Time consuming sport as only extra-curricular?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Colleges don’t care about extracurriculars unless you’re in the top 1% of the nation

Wrong. If this kid recruits successfully, that is all the school will care about. So that could be GMU or Marymount or Yale. If he is NOT a good enough athlete for the schools he is looking at, then his EC as an athlete will count like any other EC and this could hurt him if it is all he has as an EC and it is a selective school.

Not at Yale or other T-20 schools. Recruiting successfully means gotten the endorsement from the coach and from the admission office, which typically will issue a Likely Letter to confirm candidate is qualified academically. These schools will require a pre-read (full transcript, test scores, all ECs, resume, etc.) in the spring/summer before senior year to assess potential recruit's academic strength. Look up 'Academic Index' requirements for Ivy League. In practice, if the candidate is truly outstanding in a revenue-generating D1 sport (think football or basketball) then the academic index threshold could be lowered to an extent, but the overall Academic Index for all recruits needs to be compensated by other athletes in different sports, e.g. fencing which tends to have the highest academic profile.

Here is the problem..two Yale recruits for the same team can have very different recruiting experiences. The top 3 baseball recruits that the coach really wants just need to have high grades, strong rigor and at least like a 1350 SAT (this is Yale currently...I know there were headlines on how Yale may change how they treat athletes). He doesn't care if they do anything else but play baseball.

The bottom 3 recruits have a very different experience. They are told they need high SAT scores...probably 1530/50+. The coach needs them to bring up the Academic Index. They should look a lot like your overall Yale applicant.

Recruits 4-6 are somewhere in between. Have at least a 1475 or so. Probably don't care so much about other ECs, but nice to show something.

Also, Ivy League D1 is acting much more like Power 4 D1 with athletic recruiting. Probably 30% of the team is committed by August before their junior year of HS, and around 80% is committed before the Summer of senior year. Again, talking baseball specifically as other sports have their own calendars.

Duke and Stanford are going to be completely different from Yale as Power 4 schools. Duke basketball players just need to meet minimum NCAA standards. Their top recruits will only be there for one year anyway. You can't compare Power 4 recruiting at Duke, Stanford, UCB and Vanderbilt (all top 20) to any of the other top 20 schools.

[Anonymous]

Unless a recruited athlete, no one cares.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Colleges don’t care about extracurriculars unless you’re in the top 1% of the nation

Wrong. If this kid recruits successfully, that is all the school will care about. So that could be GMU or Marymount or Yale. If he is NOT a good enough athlete for the schools he is looking at, then his EC as an athlete will count like any other EC and this could hurt him if it is all he has as an EC and it is a selective school.

Not at Yale or other T-20 schools. Recruiting successfully means gotten the endorsement from the coach and from the admission office, which typically will issue a Likely Letter to confirm candidate is qualified academically. These schools will require a pre-read (full transcript, test scores, all ECs, resume, etc.) in the spring/summer before senior year to assess potential recruit's academic strength. Look up 'Academic Index' requirements for Ivy League. In practice, if the candidate is truly outstanding in a revenue-generating D1 sport (think football or basketball) then the academic index threshold could be lowered to an extent, but the overall Academic Index for all recruits needs to be compensated by other athletes in different sports, e.g. fencing which tends to have the highest academic profile.

Here is the problem..two Yale recruits for the same team can have very different recruiting experiences. The top 3 baseball recruits that the coach really wants just need to have high grades, strong rigor and at least like a 1350 SAT (this is Yale currently...I know there were headlines on how Yale may change how they treat athletes). He doesn't care if they do anything else but play baseball.

The bottom 3 recruits have a very different experience. They are told they need high SAT scores...probably 1530/50+. The coach needs them to bring up the Academic Index. They should look a lot like your overall Yale applicant.

Recruits 4-6 are somewhere in between. Have at least a 1475 or so. Probably don't care so much about other ECs, but nice to show something.

Also, Ivy League D1 is acting much more like Power 4 D1 with athletic recruiting. Probably 30% of the team is committed by August before their junior year of HS, and around 80% is committed before the Summer of senior year. Again, talking baseball specifically as other sports have their own calendars.

Duke and Stanford are going to be completely different from Yale as Power 4 schools. Duke basketball players just need to meet minimum NCAA standards. Their top recruits will only be there for one year anyway. You can't compare Power 4 recruiting at Duke, Stanford, UCB and Vanderbilt (all top 20) to any of the other top 20 schools.

Along the same lines, I've heard that certain good schools use one sport to raise the average across all sports, and, more specifically, the cross country team has an above-average GPA/SAT score to compensate for the football team.

