<p>Pizzagirl- a 4.0 GPA and President of class is impressive. D2 couldn’t be president of her class because she transferred junior year, and her counselor told her not to try, but instead she went for head of Link, which also got her a seat at the student counsel.</p>
<p>ADad, the OP asked “At what level do such EC’s become ‘useful’ hook wise? i.e. do you have to actively compete, qualify for the Olympics, or what?” For fencing to be an admissions hook, I think the applicant would have to be recruitable to a varsity team, and at that level, it’s a huge commitment. I don’t think the fencing club level would carry much weight w/ admissions committees. Here’s a link to a list of the Div 1 - 3 colleges for fencing: [List</a> of NCAA fencing schools - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NCAA_fencing_schools]List”>List of NCAA fencing schools - Wikipedia). Many of these schools are tough to get into, so if the OP’s kid is an excellent fencer and wants to devote a lot of time to the sport in college, it’s probably worthwhile to pursue it through high school. But as someone wrote above (was it fireandrain?), they should do it, or any EC, because they love it. My S had a blast fencing and made terrific friends w/ many of his teammates.</p>
<p>ADad, I do like your point of investigating what the school offers for fencing outside of varsity. For my S, his school unfortunately offers nothing but varsity, which is why he tried out for the team. He wishes his school had a fencing club.</p>
<p>^^^ I think the above pretty much nailed it, since we’re at the club level for now. If this is the case tho, is there any value at all to **any **EC that does not show a spectacular level of commitment **and **achievement?</p>
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<p>Yes. </p>
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<p>^^^^^ I guess it’s more of a philosophical, “why bother to mention EC’s” type of question rather than, “let’s play the bagpipes for EC” type of question. Having done the outside school activities since my girls were toddlers I can see the “love” part, but if you’re a college, what’s the point of even considering EC’s if it takes making the US Olympic team to give candidate A an “edge” versus candidate B who only won State…</p>
<p>Well, I remember one admissions officer at HYPMS stating: “We feel that we have a pretty good community here, and we want to know what applicants are going to contribute to it.”</p>
<p>Sure, colleges would love to have Olympic-class people in any field, but there are not enough Olympic-level people around to fill the classes of the top universities.</p>
<p>Turbo - if they learn to play the bagpipes they should definitely apply to Carnegie-Mellon. LOL!</p>
<p>OP,</p>
<p>Hooks or not, imo, the two most valuable life skills/experiences are writing and team sports, so if your D can manage to excel at both, it will benefit her.</p>
<p>I would not encourage a student to do any EC with the intention of it being a hook for college.</p>
<p>I always encouraged my kids to find something they really liked to do, stick with it and enjoy themselves. It seems a bit sad to have the time spent not on academics doing something with the hopes that it might make them look good to some college.</p>
<p>DD2 wanted to get into a sport of some kind - coming from cultures where HS sports are pretty much unheard of we were not sure. Track and field has horrendous after school time commitments (a major issue if both parents are working) plus she loves anything French and fencing seemed like a natural. I had a friend back in the old country that made the Olympic team in fencing and thought “why not”… There is a well respected fencing club nearby, so… It’s more of doing something because she likes it, no question about it. Much like piano, which she’s been doing for a decade. </p>
<p>Newspaper is more of an ‘EC bait’ 
but it’s also a case of putting a good talent to good use. DD2’s writing / language skills are 99%+ based on the alphabet soup of placement tests she’s done, and she enjoyed the newspaper class in middle school immensely (and attracted grande controversy a couple times…). </p>
<p>DD2’s favorite activities don’t lend themselves to college-bound EC’s (serious video gaming, reading, Facebook, and watching online TV :)).</p>
<p>turbo, is your daughter in HS yet? What I mean is sometimes the clubs in HS aren’t available before that so one can’t predict what will appeal. My youngest son got involved in Robotics freshman year, liked it, loved it and it really helped focus his college major. I really thought he would follow in his older siblings footsteps and do the clubs/activities they did so it was interesting to see him chart a different course. Our only rule was that he had to find SOMETHING to do besides all the things in your last sentence. ;)</p>
<p>She’s starting HS next fall, and the list of clubs, electives, and the like available boggles the mind (4500+ student HS with infinite funding). DD2 is not into anything mechanical (my company sponsors FIRST robotics so I’m quite familiar with it, they have a team, they also have the Lego MindStorm (?) league and so on). </p>
<p>She’s all set to go to the IB program (programme :)). I don’t quite know how she manages to maintain a 4.0 literally without studying (see favorite EC’s listed earlier); today she brought home a 99.5 in Algebra I… Ho Hum :). I know her 8th grade is not a joke because I know her friends who get 3.8’s or 3.9’s and they study 3 hours a day with parents, index cards, constant emails to teachers and the like. I’m lucky I can find her school without Google Maps. Likewise, her pre-SAT (ReadiStep) and the state standardized tests are somewhere in the ‘outlandish’ zone (high 90’s, with writing consistently 99%). The difficulty here is to harness this ability and focus it on something useful and interesting. </p>
<p>As I said, DD2 is nature’s revenge for having an easy time college / career planning with DD1…</p>
<p>From our experience - D always had a sports passion from toddlerhood and plays the same sport at a very high level now. It is an unconventional sport but she plays at a national level. Who knows if it helped at her LACs, as she had the stats to be admitted anyway, but it was not a hook at Stanford. Given the unique quality and national level I had thought that it could be the thing to push a kid with all the other attributed needed over the edge (a tip, if you will). Nope. However, she does it because she loves it. She did get a nice essay out of it, but one wouldn’t devote 11 years of their life to something just for an essay topic.</p>
<p>DS15 always wanted a sport to love. He played a few seasons of all the standard team sports and never really latched on to one. In 7th grade he gave up on the regular league sports and did school inter-murals (ultimate, badminton, volleyball) then tried tennis. The real breakthrough was when he tried rowing in 8th grade. It just set something off in him that is amazing. The passion and discipline has spilled over into all the other areas of his life. It has really done all those things for him mentioned in posts above in terms of personal benefit. He actually may have a chance to row in college at the rate he’s going now and it could be a hook if he decided to go that route, but it would not be worth the time, energy, money an commitment if he didn’t love it and was not getting all the character benefits from it. </p>
<p>At some point kids decide what to prune away and what to hold on to as they get busy in high school. Some keep those sports and activities that they really enjoy, but won’t “go on” in and others decide to cut some of those out as they get into junior and senior year to free up time for other things.</p>
<p>It is important as IB really heats up, though, to have something that you do just for fun. D took up an activity like that last summer and it was her sanity this year.</p>
<p>I am an undergraduate in the honors program at Cleveland State University.
