Right now I am getting ready to start my junior year of high school. For the past 4 years I’ve been playing volleyball for my school but I’m not very interested in playing this year. I know a lot of people say you don’t need a sport as long as you have an EC that you love but volleyball was my main EC. Right now I’m number 1 in my class and I was on the honor role all year last year but I don’t have many ECs. I plan on doing academic challenge this year and I’m currently a member of the nation honors society but that’s about it. Should I stick with volleyball to help beef up my college applications or keep focusing on my academics and join more clubs? I really want to go to a great college and am currently very interested in Duke.
You do not need a sport; if there are clubs that are more in interesting to you, join those instead.
It would be a shame to engage in an activity that you are “not very interested in” just to add something to your application which may or may not (I’m on the may not fence) have any effect in your admission status. Do other things that interest you and that way, your application will be sincere. Good luck!
Unless you are a recrtited athlete a sport will carry no more weight in the admission process than any other activity. Do what you are interested in and let your commitment and passion shine through.
You should do what you want to do but as an aside if volleyball was your only physical activity you should replace it with something else even if it’s an unofficial activity like a running club, swimming, ultimate Frisbee, Quidditch etc
Of course you don’t have to. Do something you enjoy and can really contribute too. Sports are a fine EC. They show a time commitment and an ability to be a team member, but many other activities can do the same.
OP - Here’s a good summer read for you: “How to Be a High School Superstar” by Cal Newport. While this book certainly isn’t one of the best I’ve read recently on matters relate to college admission, Newport does discuss in length about the very issue you’re trying to address here. What Newport meant by “High School Superstar,” he certainly doesn’t mean someone who has been living under brutal schedule all his life to achieve 4.0 GPA, 1600 SAT, 800 SATIIs and bound to next Olympics. The author’s simple definition of high school superstars is that these are “genuinely interesting people who did genuinely interesting things.” By “interesting things,” he doesn’t mean winning the Intel ISEF or performing solo with the New York Phil. He meant what in YOUR life you find interesting to YOU and pursuing that with what he calls “deep interest.”
We see on CC here hundreds and thousands of posts wanting to know whether “do I have enough EC’s?” or, in your own words, how to “beef up” the college application, etc. The Adcoms see through all these “faux passion,” and I’d bet they’re extremely tired of having to go through thousands of applications with the same ol, same ol. You might want to use your summer break to have some quiet time to deeply probe into what truly and deeply interest YOU, not what you think the Adcoms are looking for, and make that your focus for the rest of your high school years.
A quick answer to your question is NO, that is, whether you continue with volleyball or “joining more clubs” won’t matter.
You should never waste your time pursuing something that does not interest you to the exclusion of things that do. If your passion for a sport is gone, replace it with something else that DOES interest you. Don’t drop the sport and take up online gaming instead, however.
I will otherwise repeat what I wrote in response to a similar question on another thread–playing a varsity sport is NOT just another activity or club, because the time commitment is so much more demanding. Playing a sport is more akin to a part-time job, in that most team sports or competitive individual sports eat up anywhere from 15+ to 20+ hours per week. Being in Key Club or the like is just not comparable. AO’s are aware of this, and if you drop basketball for Key Club or such, your resume will suffer a little. Drop a sport and develop a passion for music, involvement in politics, or meaningful volunteer work, etc., and you are fine.
Even if adcoms are “aware of this” it won’t make a difference. As the aforementioned Cal Newport points out (he has a lot of good advice, BTW) you could replace all the time soaked up by the ECs a lot of kids shoulder with “Spends 20 hours a week transcribing the phone book”. Sound just as good to an adcom?
The point is just piling up hours in volunteer work, on a sports team, in rushing to meetings of 7 clubs, is not what adcoms care about. As Stanford writes
Simply putting in lots of hours playing volleyball or copying the phone book doesn’t rise to this standard…
You quote a paragraph about depth of commitment, then proceed to argue from that same quote that spending a very large amount of time on an activity “doesn’t rise to this standard.” Not sure that follows logically.
My point, should you choose to read it, is not that sports is better than another activity EC, but that playing a sport is not directly comparable because of the (likely) large difference in time commitment. Your resume is a total package of grades, scores, and your EC activities which creates a picture of you as a candidate and what you will bring to the college community. Someone with top grades and scores without ECs may not, in an overall view, look as promising as someone with very good grades and very good scores but who also has great ECs–for one thing, if all you do is study, getting a 4.0 is not as impressive as someone who gets a 3.9 while simultaneously spending loads of time in clubs, sports, volunteering, or such. It is how we evaluate graduates for jobs and always have.
All I am saying to the OP is that dropping sports for a club that meets every other week, and has some function/activity a few times a semester, is not a direct trade. If you don’t like sports, that is absolutely not a big deal, but you should go out and do something interesting with that large block of time you have created for yourself.
I want to add that I’m assuming the OP is using the definition of “good college” adopted on this forum, typically taken to mean the 100 or so most selective colleges in the country (or even just the top 20/10/5 for those with more refined standards).
I say this because the OP may have in mind by “good college” a place where she/he will receive a good education leading to solid prospects for employment or grad school, find great friendships, and have fun while being challenged academically. There are hundreds and hundreds of colleges like this in the country, the fixation on the most selective colleges found on this forum notwithstanding. Lots of rumors about college admissions circulate among HS kids, one of which is that just about every college demands lots of ECs. In point of fact outside of the most selective colleges ECs commonly play a minimal role in admission. You can find out for colleges you are considering by looking at their Common Data Set report.
@BooBooBear If you don’t see why spending 20 hours a week copying the phone book isn’t going to impress adcoms I don’t know what else to tell you. And it’s the same with any other activity or collection of activities where all one can point to is the time spent.
“OP may have in mind by “good college” a place where she/he will receive a good education leading to solid prospects for employment or grad school, find great friendships, and have fun while being challenged academically.”
IMHO this is a very good definition of “good college”. Given this definition, OP is very much on-track to get into a very good college with or without any ECs at all.
@msoup23 I agree with other posts above: You should participate in ECs that you personally find interesting and want to do, keep ahead in your academics, and then find a university that likes what you have done. It sounds like you are a great student and will do very well.
Oh, good Lord, equating playing a varsity sport with copying a phone book is about one of the most insulting and conceited statements I have seen on this forum. You may not feel sports are important but to belittle the activity in this manner is ridiculous. Get a grip.
“If you don’t see why spending 20 hours a week copying the phone book isn’t going to impress adcoms I don’t know what else to tell you. And it’s the same with any other activity or collection of activities where all one can point to is the time spent.”
LOL, one of the more ignorant staetments on cc, and that’s saying a lot. Playing a varsity sport especially a team one is impressive, here’s another statement taken from Stanford’s intramural sports website
“Intramural Sports program provides students, faculty, staff, alumni, and other university affiliates the opportunity to participate in a variety of competitive and recreational sport activities. Intramural Sports offers more than 27 different activities in traditional sports such as basketball, softball, soccer, volleyball, and flag football, as well as nontraditional activities such as ultimate frisbee, innertube water polo, floor hockey and dodgeball. Intramural Sports also presents tournaments and leagues for individuals and two-person teams in such activities as badminton, racquetball, and table tennis.o an adcom, regardless of the hours spent.”
Without students who have an interest (IMs are rec, so need to even be good at them), how is Stanford going to get 27 teams filled? That is why it’s important Stanford and other colleges see sports, ECs etc. because they need students to participate in them. There’s volleyball btw, :-).