<p>I'm currently a high school freshman. Right now I'm running varsity cross country, but my times aren't spectacular and I probably wouldn't get recruited unless I somehow get a lot better between now and senior year. This seems especially unlikely considering that over time, I'll have less and less time to devote to running. I also do extemp (it's a speaking event that's part of debate, there are tournaments almost every saturday. I really enjoy it and I do pretty well considering it's my first year, but I want to spend more time on it so I can be competitive on a national level. I consider this my main EC), tutor kids at an ESOL school four hours a week, get paid to tutor one hour a week, am in Latin Club, and do High-Q. Assuming they accept my application, I'll join the school paper in junior year and hopefully get some type of editorial position when I'm a senior.</p>
<p>So I guess my question is, how valuable is the cross country? Will elite colleges be at all impressed by four years of a varsity sport if I'm never all that great? If things get to hectic (especially once junior year starts) would it be okay to drop cross country?</p>
<p>It’s not important at all. What is important is that you do something you care about, show commitment, creativity, leadership, teamwork, or whatever qualities you plan to showcase…A few ECs in which you’re really invested will say a lot more about who you are than 4 years of half-hearted participation in any sport, or any other EC. (But if you love to run, don’t let your times be the reason you stop-you can run marathons for fun, coach a kids track team, or do other running-related activities.)</p>
<p>Our family’s experience has been different. My older, genius son with almost perfect SATs, 4.0 in IB, and fabulous ECs:president student gov, editor in chief for the school paper, for which he got multiple NYS awards-best editorial etc., won a national award for United Way for our school, etc etc. He quit running XC because he didn’t have time his senior year, and he was wait-listed at Harvard, Middlebury, Amherst, Dartmouth, and Tufts. His younger brother, scores not as good, is being recruited by all the same schools for his sport. I think you should stick with it for now.</p>
<p>It does not help that much unless, as others have said, you are committed. Many of my friends are on varsity sports, but our teams and programs aren’t that great. Even being a captain shows little, because schools won’t know how competitive the team you’re on, is itself. If you show dedication, attending camps, creating youth programs for that sport, or working as a coach for younger players, then it may mean more. The only time it matters the most if you are a nationally recognized athlete and can be recruited.</p>
<p>You don’t have to be a nationally recognized athlete to be recruited, depending on the sport and the school. You just have to be willing to play, and better than their other prospects. The best athletes will go D1, because that’s where the money is. D3 wants to field their teams from their student body, and with SO many talented kids, I have to say at least at our house, it’s given him that little extra thing to stand out. He does love his sport, but didn’t train year-round til the last year, AND he absolutely was not a stand out his frosh or soph year. He also is a 2 year team captain, which schools LOVE.</p>
<p>How much time is it taking out of your day? Our cross-country team is usually home by 4:00. The health benefits alone of continuing to participate are worth the effort, so do it for that reason if you can.</p>
<p>It is good to be team captain, but I don’t think they can place any value on whether you are captain for more than a year because many schools only allow seniors to be captains.</p>
<p>I think schools are impressed by kids who do what they love and do they best they can because they love what they do. If you don’t love XC, then don’t do it. Sounds like you’ve got plenty to keep you busy.</p>
<p>I see lots of bs in this thread. Playing a varsity sport is AS valuable as any other club in school or even more important.
I spend quality time - hours a day of dedication to varsity soccer. Whereas in clubs, it’s more like once a week during lunch or after school for an hour session.
Oh, and I don’t see anyone sweating, running for their health, and developing their body while participating in a club.
SO OP, stick with XC. I’m telling you right now you will regret it if you listen to most of the parents in here.
High School is all about time management, so there’s no such thing as having “no time”.
To show you that you can always make time, here’s my schedule…
4 APs. Demanding schedule obviously. Varsity soccer which demands hours a day in the baking sun. Not to mention I need a social life to stay sane, so I have to make room with my girlfriend and my friends. I like you wish there were more hours in a day, but there is always a way to juggle things around. Develop a skill necessary to survive in the real word: time management.
Good luck.</p>
<p>
Hahah, yeah…not true.