[Anonymous]

The short answer is that schools won't give him extra credit for the amount of time the sport takes. It will count as one extracurricular. If he's recruited, that won't be an issue. If he isn't, it will weaken his application to have only one extracurricular.

My kid is a three sport varsity athlete, and has been captain of two. He also played two of the sports at the club level until mid way through high school. He counted all three sports as one entry at the very bottom of his "Activities" list.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Colleges don’t care about extracurriculars unless you’re in the top 1% of the nation

Wrong. If this kid recruits successfully, that is all the school will care about. So that could be GMU or Marymount or Yale. If he is NOT a good enough athlete for the schools he is looking at, then his EC as an athlete will count like any other EC and this could hurt him if it is all he has as an EC and it is a selective school.

Not at Yale or other T-20 schools. Recruiting successfully means gotten the endorsement from the coach and from the admission office, which typically will issue a Likely Letter to confirm candidate is qualified academically. These schools will require a pre-read (full transcript, test scores, all ECs, resume, etc.) in the spring/summer before senior year to assess potential recruit's academic strength. Look up 'Academic Index' requirements for Ivy League. In practice, if the candidate is truly outstanding in a revenue-generating D1 sport (think football or basketball) then the academic index threshold could be lowered to an extent, but the overall Academic Index for all recruits needs to be compensated by other athletes in different sports, e.g. fencing which tends to have the highest academic profile.

Here is the problem..two Yale recruits for the same team can have very different recruiting experiences. The top 3 baseball recruits that the coach really wants just need to have high grades, strong rigor and at least like a 1350 SAT (this is Yale currently...I know there were headlines on how Yale may change how they treat athletes). He doesn't care if they do anything else but play baseball.

The bottom 3 recruits have a very different experience. They are told they need high SAT scores...probably 1530/50+. The coach needs them to bring up the Academic Index. They should look a lot like your overall Yale applicant.

Recruits 4-6 are somewhere in between. Have at least a 1475 or so. Probably don't care so much about other ECs, but nice to show something.

Also, Ivy League D1 is acting much more like Power 4 D1 with athletic recruiting. Probably 30% of the team is committed by August before their junior year of HS, and around 80% is committed before the Summer of senior year. Again, talking baseball specifically as other sports have their own calendars.

Duke and Stanford are going to be completely different from Yale as Power 4 schools. Duke basketball players just need to meet minimum NCAA standards. Their top recruits will only be there for one year anyway. You can't compare Power 4 recruiting at Duke, Stanford, UCB and Vanderbilt (all top 20) to any of the other top 20 schools.

Along the same lines, I've heard that certain good schools use one sport to raise the average across all sports, and, more specifically, the cross country team has an above-average GPA/SAT score to compensate for the football team.

that's not how it works despite what you "heard"

[Anonymous]

My son went to prep school and was in this same scenario—though he did manage to pack a few ECs into the margins. For the boys on his team who were low stats to a bit above average stats who were in a similar boat, I don’t think the college outcome changed much due to just having the one intense activity. Those kids are all into t50-t150s as they would have been regardless.

HOWEVER, it definitely hurt the really high stat/top rigor kids…they were shut out of the top schools (t20ish) that the more well rounded kids with similar stats at the prep school got in to. My son watched this play out his freshman and sophomore year and dropped the sport (still played another less time intense sport) and reconfigured starting the summer after his sophomore year and ended up getting into several top schools that I’m certain he’d have been rejected from if he’d continued the sport.

So, I’d say it’s really not an issue if your kid is aiming around t50 or lower. But if your kid wants t25 or better schools and isn’t going to be recruited, he might need to think about how important it is to keep playing that much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Colleges don’t care about extracurriculars unless you’re in the top 1% of the nation

Wrong. If this kid recruits successfully, that is all the school will care about. So that could be GMU or Marymount or Yale. If he is NOT a good enough athlete for the schools he is looking at, then his EC as an athlete will count like any other EC and this could hurt him if it is all he has as an EC and it is a selective school.

Not at Yale or other T-20 schools. Recruiting successfully means gotten the endorsement from the coach and from the admission office, which typically will issue a Likely Letter to confirm candidate is qualified academically. These schools will require a pre-read (full transcript, test scores, all ECs, resume, etc.) in the spring/summer before senior year to assess potential recruit's academic strength. Look up 'Academic Index' requirements for Ivy League. In practice, if the candidate is truly outstanding in a revenue-generating D1 sport (think football or basketball) then the academic index threshold could be lowered to an extent, but the overall Academic Index for all recruits needs to be compensated by other athletes in different sports, e.g. fencing which tends to have the highest academic profile.

