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

Sigh. It doesn’t even occur to you that once you do the basic research in the lab that you need to work for hours afterwards analyzing the data?  You’re really that dense?  Your kid spent lots of time on his or her sport. Good for them. But it isn’t some unique commitment and it isn’t intrinsically better or harder than the commitments other kids make to other activities or combinations of activities. [/quote]

Wow - so  high school students are commonly spending 25-35 hours a week during the school year doing research?  Really?  If I were running a lab, I certainly wouldn't let high school interns spend that kind of time.  The kids I know working at NIH or doing the Kirsten internships at the National Cancer Institute certainly aren't putting in close to those hours.  Which lab exactly is allowing this to happen?
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You just don’t get it. Kids routinely spend 25-35 hours a week in one extracurricular ([b]from the lab standpoint if you go teo to three hours after school[/b] and then work in the weekend at home it’s 25 hours easily - especially if I include commuting and travel time as you do for sports) or a combination of them. What makes your kid’s commitment better and more valuable?  I actually respect what your kid did, you’re the one who denigrates the work that other kids put in [/quote]

The point is that [b]two to three hours after school on school nights is about half of what team sport athletes are spending[/b].  And athletes ALSO have tournaments on weekends that generally take the whole day.  When the varsity practice schedule came out at my kid's school his senior year, the [b]first day of practice (a Saturday) had 7 hours of team activities[/b], and this was a month before games and tournaments got started.

I'm not denigrating kids who do other things -- in high school I did two individual sports, plus extra-curriculars like debate, model UN, forensics, etc.  I was able to do all of that pretty well (multiple varsity letters, state champ in debate, etc.) and spend far less time than my kid on his one activity.  My point is that the demands that coaches in sports like basketball and football make on kids are wildly unreasonable.  A tiny fraction of the tiny fraction good enough to play DI sports will someday play professionally, but coaches encourage all kids on their teams to train like they are trying to get to the NBA, NHL or NFL.  It's absurd, and it makes performing well academically very, very hard.  I point it out because so many people in discussions of Ivy admissions bemoan "special treatment" for athletes and discuss athletes as if they were stupid, when in fact they are spending what I think is a lot more time than most people realize on their sport. 
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I don't see why we insist on curving athletes for the time they spend on their non-academic activities and no one else.  I don't agree that the time they spend on their sport so far outstrips what other kids spend on their sports, or working after school jobs, or any other meaningful things they do outside of school.  So your kid has practice every day and a game on the weekend - big deal.  My kid spent 3 hours practicing for his run of the mill sports and spent 7-12 hours every Saturday in the fall running (very slowly) at cross country meets.   You don't see me whining for lower standards.

Your kid (and you to an extent) made a choice to spend this much time on the sport.  It has a cost on the academic side.  Now you're asking for and, I would point out, getting an accommodation for this voluntary sacrifice that others don't get and then have the audacity to claim that your kid is the only one who deserves it.   Perhaps the real answer is that your kid has spent too much time on the sport.[/quote]

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