<p>as a semi-competitive applicant (top 3%, 35 act, good ecs), im looking into some top colleges. in high school, ive been pretty successful in debate (2x state champion, placed in the top 8 at nfl nationals 3 times, won major bid tournaments) and was wondering what i could potentially do in order to get recruited for debate.</p>
<p>ive heard of people with worse stats getting recruited to debate at top tier schools like columbia, nyu, and princeton. is there a specific way to get started with the process? or do i just have to luck out?</p>
<p>I'm on Columbia's parliamentary debate team, and can tell you with certainty that there's no way any debate team at Columbia can intervene in the admissions process the way, say, an athletic coach could. That said, Columbia really favors champion debaters in its admissions, as it finds them capable of leading and succeeding in small seminar classes such as those in the core curriculum as well as constituting potential successful alumni, in fields like law and politics. We usually get tipped off when a high-ranking high school debater is applying and/or is accepted and then send a letter of interest on behalf of the team to him or her, but that's the extent of our involvement at that stage.</p>
<p>I've never heard of someone getting recruited for debate, or anything social science-y. It might help you, but you won't get recruited.</p>
<p>If you want to do parliamentary debate, Northwestern is by far the best… The school offers the Coon Hardy debate scholars program for high school seniors. Many students who do this program are known to attend the university and be on the team….</p>
<p>Within APDA (Ivies, Stanford, Chicago, MIT, Duke etc.) Yale and Princeton are usually considered the best teams. Northwestern, I think, is in NPDA, with many of the top publics and major Western/Midwestern schools.</p>
<p>Well, all I know is that Northwestern has the oldest debate program in the nation and has won the National Debate Tournament more times than any other team.</p>
<p>If you do policy some schools technically cant "recruit" you, but people can put a good word in for you. I know Northwestern, Harvard, Emory and UC-Berk are all very competitive policy teams that do this.</p>
<p>top policy debaters get recruited</p>
<p>Lets be clear about this, even if you win the TOC, you will still need an impressive academic resume to get into Harvard. I know Anusha Desphande(SP?) got into Harvard last year but she had amazing stats too from what I understand.</p>
<p>what if I'm a top debate in Taiwan?
I've won national contests and got 1st and 4th and also some solo awards (most valuable debator).
Does that help in college admissions since the debate is in Chinese instead of English?
btw, I want to do engineering, but I'd be glad to join the debate team in the university as well.
schools: Princeton, Cornell, Stanford, MIT, Caltech
CMU, UMich, Georgia Tech
UIUC, Penn State</p>
<p>thanks to anyone who replies</p>
<p>i'm sure it'll help greatly as an extracurricular, but, you most likely won't be recruited if that's what you're implying. The debate, especially policy debate, is probably very different than the debate you have participated in. It is incredibly high speed debate that normal people generally can't understand.</p>
<p>Yes, it can be a fairly bizarre system, even in parliamentary. I've seen highly capable and qualified Oxford debaters fall to lesser American teams because the latter simply "knew the format" better. Somewhat of an unfair advantage given they were debating in the US? Nonetheless, debate is a fungible skill; one retains at least some of it across different types.</p>
<p>i think our debate team captain who graduated this year got a pretty sweet financial aid package from USC b/c of his debate career. he was an LD debater as well.</p>