Here is the problem..two Yale recruits for the same team can have very different recruiting experiences. The top 3 baseball recruits that the coach really wants just need to have high grades, strong rigor and at least like a 1350 SAT (this is Yale currently...I know there were headlines on how Yale may change how they treat athletes). He doesn't care if they do anything else but play baseball.

The bottom 3 recruits have a very different experience. They are told they need high SAT scores...probably 1530/50+. The coach needs them to bring up the Academic Index. They should look a lot like your overall Yale applicant.

Recruits 4-6 are somewhere in between. Have at least a 1475 or so. Probably don't care so much about other ECs, but nice to show something.

Also, Ivy League D1 is acting much more like Power 4 D1 with athletic recruiting. Probably 30% of the team is committed by August before their junior year of HS, and around 80% is committed before the Summer of senior year. Again, talking baseball specifically as other sports have their own calendars.

Duke and Stanford are going to be completely different from Yale as Power 4 schools. Duke basketball players just need to meet minimum NCAA standards. Their top recruits will only be there for one year anyway. You can't compare Power 4 recruiting at Duke, Stanford, UCB and Vanderbilt (all top 20) to any of the other top 20 schools.

Along the same lines, I've heard that certain good schools use one sport to raise the average across all sports, and, more specifically, the cross country team has an above-average GPA/SAT score to compensate for the football team.

that's not how it works despite what you "heard"

Yes, it is how it works. That's a fact.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Colleges don’t care about extracurriculars unless you’re in the top 1% of the nation

Wrong. If this kid recruits successfully, that is all the school will care about. So that could be GMU or Marymount or Yale. If he is NOT a good enough athlete for the schools he is looking at, then his EC as an athlete will count like any other EC and this could hurt him if it is all he has as an EC and it is a selective school.

Not at Yale or other T-20 schools. Recruiting successfully means gotten the endorsement from the coach and from the admission office, which typically will issue a Likely Letter to confirm candidate is qualified academically. These schools will require a pre-read (full transcript, test scores, all ECs, resume, etc.) in the spring/summer before senior year to assess potential recruit's academic strength. Look up 'Academic Index' requirements for Ivy League. In practice, if the candidate is truly outstanding in a revenue-generating D1 sport (think football or basketball) then the academic index threshold could be lowered to an extent, but the overall Academic Index for all recruits needs to be compensated by other athletes in different sports, e.g. fencing which tends to have the highest academic profile.

Here is the problem..two Yale recruits for the same team can have very different recruiting experiences. The top 3 baseball recruits that the coach really wants just need to have high grades, strong rigor and at least like a 1350 SAT (this is Yale currently...I know there were headlines on how Yale may change how they treat athletes). He doesn't care if they do anything else but play baseball.

The bottom 3 recruits have a very different experience. They are told they need high SAT scores...probably 1530/50+. The coach needs them to bring up the Academic Index. They should look a lot like your overall Yale applicant.

Recruits 4-6 are somewhere in between. Have at least a 1475 or so. Probably don't care so much about other ECs, but nice to show something.

Also, Ivy League D1 is acting much more like Power 4 D1 with athletic recruiting. Probably 30% of the team is committed by August before their junior year of HS, and around 80% is committed before the Summer of senior year. Again, talking baseball specifically as other sports have their own calendars.

Duke and Stanford are going to be completely different from Yale as Power 4 schools. Duke basketball players just need to meet minimum NCAA standards. Their top recruits will only be there for one year anyway. You can't compare Power 4 recruiting at Duke, Stanford, UCB and Vanderbilt (all top 20) to any of the other top 20 schools.

Along the same lines, I've heard that certain good schools use one sport to raise the average across all sports, and, more specifically, the cross country team has an above-average GPA/SAT score to compensate for the football team.

that's not how it works despite what you "heard"

Yes, it is how it works. That's a fact.

It’s more complicated than that. But people who are actually interested can just google academic index for Ivy League sports or something similar and learn how it works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Colleges don’t care about extracurriculars unless you’re in the top 1% of the nation

Wrong. If this kid recruits successfully, that is all the school will care about. So that could be GMU or Marymount or Yale. If he is NOT a good enough athlete for the schools he is looking at, then his EC as an athlete will count like any other EC and this could hurt him if it is all he has as an EC and it is a selective school.

