The valedictorian of my S22’s school is an amazing student, already finished Multivariate Calculus. Apparently, he’s quite good a “shooter” games. Maybe something about anticipation, reflex and strategy vs. repetition?
I honestly don’t know. There’s a mix of kids, and while kiddo hangs with them, their parents don’t come up in conversation. I know some are international, one I know moved here when he was young.
gaming is an overwhelmingly male activity, but crosses geographic and ethnic boundaries. It is one of the things I like about it. People across the globe can compete, and what you look like or sound like couldn’t matter less.
It is all semantics. Call it esporks, then. The name doesn’t matter. It is a competition. It has a huge following, the revenues dwarf traditional sports. The broadcasts have international reach. people, including super smart and successful people, love to watch. I don’t, but to each their own.
There are real skills involved. I don’t know why [insert traditional sport here] has any more intrinsic value as a past time than esports.
Not quite yet. And not close yet.
I should know better than trying to remember stats someone rattled off to me a month ago.
Here’s an interesting summary of revenue and market growth for esports:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/influencermarketinghub.com/esports-stats/amp/
The revenue hit over a $1B in 2021. NFL is $15B. My bad. It was maybe probably viewership that I was misremembering. A typical NFL game garners $15 mil. Esports is supposed to grow about 10% per year.
The most-watched Superbowl had 114.4M viewers. There are 223M esports “enthusiasts”, and 272M occasional viewers (495M combined). In 2023, the number of esport viewers is expected to reach 646M. The last soccer World Cup final had 517M viewers.
I was thinking in terms of watching the activity (stereotypical sports fans aren’t known for their physiques, either), but point well taken.
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Have you ever seen the audience at a CrossFit Games? 
Nope! They are definitely NOT stereotypical! I used that qualifier anticipating you would have an excellent counter example. 
. You did not disappoint!
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Chess is definitely a competition and not a sport. Youth chess does seem to see many players get accepted to many top colleges for whatever reason. In our son’s small chess club we saw players accepted to Yale, Princeton, MIT, and Stanford (3) in 2016 alone.
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Of course, traditional sports vary in health and physical fitness of those doing them. For example, compare golf, rowing, powerlifting, and swimming.
Of course, the physical fitness demographics of spectators of sports which mostly attract spectators who do the sport may differ from the physical fitness demographics of spectators of sports which attract a mass market of spectators.
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Golf hasn’t been a movement programmed in Crossfit, yet.
But the other three sports/movements are commonly programmed in daily workouts.
A rope climb and closest to the hole contest would be an interesting workout though.
I think more of a determiner of audience health may be geography. But we’re way off topic.
That’s what I meant, their views are in vogue and yours may not be if you think these competitions and science fairs shouldn’t be used in admissions. And these AOs have been valuing them for a while, the AMC, science fair winners have always done well, as I posted before.
“and they aren’t necessarily any more exceptional that the science interested kid with the 800 SAT who has never heard of these competitions.”
Well many of these kids are still going to get in, it’s not the like entire class at these colleges are made up of Olympiad or science fair winners.
But you’re still kind of dodging the main question posed by others, how would you decide between someone who made the Biology Olympiad US national team and someone with an interest in science with the 800 SAT who hasn’t heard of the competition, assuming for the sake of discussion there’s only one spot left?
Roshambo! 
Seriously though, I understand why they place value on those things. It simply gives AOs more information. It’s like having a job referral versus applying cold. The referral lends weight to the application.
I’d decide by looking at the full application rather than just looking at math/science SAT score and whether the applicant is a national/international contest participant. It’s not a given that Biology Olympiad trumps all. For example, maybe the Biology Olympiad kid doesn’t a great transcript outside of science, and his/her LORs talk about some concerning issues when interacting with classmates. Maybe the 800 SAT kid has other impressive out of classroom accomplishments, such as a lot of hands on experience in their planned field of study, related published research that interests the applying college’s faculty, and has overcome some extremely challenging situations. There isn’t enough information to make a decision.
Yes, Biology Olympiad can give a powerful boost, but nothing of the sort is required for admission, and many other factors are considered.
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800 total or math section?
“I’d decide by looking at the full application rather than just looking at math/science SAT score and whether the applicant is a national/international contest participant”
So representing the US team means the 4 or 5 (I think) that go the international competition.
“such as a lot of hands on experience in their planned field of study, related published research that interests the applying college’s faculty”
Doing research that would interest the faculty is, by definition, doing something to get into college, which is not the type of student that should get admission since he or she is prioritizing admission over education. That’s part of the argument.
There’s a Biology Olympiad too? How many STEM Olympiads, regional or national science fairs, robotics competitions, CS contests, and STEM based competitions are there? And let’s not forget non-STEM Olympiads and debate and policy competitions and other non-stem competitions. By the time we add up all the kids with notable accomplishments in all the competitions, we are talking about a fair number of kids, right? One poster who follows these things seemed to think that 200+ kids have an 80%+ at HYSPM based on the math Olympiad alone! Seems like enough kids to fill an Olympic village, or so. I think all these things are worth considering as extracurriculars, and the children and their parents should be very proud, but these contests aren’t necessarily identifiers of “rare” talent, except in rare Terrence-Tao-type cases where the talent was obvious anyway. Beyond that I think my views are along the lines of @Data10. As I’ve tried to explain, a lot of this has to do with how I view education.
Let’s turn your inquiry on its head . . . Once all these competition kids get their spots in Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Astronomy and who knows what else, how many spots are left for the extremely talented and intelligent kids who are as capable (or more capable) of making tremendous contributions in these fields, but have either no exposure to such competitions, or no interest in participating in the sportification of education?
There may cultural and educational costs when we dole out STEM spots through athletic type-competitions. Here are a few:
- The skills and disposition necessary to excel in a math or science competitions may not closely correlate with the skills and disposition necessary to significantly contribute to the fields of math and science.
- Those without access to such competitions or not in an environment where such competitions are common are excluded.
- Many potentially excellent mathematicians and scientists (especially girls) want nothing do with such competitions.
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Many people truly enjoy doing original research in their planned field of study, and would do so even if it was not particularly influential in college admission decisions. I think the bigger issue is limited opportunities. Only a small fraction of kids have the opportunity to pursue published research. In any case, it was an arbitrary and extreme example. There are also plenty of ECs and academic pursuits that are more assessable for typical kids who are interested in science. Ivy+ type colleges generally consider how well the student took advantage of the opportunities in his/her particular environment, so there are different expectations for different applicants.
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