Reply to If your kid wants to go to a selective university, do not let them play sports in high school

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]To sum up: Participate in sports because you love to compete, love the camaraderie of teamwork, the personal challenge, the physical activity. Playing a sport is one of the best things one can do with one's time.

But do not participate in sports thinking it will help all that much for college applications, unless being recruited to play on the college level. There is really not more to it than this.[/quote]

False. That’s not a summary at all.

That’s your personal option again that sports, esp team sports, take up too much time.

You’re wrong because there are scholar athletes everywhere who are attractive candidates for colleges and who don’t desire to play college sports, but club or other college ECs and focus on their majors, study abroad, internships, networking and friends.

Get over it OP. Not everyone wants to sit on their butt coding or doing hours of robotics. [/quote]

Honestly the same thing can be said about robotics... and pretty much everything else

The amount of time dedication and talent it takes to turn robotics into an extracurricular activity that is noticably more impressive than varsity sports is huge.

You want to build a competitive robot for the FIRST or Vex competition?  That one activity crowds out pretty much everything else.

You want to get invited to the USAMO?  You are going to be spending almost all your time on it.

You want to be a regeneron semifinalist, forget about the USAMO or robotics or the football team.

The academic extracurriculars are important to have, but if you aren't pointy (winning at least at the state level), it doesn't really help that much, you might as well touch some grass.

And yet every year, IVY+ takes kids that aren't winning competitions or being recruited athletically.

If you don't get in, maybe you are actually better off elsewhere.[/quote]

Np. I feel like you guys need a primer on what AO are looking for. They seem SOOO may Robotics/Vex/USAMO - it doesn't even phase them anymore. They are bored when they read those applications.[/quote]

Really?

There are 223 students that qualify for USAMO in the country.
If you qualify for USAMO and you have good stats, you have a good chance at any school.

First Robotics Competition has 100 Dean's List finalists.  This is significantly more impressive than varsity sports, (not as impressive as USAMO for most purposes).
Vex Robotics has 32 teams with an average of 6 players per team for about 200 students (slightly less impressive than FRC Dean's List).

USAMO especially is a big deal.
I know kids who got into MIT with almost no other EC (they were struggling to fill out that section of their application).
They had great stats 1550+ SAT and near perfect GPA but qualifying for the USAMO was their main activity.
They didn't even qualify for MOP[/quote]

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