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

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

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

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]🙄

There’s more to life than sacrificing your kid’s authenticity and interests to try to match the ever-changing whims of admissions committees.

Sure, if your kid doesn’t like sports, don’t force them to play one in an attempt to impress admissions. That’s silly and worthless. Same is true if they’re all-in on their instrument, musical theater, dance, or any other super time-consuming passion.

But if your kid loves sports (or the equivalent) and wants to pursue it in HS but not at a recruited level, there’s plenty of upside for them as a human being: authenticity, grit, leadership, social skills, physical health, mental health/wellness, and more.

All that said, if playing three varsity sports is what keeps our 4.0/1500+/12AP student out of the T-20, that’s fine with us. We’re thrilled to see our kid enjoy and excel at the EC’s they have chosen. It’s been wonderful for their growth, resilience, sense of self, and relationships with their peers, coaches, and teachers, alike.

IMHO that’s more important in the long run than dropping their authentic self in an attempt to make themself marginally more attractive to a school with an already tiny rate of admission. But you do you. [/quote]

It is not a marginal boost. I don’t think that many parents realize here how much sports actively hurt your chances in admissions because of the time factor. Most college admissions advisors actively tell kids to give up on sports if they aren’t being recruited [/quote]

First of all, who are you to make the claim that "most" college admissions advisors actively tell kids to give up sports if they aren't recruits? Are you an admissions advisor? Second, DS was not penalized in any way in the admissions process for playing sports. Did he have to work hard to juggle academics and athletics in HS? yep. Did he learn a lot about time management that prepared him for college? yep. Did he have top grades and scores and get into a T20? yep. Here's what he did not do: make his whole personality (and personal statement/application etc) about sports. If your kid enjoys sports, let them play sports. [/quote]

New poster here.  I consulted with at least 3 national college counselors and each of them basically said that unless your kid is going to be recruited, they should probably not play sports because sports will take up too much of their time and make it harder to stand out in other ECs.  I generally agree that sports is not enough unless you're going to be a recruit and my kids learned in 9th grade that speech and debate meets every day after school and has weekend tournaments, same thing with robotics, newspaper, etc.  So, it's not an untrue statement that your kid needs to go beyond sports, which it sounds like your kid did, in order to stand out from a very competitive applicant pool.[/quote]

At public school yes, they make it so you can only do 1 or 2 things.

Totally different at private school. You can specialize in 1 or 2 things year round, but still do other things like 7th period school sports or seasonal clubs or trips. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics