<p>Most of the teachers who I've talked to have said that colleges won't differentiate between club and school soccer(For example). Is this true?</p>
<p>unless you have a shot at playing varsity at penn or soccer is an integral part of your application( like it was for me), its not gonna matter that much</p>
<p>but personally, i wasn't a soccer phenom, but my experience with soccer really spoke towards my indomitable drive, blah, blah, blah.</p>
<p>85 percent of your application is sort of filler, even stuff like NHS or random club officer or a varsity letter in a sport. in and of themselves they don't show that you are spectacular person that ought to be admitted. if that makes sense. what you want to REALLY HIGHLIGHT is the one or two experiences in highschool that show you are so talented and driven that this ivy league school should admit you because there is a better chance of you one day getting rich or famous over some other guy with the same 'generic' stats...</p>
<p>Ok. Thanks for the advice.</p>
<p>i need to get paid for this</p>
<p>hahahaha well, can't help you there.</p>
<p>They don't really care about the activity that much - they care about what you learned from it and how it shaped you. If you were a school sport captain but have nothing to say about it, it's almost worthless. If you were a club sport scrub but a spiritual leader for the team, it'll help.</p>
<p>(This is of course a different story for recruited athletes).</p>
<p>One more quick question, are letters of recommendation from my "Club" coach any less valuable then, let's say, my science teacher's?</p>
<p>Depends on how good the letters are, and how well the coach knows you. All else being equal, the teacher's are probably more valuable because it is an academic process, after all.</p>
<p>matt,</p>
<p>i feel that 'spiritual leader' is cliched because it only reinforces the 'a for effort' kind of personality, which becomes less and less applauded in the college/real world.</p>
<p>personal achievement (effective action) is different from and more desired than the spiritual leader (mostly thought and personality) because adcoms would rather take a person who has guaranteed success rather than someone who has the promise to do so</p>
<p>meng,</p>
<p>Colleges don't want to see success, they want to see how you learn and grow from success. At any rate, performance on a sports team has nothing to do with real world performance. They'd rather see what you got out of being on that team than just seeing you play a sport.</p>
<p>in the spirit of gen y, "everyone is a winner"</p>