<p>One of the schools near my home offers an excellent Forensics Speech and Debate Program (it's one of the top five teams according to the National Forensic League and it has won the National Championship 3 times). I'm homeschooled and in order to participate in extracurriculars, I'll have to take some classes at that school for 2-4 hours a day. I'm not sure if I should spend this much time to join the debate team, since my own school work takes 6-7 hours. But I had poor grades in freshman year so I really do need strong ECs. Should I participate in the forensics program?</p>
<p>The great majority of colleges base admission only on one’s stats and – for public schools – state of residence. This particularly is true of public universities.</p>
<p>The few colleges that factor ECs are places like Harvard, which can use ECs and other nonacademic factors to pick and choose from among the overabundance of high stat applicants they get.</p>
<p>NSM, that’s an overstatement. Many schools that are significantly less selective than Harvard also use ECs as an admissions criteria. There must be at least 100 others, quite possibly two or three times that number. Mostly private, as you note.</p>
<p>What do you mean by poor grades? ECs will not make up for truly poor academic performance, but they can tip a less-than-stellar application towards acceptance at some lesser (generally) private schools.</p>
<p>You didn’t mention if the debate team is something that you want to participate in.</p>
<p>2-4 hours of extra schoolwork is a major commitment. If you are truly interested in debate, what will you add to your schedule? An English class? science? language? In the end, you may be talking about 2-4 hours plus debate club meetings, or 3-5 hours. Then again, you may be giving up a subject at home too, since you’ll be doing it at school. Mostly, it seems your status as “home schooled” may change somewhat.</p>
<p>^Yeah, at that point you may as well just attend that high school. You can, however, do debate through the homeschooled community. My dad, an alum interviewer for Duke, recently interviewed a homeschooled girl who is heavily involved in the debate community.</p>
<p>I do have a passion for debate.
Problem is that I won’t get credit for the extra classes I’ll have to take so they seem like a waste of time. </p>
<p>Should I just find another EC? Which activities yield national recognition or impressiveness, yet don’t require years and years of practice?</p>
<p>YES! YES! YES!
Ben, you know how I feel about the beauty of speech and debate. i wax eloquent on it.</p>
<p>Reasons to join speech and debate
- To have a new group of completely awesome freinds and be in on their jokes (debate ninja/ don’t h8te, forensicate!
- Because , as a homeschooled kid–you should take school classes anyway to get a feel for what college is like
- Its an awesome EC, its fun too. Lots of trips!
- If you have an award winning forensics program; you will be better prepared to win national and state championships which are VERY prestigious
- Because you will join many sucessful people in being a forensicator- Oprah Winfrey anyone?
- Beacuse it will expand your debating power and your mind. Now , as a forensicator, I rarely worry about presenting because i can extemp- I’m an extemporaneous speaker- stuff off my head. People wantme in their social studies class because I know so much about world afairs.
- Because according to a statistic somewhere, I can’t remember where, debate captains are 2x as likely to get into good schools.
*. there are more but I have to leave now. Adieu.</p>
<p>No, what really sounds like a waste of time is doing an EC just to look impressive on apps. If you really, really like debate, and feel like you can shoulder that extra work, then do it, maybe you can find an easy class or one that looks interesting.</p>