Advice from Ivy Coach re not listing sports on college application

[Anonymous]

Some T25 schools like HS athletes more than others….
Ask your college counselor.

[Anonymous]

Hiding sports in admission is nuts. My kid was recruited by top liberal arts colleges, but decided to go to a top university to focus on academics. The kid spent tremendous amount of time on a sport and won a bunch of national, state, and conference awards. Hiding all of these awards? Nuts.

[Anonymous]

We listed sports and my DS was not recruited. However DS was accepted to Ivy for academics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Heck no. They are idiots for saying so. There are many reasons to do sports unrelated to being recruited to play in college.

Yep. Colleges want kids playing on their intramural and club teams. They want athletes. My kid listed a bunch of his sport teams and got in an Ivy, 2 T10s.

[Anonymous]

This has nothing do with the colleges, and everything to do with the consultants. Ivy Coach's entire business premise is that the pointiest kids will win the prize. And they are ever willing to sharpen your kid right up... for a fee.

No doubt, being pointy is one of several different strategies, all of which have a grain of truth/success to them. But they have staked their financial existence on, "This is the way, the one true way," and done so transparently (10 minutes on their website will confirm this).

So take it with a grain of salt. Everybody is selling what they are selling. If this strategy is the right one for your student, go with it. Hard.

But if it isn't, you don't have the wrong kid. You have the wrong strategy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some T25 schools like HS athletes more than others….
Ask your college counselor.

Doesn’t have to be HS. My kid chose club sport over HS- top level. Got in everywhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This has nothing do with the colleges, and everything to do with the consultants. Ivy Coach's entire business premise is that the pointiest kids will win the prize. And they are ever willing to sharpen your kid right up... for a fee.

No doubt, being pointy is one of several different strategies, all of which have a grain of truth/success to them. But they have staked their financial existence on, "This is the way, the one true way," and done so transparently (10 minutes on their website will confirm this).

So take it with a grain of salt. Everybody is selling what they are selling. If this strategy is the right one for your student, go with it. Hard.

But if it isn't, you don't have the wrong kid. You have the wrong strategy.

This is why I think my kid did so well —in at an Ivy, T10s, 20s with no hooks, white kid. We didn’t use a counselor. He didn’t bullsh@t. His essays were authentic. He and we knew him the best. Getting some stranger to craft a fake image is about the worst thing you can do. Turns out bland and sounding like everyone else, sounds fake and packaged. I think they can smell that from 100 mines away.

[Anonymous]

^ miles

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This has nothing do with the colleges, and everything to do with the consultants. Ivy Coach's entire business premise is that the pointiest kids will win the prize. And they are ever willing to sharpen your kid right up... for a fee.

No doubt, being pointy is one of several different strategies, all of which have a grain of truth/success to them. But they have staked their financial existence on, "This is the way, the one true way," and done so transparently (10 minutes on their website will confirm this).

So take it with a grain of salt. Everybody is selling what they are selling. If this strategy is the right one for your student, go with it. Hard.

But if it isn't, you don't have the wrong kid. You have the wrong strategy.

Pointy is passé. They don’t value that as much anymore. Well-rounded seemed to be valued last round.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This has nothing do with the colleges, and everything to do with the consultants. Ivy Coach's entire business premise is that the pointiest kids will win the prize. And they are ever willing to sharpen your kid right up... for a fee.

No doubt, being pointy is one of several different strategies, all of which have a grain of truth/success to them. But they have staked their financial existence on, "This is the way, the one true way," and done so transparently (10 minutes on their website will confirm this).

So take it with a grain of salt. Everybody is selling what they are selling. If this strategy is the right one for your student, go with it. Hard.

But if it isn't, you don't have the wrong kid. You have the wrong strategy.

Pointy is passé. They don’t value that as much anymore. Well-rounded seemed to be valued last round.

Fake pointy is passe.

[Anonymous]

Sports are a huge commitment.
My son has practices basically every single day (5 days + a weekend in Fall and most days in Spring between club and HS workouts). It would be insane not to account for this type of commitment to shed light on what an accomplishment his 4.0 is given he has compromised free time.

Please.

[Anonymous]

Isn’t the real point of the article is that your kid should not be doing sports but instead some “higher value” (usually bs) ECs. Because if you are committed to your sports, there is t a lot of time left. And I doubt the recommendation is to leave large holes in the app re what you kid does.

So Ivy coach so anti sports clearly

[Anonymous]

Ivy Coach makes its money from ambitious families of extreme wealth in Asia. The name itself is a dog whistle to attract them. It dovetails nicely with the smug and incessant use of “the royal we” in their blog posts. They are not in the business of placing athletes. And they have proudly defined themselves as the perpetrators of exclusively pointy. The pendulum shifting to authentic won’t help them cash in, but I doubt that billionaire in China is reading DCUM. So they keep posting what they post on their blog. They are not your people. Just ignore it?

[Anonymous]

Adding— I’ve read through a lot of their posts. There is some good truth in much of their general perspective. It’s not all wrong. But, generally, the sport thing is off, and the must be pointy or die thing is wrong. There are always exceptions.

What really gets me is the snark throughout the site. It’s like they thought they should sound “cool” to a teen, and missed the mark by a mile. If that is the tone they use to edit essays… yikes!

Don’t have to be rude to be a truth teller. I prefer to get my info from more professional sounding consultants.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The better thing is to have your kid volunteer teaching their sport to xyz under resourced group and form a summer clinic /camp/business for their sport where they show initiative and other skills.

The sports stuff is sadly a dime a dozen. Make your kid stand out.

This is excellent advice. My son has taken it a step further by starting a nonprofit focused on teaching fencing and squash to under-resourced groups. He's definitely going to be authentic with these activities.