How important are sports?

Applying to College
1

<p>I'm a sophomore at a all girls private prep school in Westchester, New York. I have decent grades, ranging from A's to B's. I take three honors corses (Global, Spanish, English) and I am a member of the National Junior Honor Society. My extra-curricular include: Sailing, Church Youth Group, Soup Kitchen, Local Humane Society Volunteer, Stage Crew for a play, National Junior Honor Society Tutor.. (clubs) Gaelic Society, Art Club, Breast Cancer Awareness Club, Snow Club (skiing club), Paddle Club, and next year I am starting up a Sailing Club. </p>

<p>However, besides sailing, which isn't a school sponsored sport, I have 0 sports! I put a lot of hours into sailing year round though. During the winters, it is 5 hours a week. During the summer, it is around 50 hours for seven weeks, and during the fall/spring, it is about 12 hours for two weeks. </p>

<p>I'm going to start taking tennis lessons, so I may join my JV Girls Tennis Team next fall. But if I don't make it, I am pretty much screwed I think. </p>

<p>SO, my question is, how important are sports to get into college?! I am on no varsity teams, and to be quite honest, I never really cared for sports. </p>

<p>The colleges I'm going to apply to at the moment are:</p>

<p>George Washington University
Georgetown University
Providence College
Villanova University
Syracuse University
Notre Dame University
Roger Williams University
Miami University Ohio
U Southern California
University of Alabama
University of Denver
Loyola Maryland</p>

2

<p>Sports are not important if that is not your thing … the important thing is that you have spent your free time wisely developing yourself in something that interests you, and you perhaps have even mastered some component of that interest. If you have taken a leadership role over time, that continues to show that you have a passion and grew it over time. For you, it sounds like sailing is exactly that. It could also be a great starting point for an essay as not many girls are great sailors.</p>

3

<p>Sports aren’t important at all. From what I can tell, most college students don’t have much experience playing organized sports. I didn’t play any sports in high school, but I was accepted by all of my applied schools. </p>

<p>Ultimately, a sport is just another extracurricular activity, which you already have plenty of. Your inexperience with school sports will not keep you out of any schools.</p>

4

<p>You have strong enough academics and non-sport ECs that it is obvious you have passion for some things, just not sports. That’s perfectly okay, and it definitely won’t kill your application. Everyone is unique in what they enjoy doing.</p>

5

<p>I don’t know why you ignored sailing … it’s a perfectly valid sport! (It doesn’t have to be school sponsored. Rugby for example isn’t sponsored by our state in my school, so I play for the local club team.)</p>

<p>With that being said, sports aren’t all that necessary. There’s a misconception that applicants need to be a balanced, all-around student that needs to excel at every area of academics, athletics, the arts, and so on. That isn’t true … it’s not really what your extracurriculars are, it’s how you do them! As long as you are make sure that the use out of your time outside of school is constructive, colleges don’t really care what you do. If you have a sport, great! But if you don’t play sports, that’s alright too as long as you are doing other constructive activities with your time. :)</p>

6

<p>From what I’ve gathered, sports is an all-or-nothing extracurricular. Either you are good enough to get recruited, or its not worth much of anything.</p>

7

<p>My son has health problems that preclude him from playing any sports. He is not coordinated and has significant physical limitations. Yet, he has been accepted to some great schools. In summary, no, sports are not important for college admissions.</p>