You actually look better if you have a captain belt along with dedicated ECs.</p>
<p>The schools I am looking at consider your grades and test scores. Everything else is gravy. If I had known how little the EC’s mattered, I would have perhaps cut back and spent more time on getting great grades.</p>
<p>Slipjig, I totally disagree. You have to have the grades, scores, ECs, community service, and preferably a varsity sport, because there are so MANY qualified kids with your scores, courses and grades, for the elite colleges.You have to manage your time, per Greens recom. If its a top LAC, or one of the Ivies, don’t quit your sport.My second S, same grades, courses, and ECs as his brother, slightly LOWER test scores(but still above average for the school’s range) is being RECRUITED at the schools who wait-listed his brother.</p>
<p>Greens…you misunderstood. First of all, I agree with you totally. As the parent of two high level athletes and one well rounded kid who played varsity sports in high school, I very much know and understand the hours and sweat that go into sports. My daughter trained 36 hours per week, year round! I was just saying that, at many schools, there are rules placed on how captains are selected, when you can be a captain, etc. At my son’s school, for example, only seniors can be named captain. I am certain colleges realize this and would not give more weight to someone who captained their team one year vs. two years.</p>
<p>Yeah, I’ve gotten mixed feelings.
Although I’m a very studious person without a lot of physical talent, I’ve been doing sports year round and I’m in varsity Lacrosse. I like sports, but I feel like I would have increased my chances for college if I had spent that time doing more math or science and such.</p>
<p>A varsity sport really is only a big asset in admissions if you are at the level where you might be recruited. For XC, it should be pretty easy to find out what time you would need to have. </p>
<p>Unless you want to do it or you have enough talent to get recruited, it won’t be worth any more than any other EC. </p>
<p>XC is more exhausting than most sports. I can definitely see how it might hard to do that on top of everything else.</p>
<p>I was in the same dilemma as you during the beginning of junior year. I thought I would burn out running XC on top of my other EC’s and my course load, but it wasn’t that bad. It’s about commitment and dedication, keep running because you like doing it. I’m not at the level where I can be recruited either but I stuck with it, and my times have improved. Do some intense training over the summer, and you’ll see your times improve. Your only a freshman, you have 3 years to go, you should be able to improve your times by then so you can be recruited if that’s the route you want to go. My advice is to keep running.</p>
<p>Having a varsity sport isn’t important at all. Most colleges don’t factor ECs, sports, etc. into admission unless you are, for instance, a recruited athlete, something most people lack the talent to be. Most colleges base admissions decisions overwhelmingly on one’s stats.</p>
<p>The colleges that do factor ECs into admission are colleges like Harvard that get such an overabundance of high stat applicants that the colleges can pick and choose from that outstanding pool students who’ll contribute to creating a class that is diverse in all ways including their ECs.</p>
<p>When it comes to your ECs, sports, etc., the main reason to do those things is for yourself. Such activities help you develop talents, skills, and hobbies that will serve you well for life including by helping you figure out what kind of profession will make you happy.</p>
<p>There are many great reasons to run cross-country (which I’ve done for 4 years), but, unless your times put you into the top 5 or so runners of the schools you are targeting, getting into college isn’t one of them. And if you’re interested in the Ivies, those times have to be pretty darn good – like top few hundred or so in the US for your graduation year. The threshold for the top LAC’s is a bit lower, but not by much, and the threshold is even higher at most of the second tier elites like Georgetown, Duke and Northwestern. How much improvement you have left in you is a function of a few factors, mainly how much you’ve already realized your potential through training. The reality is, success in cross country is mostly determined by innate physical ability (VO2 max, etc), and once you’re mostly trained up, there isn’t that much room for improvement. Almost everyone plateaus or improves just a few percent once they’ve trained at a reasonably high level for a couple of years. Unless, you’re already running times in the range of the elite group of runners, I’d focus more on extemp. (If you ARE close to the elite level, I’d stick with cross country, because being a recruited athlete is a true hook in elite college admissions; success in speech and debate is just a nice-to-have.) Of course, speech and debate success also depends on innate ability, but you can increase your effective ceiling a lot more through hard work and dedication in extemp than you can in cross-country. If you work hard enough and have enough talent to reach a national level of success in extemp (qualification to NFL Nationals, etc) that should provide a modest boost in the admissions process. Again, this addresses only the impact of the sport on college admissions – there are lots of other great reasons to continue running (as I have).</p>
<p>you should continue too run because it will make you more organized and do better in school. also running makes you smarter (thinking faster, its true). so keep it up</p>