Not at Yale or other T-20 schools. Recruiting successfully means gotten the endorsement from the coach and from the admission office, which typically will issue a Likely Letter to confirm candidate is qualified academically. These schools will require a pre-read (full transcript, test scores, all ECs, resume, etc.) in the spring/summer before senior year to assess potential recruit's academic strength. Look up 'Academic Index' requirements for Ivy League. In practice, if the candidate is truly outstanding in a revenue-generating D1 sport (think football or basketball) then the academic index threshold could be lowered to an extent, but the overall Academic Index for all recruits needs to be compensated by other athletes in different sports, e.g. fencing which tends to have the highest academic profile.

Here is the problem..two Yale recruits for the same team can have very different recruiting experiences. The top 3 baseball recruits that the coach really wants just need to have high grades, strong rigor and at least like a 1350 SAT (this is Yale currently...I know there were headlines on how Yale may change how they treat athletes). He doesn't care if they do anything else but play baseball.

The bottom 3 recruits have a very different experience. They are told they need high SAT scores...probably 1530/50+. The coach needs them to bring up the Academic Index. They should look a lot like your overall Yale applicant.

Recruits 4-6 are somewhere in between. Have at least a 1475 or so. Probably don't care so much about other ECs, but nice to show something.

Also, Ivy League D1 is acting much more like Power 4 D1 with athletic recruiting. Probably 30% of the team is committed by August before their junior year of HS, and around 80% is committed before the Summer of senior year. Again, talking baseball specifically as other sports have their own calendars.

Duke and Stanford are going to be completely different from Yale as Power 4 schools. Duke basketball players just need to meet minimum NCAA standards. Their top recruits will only be there for one year anyway. You can't compare Power 4 recruiting at Duke, Stanford, UCB and Vanderbilt (all top 20) to any of the other top 20 schools.

Along the same lines, I've heard that certain good schools use one sport to raise the average across all sports, and, more specifically, the cross country team has an above-average GPA/SAT score to compensate for the football team.

that's not how it works despite what you "heard"

Yes, it is how it works. That's a fact.

Nice "fact" - it's not how it works. I will let you do the research.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Colleges don’t care about extracurriculars unless you’re in the top 1% of the nation

Wrong. If this kid recruits successfully, that is all the school will care about. So that could be GMU or Marymount or Yale. If he is NOT a good enough athlete for the schools he is looking at, then his EC as an athlete will count like any other EC and this could hurt him if it is all he has as an EC and it is a selective school.

Not at Yale or other T-20 schools. Recruiting successfully means gotten the endorsement from the coach and from the admission office, which typically will issue a Likely Letter to confirm candidate is qualified academically. These schools will require a pre-read (full transcript, test scores, all ECs, resume, etc.) in the spring/summer before senior year to assess potential recruit's academic strength. Look up 'Academic Index' requirements for Ivy League. In practice, if the candidate is truly outstanding in a revenue-generating D1 sport (think football or basketball) then the academic index threshold could be lowered to an extent, but the overall Academic Index for all recruits needs to be compensated by other athletes in different sports, e.g. fencing which tends to have the highest academic profile.

I understand how it works. What was written above is still wrong. OP said nothing about academics…only ECs. If the kid is a phenom OR if it is a less rejective school (higher admission rate) then not having other ECs won’t matter at all unless it is a place like MIT or Cal Tech.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Unless a recruited athlete, no one cares.

And OP said her kid hopes to be recruited, dolt.

[Anonymous]

My kid was in the same boat and got into a great D3. Lots of hours in his sport and his only other ECs related to his sport. A lot of ECs are fluff. Better to show who they really are rather than invent stories.

[Anonymous]

My kid did a year round 20 hr a week sport. They also managed to have a summer job each year, volunteer with local groups, join two honors societies and some other leadership thing that happened during school hours. All of this was possible while taking a rigorous course-load to get a lottery ticket for a T20 school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Colleges don’t care about extracurriculars unless you’re in the top 1% of the nation

Wrong. If this kid recruits successfully, that is all the school will care about. So that could be GMU or Marymount or Yale. If he is NOT a good enough athlete for the schools he is looking at, then his EC as an athlete will count like any other EC and this could hurt him if it is all he has as an EC and it is a selective school.

Not at Yale or other T-20 schools. Recruiting successfully means gotten the endorsement from the coach and from the admission office, which typically will issue a Likely Letter to confirm candidate is qualified academically. These schools will require a pre-read (full transcript, test scores, all ECs, resume, etc.) in the spring/summer before senior year to assess potential recruit's academic strength. Look up 'Academic Index' requirements for Ivy League. In practice, if the candidate is truly outstanding in a revenue-generating D1 sport (think football or basketball) then the academic index threshold could be lowered to an extent, but the overall Academic Index for all recruits needs to be compensated by other athletes in different sports, e.g. fencing which tends to have the highest academic profile.

