<p>Hello,</p>
<p>I am an International student applying to the US. As I was filling in my common app preferences for activities offered by different colleges I came acros junior varsity teams. Since I have no idea about how they work I was just wondering if they want you to have any prior experience in that sport before you saying that you would be interested in a jv team. Can I just join a JV team if it means learning that sport from scratch ?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>I am not entirely sure if I am interpreting your question correctly.</p>
<p>Are you saying that the common app is asking for what activities you did in high school? Or are you saying that the common app is asking about what activities you want to do in college? </p>
<p>Most sports teams in American high schools have junior varsity and varsity sports. Varsity is the best set of players on the team while junior varsity has players that did not make varsity that are trying to make varsity. My high school had a policy where seniors weren’t allowed to play junior varsity so they had to make the varsity team by then or else not play at all.</p>
<p>Here’s an example:</p>
<p>My high school tennis team had 14 boys and 14 girls on varsity. These were our best players. If you did not make varsity or aren’t placed in varsity, you try for junior varsity (unless you are a senior at which point you aren’t elligible). Junior varsity may or may not accept everyone who tries out depending on how many spots are available and how many people try out. Thus, depending on the situation, it is possible that you can make a JV team with zero experience.</p>
<p>For college, the word “junior varsity” isn’t used. I can tell you about my university. We have the main sports team (sometimes called varsity). After that we have club teams followed by the intramural teams. The main team will be the best of the best players which may be on scholarship and will travel very often and even be televised. The club team will be students who are not there on an athletic scholarship but still want to play competitively and compete against other schools. A club team may accept everyone who tries out or it may reject some depending on the policy set for that sport and how many people try out and how many spots there are. The intramurals accept everyone and you just play against others from your school that are also signed up for intramurals so you don’t travel much at all. The intramurals will typically be a large group of people and they will section you off by skill level so that you are placed with people who are around your skill level. This is especially good for people who have never played the sport before since they will be put with those that have never played before.</p>