I am on the Division I Varsity Fencing Team; epeeist. </p>
<p>Fencing has been one of the greatest activities I’ve involved myself in. From the team, to the tournaments and the athletics, to the inter-state relationships I’ve built with other fencers… It’s sooo worth it. I mean, there is a bond with your teammates, where they are FAMILY. Many college kids look for that sort of comaraderie with sororities and fraternities. The social aspect of fencing has also expanded my horizons; I have good friends in other states–to the point where I have a place to stay if I was traveling through their region. The USFA may be a large, normal-looking governing body from the outside, but from the inside, it’s a close-knit network of amazing people; they’re helpful, open, fun, friendly… There was this one time that a friend and I went down to the hangover open (it’s a fencing tournament) in virginia. Her lame (a piece of fencing equipment vital to tournament foil) stopped working; we were 1000 miles from home, lame-less, and pretty screwed. One of the coaches from Pennsylvania said, “Our club needs a new lame. I’m going to go buy one, and you can borrow it for the competition.” You come for the fencing, but you stay fencing because of the awesome relationships you develop in the sport. And fencing has taught me so much–about fencing, and about life in general. It is sooo worth it.</p>
<p>Four years is enough time to become fairly decent (understatement), so she WILL be recruited. I’m not sure colleges themselves “notice” things, but I do know that the collegiate fencing COACHES will notice her. A friend/teammate of mine was offered a scholarship with the Penn State fencing team (very good–go to their HS fencing camp). She was a level C fencer (meaning not “on top,” but nothing to sneeze at either). She ended up coming to CSU, though, because she wanted to ensure competition time.</p>
<p>Every collegiate team is different, even among Div I. For example, Ohio State has a tendency to burn out their fencers. They’re very serious, and I have a friend who went there, fenced with them for four years, and then… doesn’t want to fence anymore, ever again. At CSU, we’re more laid back. The head coach, Andy, has “themes” for each year, and last year’s was “Have Fun, and let me worry about qualifying.” This year, it was “Mental toughness” and “Do the work.” He’s also a very academically-focused coach. There were a few times where he was so “disappointed” in our grades that he cancelled practice and made us study in the gym instead. </p>
<p>And we really are a family, from helping each other with fencing stuff, to supporting each other through drama, to everything. It’s a great experience. And I mean, I’m not trying to promote CSU specifically; It’s just what I know. I want to give you a snapshot of what it is to be on a fencing team. I hope this isn’t too verbose. </p>
<p>Oh, BTW, you mentioned Northwestern–they’re a very good, competitive fencing team. They have this intense rivalry with Notre Dame, and they do have fencing scholarships. CSU does not (which is fine, because the honors program is a full ride. I highly encourage your daughter to apply to all honors programs. There may be hidden money in it, and it opens up a lot of opportunities.) </p>
<p>Hope this helps. :)</p>
<p>In my D’s freshman dorm at Harvard ,one of her roommates was a skilled horse rider ,and the other was a certified diver who had gone on many interesting dives around the world . No fencing here .</p>
<p>In my experience, your child may not get the nod because of fencing, but he may get a second look and encouragement from the coach to apply and then join the team as a walk on. Check out Boston College for fencing. My son has been a rower, but began fencing four years ago and is considering moving over since BC does not have varsity crew.</p>
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<p>Did you mean to suggest that Harvard does not have a varsity fencing team? They do have one:</p>
<p>[Harvard</a> Athletics - GoCrimson.com](<a href=“http://www.gocrimson.com/sports/wfencing/index]Harvard”>General - Harvard University)</p>
<p>egoot: Northwestern only has women’s fencing team, right? So, only women are recruitable for fencing, am I right here?</p>
<p>OP, if you are still reading from a couple of months ago, some advice from a fencer parent: it is good that your child started in middle school, it is good that you are in an area where there is not as much interest in the sport; in our area where there is great interest, it is competitive at the high school level to get a rating and to go compete at national tournaments. If your child would want to be recruited (and this is a big if since it is a lot of work along the way), I would suggest practice a couple or three times a week, fencing camps in summer (Princeton, Cornell and Penn run them for HS students), and practice practice practice. This is not for everyone, even those who like fencing since it is a big commitment. </p>
<p>I think that “even” a few years of varsity fencing in HS is a worthwhile experience, and while it would not be a hook unless recruited, especially at ivy type colleges with D1 fencing teams since many applicants may have fencing as a sport, it is certainly no worse than any other varsity sport experience. Participation on varsity teams speaks well of the applicant,generally.</p>
<p>Yes, Northwestern only recruits women for fencing, at least formally. It has a women’s Division I varsity team, and a (very strong) men’s club team, who practice together and share facilities and coaches.</p>