For those looking at top 15 colleges, who should we think about extracurriculars? My son is into sports one of which he has been doing since age 2. He’s good but it’s a very popular sport so I don’t see him having the option to play in college and so won’t help with admissions. Should we focus on another less popular sport (and who knows if he will play in college)? Do schools care about commitment, longevity etc in sports when evaluating extracurriculars or only when they are recruited athletes at the school?
Your son should play the sport he wants to play. If he wants to switch sports, he should. If he’s happy with his sport, he shouldn’t. Since he’s not a recruited athlete, which sport he plays does not matter.
In my opinion, your son should choose extracurriculars and sports because he enjoys them, not thinking about college admissions. If he is working hard in school, his extracurriculars should be a release from pressure. He should do them because they are fun!
If he does things he enjoys, he will have experiences along the way and develop skills that he may not even realize are important until he sits down to work on his application in the August before his senior year. He will be an interesting candidate to admissions officers because he is genuinely interested in those activities and can tell a meaningful story about them.
Do not worry now about what “learning” will occur or what “story” he will tell. You do not know yet. You cannot know yet. That is something cool about life; you do not always know what is significant until you look back on it.
If you want reassurance that this approach works:
My son was admitted early decision to his top choice, an extremely selective college (Williams). My son’s essay was about a small moment during his camp job which he did not realize at the time would be the stuff of a college essay; he made that connection while brainstorming in response to the Common App prompts. He did activities he enjoyed, and can be proud of his accomplishments. Like your son, he devoted a lot of time across many years to his favorite sport, tennis, but was nowhere near a level that would make him able to be considered for recruitment. I cannot know what the admissions officers thought about his tennis participation per se, but I imagine they viewed it as they would any other extracurricular activity. It helped them learn about him and the personal qualities he would bring to the college.
He did activities that interested him. In the end, he was able to write little blurbs about his activities in the Common App (and speak of them in interviews at other colleges), in a way that enhanced his application.
He should enjoy high school. He gets to experience it only once!
Check out “How to be a High School Superstar” by Cal Newport.
“The basic message of the book is this: Don’t wear yourself out taking as many classes as you can and being involved in every club and sport. Instead, leave yourself enough free time to explore your interests. Cultivate one interest and make it into something special that will make you stand out among the other applicants and get you into the toughest schools, even if your grades and scores aren’t stellar. Newport calls this the “relaxed superstar approach,” and he shows you how to really do this, breaking the process down into three principles, explained and illustrated with real life examples of students who got into top schools: (1) underscheduling—making sure you have copious amounts of free time to pursue interesting things, (2) focusing on one or two pursuits instead of trying to be a “jack of all trades,” and (3) innovation—developing an interesting and important activity or project in your area of interest. This fruit yielded by this strategy, an interesting life and real, meaningful achievements, is sure to help not only with college admissions, but getting a job, starting a business, or whatever your goals.”
http://www.examiner.com/review/be-a-relaxed-high-school-superstar
If you are not a recruited athlete, then sports are an EC that shows that the student can excel academically even though they had to take the time to put into the sport.