<p>pacheight, that’s terrible! </p>
<p>How bad was the essay? I would hope there’s more to the story than that!</p>
<p>Stemit, clearly you feel very passionate about this. As with most things in life, it depends. All of these schools are recruiting more athletes than they have spots(or slots) for. Many of these schools want your athlete to get in, but can’t give them any more support than “we’d love to see Junior apply ED” and tell admissions they would like to have the student. A varying percentage of recruited athletes are NOT accepted at their school ED or EA or at all.
If you are the top of the pile, anything goes. BUT for many kids, playing the sport is no better(or worse) than playing the trombone. They just get a visit to meet the coach. So I vote to try to let your other sides shine. Unless, of course, you will be trying out for the olympics.</p>
<p>wberry: it was bad, no real thought, you could describe it as “shallow”, she probably spent an hour on it. </p>
<p>I agree with Stem that: “the school is looking to accept him/her” but I’d qualify that for HYPS and a few others, they will not accept you if you don’t produce an essay that equals their non-athlete admits. So, they want to accept you but they will only do so if you produce quality work. It is great to be already in “almost” when you’re app arrives but for all you parents with kids in the process right now, make sure they do excellent work on all aspects of their app!</p>
<p>this athlete was a junior world champion and it was at HYPS that this happened. this notion that athletes get off easy on their application is not accurate.</p>
<p>I agree with pacheight on this: student-athletes at highly selective schools have to continue to juggle difficult classes with practice and competition. Writing an excellent application essay sends the message that you understand this and can handle the academic challenge. Your job is to convince admissions that they are accepting an exceptional student who is also an athlete. </p>
<p>On the original question about sports as an essay topic, IMO a non-sports related topic sends a clear message about the student’s range of interests and ability to reflect on something not the sport. I’ve advised kids to go ahead and write "the sports essay"if they just can’t get it out of their head, but to try and write a second essay on something else. Often the second essay is the one that gets used on the application. The best thoughts from the sports essay can be used in the short essay about one of their activities.</p>
<p>The sports essay is not a deal-killer. I can speak from experience on that. I think a recruited athlete has to put in the time to craft a quality piece of writing, regardless of the topic. If adcom receives an ap from a supported athlete and the essay reflects a lack of effort and respect for the admissions process, well, bad things can happen - as pacheight mentioned.</p>
<p>Well, I can understand if it was at a top school and really a schlock essay. Almost like a slap in the face to the admissions committee in that case. I hope things turned out OK for the kid in the end…hard lesson to learn.</p>
<p>Last night I attended a presentation by admissions officers from Duke, Penn, Stanford, Georgetown, and Harvard [Exploring</a> College Options](<a href=“http://exploringcollegeoptions.org/]Exploring”>http://exploringcollegeoptions.org/) When asked for essay tips, they gave the typical advices: it should be in your own voice, don’t procrastinate, if you accidentally dropped it in the hall at your school and some one were to pick it up and read it they should know it could only be “you”, have someone who knows you well read it and tell you if it sounds like your voice, etc.</p>
<p>One of the reps, from Duke as I recall, emphasized that the essay should show something about the applicant that would not be found elsewhere in the file. As she said this the other panelists were all nodding in agreement to emphasize the point.</p>
<p>This wasn’t addressed specifically to athletes, but I think the advice holds for athletes. They already know you’re an athlete; show them something more. As an academically qualified recruited athlete, they want to admit you and they probably will even with a mediocre essay. But better to make their job easier by showing them another aspect of yourself.</p>
<p>Good advice, Sherpa. I like the part about “in your own voice.” I keep trying to get that point across but the words were eluding me. I just kept saying, just write from the heart … but that didn’t work as well. My daughter is upstairs working on her essay right now. I told her I think she’s been trying too hard and that’s the problem. Just let it flow … I sent this advice above on to her.</p>
<p>I think it would be valuable to distinguish bertween a sports essay that is a student writing sample of which the topic is sports-related, and an insightful essay inspired by an experience within the realm of sports. In the first category would be the essay that describes your best/worst game, the day you scored the winning touchdown in the state championship, or how your involvement in sports made you a team player or taught you perseverance/self-discipine/fill-in-the-blank. If you changed the name on one of the latter essays, it could have been written by hundreds, if not thousands. of other student athletes. Bland topics like that are not a good idea for ANYONE applying to a top school, and so they’re not a good idea for a recruited athlete either. But for an athlete, a stereotypical sports essay could make the adcoms think the kid is a “dumb jock” at worst, or a one-dimensional applicant at best.</p>
<p>In the other category, though, would be a more individual, personalized reflection about an incident which happened to have occurred within the student’s sports experience: perhaps a humorous or personality-illuminating anecdote or an interesting analysis of some sports-related dynamic. I think this is acceptable. When the adcoms say the essay should show something about the applicant that can’t be inferred already from the application, they don’t mean it has to be some hidden secret. Chances are if the student were to write about volunteering for a charity or his science research instead, then that involvement would have also been listed already somewhere on the application too. The idea is that the essay should reveal something unique about the student. </p>