Here is the problem..two Yale recruits for the same team can have very different recruiting experiences. The top 3 baseball recruits that the coach really wants just need to have high grades, strong rigor and at least like a 1350 SAT (this is Yale currently...I know there were headlines on how Yale may change how they treat athletes). He doesn't care if they do anything else but play baseball.

The bottom 3 recruits have a very different experience. They are told they need high SAT scores...probably 1530/50+. The coach needs them to bring up the Academic Index. They should look a lot like your overall Yale applicant.

Recruits 4-6 are somewhere in between. Have at least a 1475 or so. Probably don't care so much about other ECs, but nice to show something.

Also, Ivy League D1 is acting much more like Power 4 D1 with athletic recruiting. Probably 30% of the team is committed by August before their junior year of HS, and around 80% is committed before the Summer of senior year. Again, talking baseball specifically as other sports have their own calendars.

Duke and Stanford are going to be completely different from Yale as Power 4 schools. Duke basketball players just need to meet minimum NCAA standards. Their top recruits will only be there for one year anyway. You can't compare Power 4 recruiting at Duke, Stanford, UCB and Vanderbilt (all top 20) to any of the other top 20 schools.

PP you responded too. Fair points. There are indeed quite a variation on recruiting experience among T-20 and even among D1 Ivies. Variables include the particular sport, coach's sway (e.g. MIT soft endorsement), balance of power between the athletic dept and the admission office, and most significantly in the last few years: the rise of college athlete's NIL. The NIL factor turns all the equations upside down, even post recruiting. Even Harvard couldn't hold on to its star basketball player. Can't blame the player who wants a pro career. After all, Jeremy Lins is an extreme outlier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Colleges don’t care about extracurriculars unless you’re in the top 1% of the nation

Wrong. If this kid recruits successfully, that is all the school will care about. So that could be GMU or Marymount or Yale. If he is NOT a good enough athlete for the schools he is looking at, then his EC as an athlete will count like any other EC and this could hurt him if it is all he has as an EC and it is a selective school.

Not at Yale or other T-20 schools. Recruiting successfully means gotten the endorsement from the coach and from the admission office, which typically will issue a Likely Letter to confirm candidate is qualified academically. These schools will require a pre-read (full transcript, test scores, all ECs, resume, etc.) in the spring/summer before senior year to assess potential recruit's academic strength. Look up 'Academic Index' requirements for Ivy League. In practice, if the candidate is truly outstanding in a revenue-generating D1 sport (think football or basketball) then the academic index threshold could be lowered to an extent, but the overall Academic Index for all recruits needs to be compensated by other athletes in different sports, e.g. fencing which tends to have the highest academic profile.

Here is the problem..two Yale recruits for the same team can have very different recruiting experiences. The top 3 baseball recruits that the coach really wants just need to have high grades, strong rigor and at least like a 1350 SAT (this is Yale currently...I know there were headlines on how Yale may change how they treat athletes). He doesn't care if they do anything else but play baseball.

The bottom 3 recruits have a very different experience. They are told they need high SAT scores...probably 1530/50+. The coach needs them to bring up the Academic Index. They should look a lot like your overall Yale applicant.

Recruits 4-6 are somewhere in between. Have at least a 1475 or so. Probably don't care so much about other ECs, but nice to show something.

Also, Ivy League D1 is acting much more like Power 4 D1 with athletic recruiting. Probably 30% of the team is committed by August before their junior year of HS, and around 80% is committed before the Summer of senior year. Again, talking baseball specifically as other sports have their own calendars.

Duke and Stanford are going to be completely different from Yale as Power 4 schools. Duke basketball players just need to meet minimum NCAA standards. Their top recruits will only be there for one year anyway. You can't compare Power 4 recruiting at Duke, Stanford, UCB and Vanderbilt (all top 20) to any of the other top 20 schools.

PP you responded too. Fair points. There are indeed quite a variation on recruiting experience among T-20 and even among D1 Ivies. Variables include the particular sport, coach's sway (e.g. MIT soft endorsement), balance of power between the athletic dept and the admission office, and most significantly in the last few years: the rise of college athlete's NIL. The NIL factor turns all the equations upside down, even post recruiting. Even Harvard couldn't hold on to its star basketball player. Can't blame the player who wants a pro career. After all, Jeremy Lins is an extreme outlier.

Interestingly enough, Yale right now has perhaps the best pitcher in all of D1 baseball who I think is a junior. He may be one of the few Ivy league kids in history to go first round in the MLB draft (which he will probably declare for this Summer). He stayed at Yale because he credits the coaches for developing him into a pitcher...he was I think a SS through high school.