ACT, along with 16 - 20 ECs / awards that mostly align with their college major interests and help to achieve a cohesive narrative in their essays. Student A absolutely trounces Student B in the eyes of AOs ... arguing otherwise is just absurd at this point. |
Anonymous
What a nerd |
Anonymous
Sure - what they really care about is DECA and how fast your kid can solve a Rubik's cube. 
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Anonymous
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Koppleman which is another high-priced college advisory service essentially says the same thing.
Her advice is a bit more nuanced. She thinks it is fine to play one sport AND do lots of other ECs that make for an interesting application. However, she will tell any 3-sport, unrecruited athlete to give up two of those sports and start spending your time on other more interesting ECs if you want a top school. |
Anonymous
Your example is nuts...both of those kids are superstar students doing tons of ECs and both will be accepted. I don't understand why you think Student A trounces Student B based on your sports example. Nobody cares if a HS team wins a state title...are you implying that a kid that plays a Spring sport where captains aren't even announced until like Februrary (i.e, well after applications are due) I guess is also SOL? |
Anonymous
| That’s ridiculous advice. I certainly understand that for a kid who’s not recruited playing a sport is “just another EC “and that’s fine. But if that’s the they do it’s what they do! If my kid left off sports he’d have very little on his application, that’s where he’s poured his time, had some decent achievements, and, some recognition, et cetera. Do I wish that he had died deeper into non-athletic ECS? Of course I do. But that’s not who he is. |
Anonymous
I'll speak to my own kid's experience this application season, who applied exceptionally far and wide as Student A ... with the exception that his unweighted GPA was 3.8 and not 4.0 ... everything else matches up. Everything. His team sport IS a spring season sport, but because he was a three-year returning varsity athlete, his role as team captain was known well ahead of time (and certainly by the point in time when his R-EA app was submitted). He had seven Top 25 schools to choose from, including both of the top publics in the country and two Top 10 privates. He obliterated every last one of his classmates who were SBA leadership for four years, actively involved in 10,000 clubs, winning Science Olympiad medals, Rubik's cube competitions, national awards, international awards, etc., but who didn't find time or energy to participate in athletics. The ones who did all of that AND athletics, and there were very few, achieved outcomes during application season just like he did - but the others, hello University of Indiana or UCSB. |