<p>I disagreed! I think my son got accepted has everything to do with his baseball. He is still a very good student, but I think he would not have got accepted without his varsity/travel baseball. We received coach’s e-mail and phone call quite a few times. He does said that he has “no impact” on the application, but he did said that he will submit a list of names to the admission office. I am convienced that his baseball stuff push him over the top.</p>
<p>His SAT:2140
SAT II: MathII 790, Chemistry 740, biology 690
GPA : 4.7 (W)
NHS</p>
<p>Probably not why he got in. This year 3/16 of our potential baseball recruits were accepted, a very comparable acceptence rate to the general rate.</p>
<p>Sports are not going to help you get admitted if you don’t have the scores and grades and extracurriculars to put you on par with the rest of the Caltech students. The one advantage you are going to have with sports is that, depending on the sport and the coach, you will have someone to talk over your application with. Sometimes, there are things you might not think to put on an application that a coach, who knows a bit better what the admissions process is like, will tell you to put on. And playing a sport, especially if you were a captain or something, is nice in that it gives you another extracurricular to put on your application and maybe some leadership experience. Like any college, Caltech does like to see leadership experience, but this probably won’t make up for a bad SAT score.</p>
<p>At Caltech the teams are made up of some people who did sports in high school, but mostly people who never had time to develop the skill required to “make the team”. At most colleges, only people who are already good can play on the teams. At Caltech, someone who wants to play soccer but never learned how can get on the team and learn how to play. That’s so great! And if you have a conflict (like a lab experiment you have to babysit) nobody is going to give you a hard time for missing practice for the sake of your studies. The priorities are in order. And there are intermural sports, too, for less structured fun. There are terrific opportunities for everyone who wants to do sports!</p>