<p>My D spent many years involved in music, drama, church activities, and sports other than the one for which she was recruited. But a lot of those activities had been necessarily pared away by the time she was a high school junior, and the vast majority of her time was then dedicated to her sport. So in her case, writing about something else would have been the equivalent of her “B Game,” to use stemit’s apropos analogy. However, D’s sport was year-round and rather intensive at the type of high school she attended. There will be athletes whose experience and time commitment is different, and thus who might have been able to maintain a significant, passionate involvement in something other than their recruited sport. If so, then write about that if you can. But if not, then I’m with stemit on this one. Stick with what you know.</p>
<p>D was recruited by the Ivies and top schools like Duke, Georgetown, and Stanford. She was accepted by the only two schools where she submitted applications, both in the HYPS group. The coach of the school she chose told me that admissions absolutely loved D. And guess what? Her main essay was about something that happened to her at a sport competition. The parent of another child on the team told me his D wrote about what being on her team had taught her about life and love. So, I don’t believe that a sports topic is the kiss of death if it’s done well.</p>
<p>Good luck to your DD, wilberry. I know what you mean, but it is hard to put into words. “Trying too hard”, “find your own voice”, more easily said than done, but it is the key, I think.</p>
<p>One of the speakers last night made the point that if the essay is very difficult to write, maybe the topic is wrong; with the right topic it should come relatively easily.</p>
<p>When my DS went through this two years ago that’s what happened with him. He labored for days on a “meaning of life” type essay and a few more days on a “reconciling death of a friend” essay. Both topics were too big for a 500-1000 essay; he labored and labored and the result wasn’t good.</p>
<p>Finally, he decided to take a try on a more whimsical essay, about a strange occurance on a family vacation a few years earlier. He wrote it in less than forty-five minutes and it was beautiful. An hour or so of editing was all it needed.</p>
<p>I started this thread a few weeks ago while trying to help a friend of DD with her essay. She had written a generic platitude-filled sports essay. I advised her to try to tell a story as she would to a friend. She came up with two good topics, one sports related but not of the generic “winning the big game” or “sports are good because…” type. She later showed me drafts of both and they were a huge improvement. I have no doubt she will be accepted at her HYP school. She probably would have been with the weak essay, but why chance it?</p>
<p>Cross-posted my above post with TheGFG, with whom I entirely agree. DD’s friend’s second sports essay I mentioned above falls into GFG’s “good” category. I wish I could share it here but it could compromise friend’s anonymity. Cute, ironic, humble, sweet, endearing, very real. Not at all cloying. In her voice; could only have come from her; easier for her to write than her first essay, she told me.</p>
<p>GFG, thanks for this explication of the difference between a “good” sports essay and a cliche “bad” one. A student-athlete just handed me the latter for review, and I’ve struggled with how to articulate the change in direction she needs to take. You gave me the words. It goes back to the “show don’t tell” philosophy for these essays. Much better to talk about an anecdote involving their sport, if it must, since that’s where they spend their time. But not one involving a state championship or overcoming dismal failure, but an incident possibly more subtle and revealing of the child’s character, aside from the “hard-worker” adjective that is so over-used with these kids.</p>
<p>Well, I read the next round of essay by my daughter and may I say, she must have listened. She kept the topic despite my suggestion that perhaps she should try another, but she worked it right this time. It needed some tweaking, change a word here and there, beef up the closing paragraph (standard weak point) but in my opinion, it was 1000% better, real, and it should work. Not about her sport, but about her summer job, which was actually somewhat related to her sport.</p>
<p>I tend to think of the entire package and the role each item plays in moving your app into the accepted pile…
first, you have to have great grades in toughest classes available…
second, you have to have scores that cross a certain threshold…2100 is my own line in the sand…many say you need 1800 to be considered…
third, your recommendations have to strongly encourage the school to take you on…
fourth, your EC’s help color in between the lines, providing real depth to who you are… and what your interests/passions are…how well you integrate with any organization, ie are you a leader? are you a trail blazer? etc etc…
fifth, your essay is your last shot at selling yourself in your own words… I think it is a wonderful opportunity to somehow create a lasting impression of someone the reader will want to have as part of their student body…
finally, interviews give you a chance to provide that impression in person instead of on paper…unfortunately, few schools require them any more… </p>
<p>my son, a recruited athlete, who got a LL from his first choice, did one essay on learning how to knit (an intersession optional class chosen as a joke), and another essay on how he had taken several years of junior professional instruction to teach skiing…how he had always looked up to and liked his own instructors, but when he finally tried it over a February break, he didn’t actually like the job…by teaching others, he learned about some of his own limits… so, he mentioned sports (watching Celtics basketball while knitting in one and skiing in another)…neither are the sport he was being recruited for…but sports do figure in his life…professionally, recreationally and passively … </p>
<p>we have another friend, recruited soccer player who wrote an essay about the angst of kicking penalty kicks to decide a game, he was always chosen and it never got easier… he too received a LL from an ivy…</p>
<p>Son was recruited athlete. Just graduated from an Ivy this past May. His essay discussed how he was able to apply discipline required by his very demanding sport to his academic pursuits. Sounds done to death but it was him all the way and it worked.
Just to clarify his GPA and SATS were in mid 50% of accepted students.</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://education.newsweek.com/2010/09/12/the-nine-college-essay-mistakes-not-to-make.html]The”>http://education.newsweek.com/2010/09/12/the-nine-college-essay-mistakes-not-to-make.html]The</a> Nine Most Clich</p>
<p>interesting how that didn’t mention sports … I saw some of those done in my ‘50 Harvard Essays’ book (all essays of accepted applicants). I still believe presentation is more important than topic. In other words, tell me something I didn’t know, but do it well. Good thing my daughter is not applying to Columbia, is all I can say!</p>