Does Playing a sport help?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Carnegie Mellon University
1

<p>Hello everybody,
I am going to apply to SCS for the January 1st deadline and i have pretty average stats(3.7 uw and 32 ACT). I have been talking to the golf coach at CMU and he said I can play for them if I get in.
How much will it help my admission chances(if at all) if they see that I am going to play a sport if I am admitted?</p>

<p>ps. I have done a bunch of computer science extracurriculars(eg. starting my own company, working with other companies, programming academy at stanford, ect)</p>

2

<p>For SCS - sports will not get you admitted, but it does help for the other schools. Seems many recruited athletes are in HSS or Tepper.</p>

<p>There is a female golfer in our freshman SCS class. You can find her on the FB page. </p>

<p>BTW -Sorry to be the one to tell you , but your stats are below average for SCS and just average for CIT.
What’s your SAT and SATIIs?</p>

3

<p>Sorry, I can’t find her – she has blond hair and a long last name. everyone has comic profile pics.</p>

4

<p>Yes, it does help. There appear to be a lot of people on campus who played @ least one varsity sport in high school; this of course may just be my confirmation bias, but it definitely doesn’t hurt… It can only help</p>

5

<p>It helps in terms of making your application look more diverse. However, CMU doesn’t normally recruit athletes or bump their admissions chances based on how good of an athlete they are. Since the coach told you “yeah sure you can play if you get accepted” it does not sound like he is willing to go to bat to talk to admissions. </p>

<p>In other words:Yes, it helps. But with a 3.7 and a 32 ACT SCS admission chances are iffy. Your computer science ECs will help a lot more than promising to play for the school, especially since a lot of student athletes in SCS end up quitting the sport or moving to a club team-- and CMU is a D3 school, so we’re not exactly the Trojans.</p>

6

<p>I second completelykate. Golf is a nice add-on to your application, and does help to show some sort of well-roundedness, but it’s certainly not a replacement for academic talent or potential.</p>

<p>Mention golf in your application, but don’t bank on it. Elaborate on your CS experience / anything else exciting + unusual you have to share</p>

7

<p>ok thanks. yea its not like I want to be a pro golfer or anything one day i just want to play in college. my number one priority is going somewhere where i can do more comp sci(high school didnt offer many classes and i learned like 15 languages on my own). and i think cmu would be perfect for that, and the golf would just be a bonus. too bad i have to get in first…</p>