<p>Interesting reading all the perspectives on marching band. Here, band is a class during the school day, and the kids march at the football games on Fridays in the fall. They do a few parades, and go to Disney or Universal in the spring every other year. There is no daily after school commitment or every Saturday in the fall obligation. So to me, band is not that time-consuming to be considered the ultimate EC. My kids have played sports, which is every day after school, and participate in forensics, which is after school practice and Saturday tournaments. Both of these are far more time consuming than marching band here.</p>
<p>I personally think that no matter how much you try to engineer it, there is always going to be some randomness based on what the particular adcom members likes, values, or doesn’t like. An adcom member who has fond memories of his or her own participation in band may be more favorable than an adcom member who thinks eh, band, whatever. The same can be said of ANY EC – sports, volunteering, math club, music lessons, etc. So you just have to go with what you like.</p>
<p>I don’t understand the point about how one school’s time commitment differs from another and that adcoms don’t know. On the application itself, let alone the activity resume my own children and all the applicants whom I advise submit, it is entered how many weeks per year and how many hours per week is devoted to each specific activity. That’s how adcoms know. </p>
<p>As an aside, since I know kids applying to college from around the country, typically sports and theater at MOST schools do consume a great deal of time. Also, with sports, many are on teams in addition to the school team either in other seasons, weekends, travel team, etc. With theater, many who are passionate about it, also are taking voice, dance, and acting lessons/classes outside the school day in addition to the many hours of rehearsal for all the productions. I definitely think marching band is very time consuming but it definitely doesn’t have a lock on heavily committed ECs.</p>
<p>I seem to remember that D had to write down the approximate # of hours per week she was involved in each EC. Between her 2 (school & studio) dance teams, the commitment was 20-25+ hours per week year round. </p>
<p>Any activity with that level of time and intensity will be an “ultimate EC”.</p>
<p>I don’t believe that marching band, or any other EC for that matter, is the ultimate EC, but if an admission clerk said it is as the OP mentioned, I can see their point (as I explained before).</p>
<p>The reason there is no “ultimate” EC (if by that, one means an EC that will guarantee a student a nice bump up) is that no university wants to enroll an entire class of students with basically one type of talent–even though it’s a great one.</p>
<p>For every handful of devoted marching band kids, they’ll look for a handful of devoted theatre kids, water polo stars, robot masterminds, debate winners… and even a selection of kids whose ECs are not common at all–designers of iPhone aps, skateboard stars, writers of published anthologies, etc.</p>
<p>Very nicely said ^^^^</p>
<p>I agree with vicariousparent that debate is up there with marching band as a high commitment E.C. (It’s also fantastic preparation for college, in my opinion.) What makes the two E.C.'s different is that kids can choose to be less involved in debate (more shades of gray), but marching band is a major commitment for anyone who joins (at least in my neck of the woods). </p>
<p>I think this is why the grid with #of hours and #weeks is so important. Also, regarding debate, anyone who is really involved will start to have a collection of regional, state, and possible national awards. This is what admissions folks will look for, in addition to the traditional “officer” roles.</p>
<p>A little side story - my son and another boy we know both applied to the same liberal arts college. His grades and test scores were slightly better than my son’s. My son, the debater, got in with a scholarship. The other boy, the band guy, got on the waiting list. The college had only chamber music, no marching band. So, the importance of marching band really does depend on the college.</p>
<p>On marching band as a hook: it is definitely a hook if you can play trumpet like the guy in the trompeten duo solo video. Google trompeten duo solo
:D</p>
<p>I agree that it is a regional thing. In our school, a lot of the top students are in band or have been in the past. BUT…our kids are in multiple activities. Those same kids play basketball & football, FFA, Drama Club, Scouts, etc. Most kids here are very well rounded, so can’t say Band was THE thing.</p>
<p>My S did get mail from colleges referring to his musical abilities, trying to recruit him to come to their college as well as be in their band. He quit his Junior year - when almost everyone else did. They do not like the new band teacher. The only kids still involved either have no other activities or their parents made them stick with it.</p>
<p>I think colleges like to see well rounded kids.</p>
<p>you are so dumb… marching band is not what it was… we practiced in high school over 40 hrs a week. we were all responsible and had a sense of pride. no drugs. no alcohol… and personally i got SO much scholarship money for MB so… it is the end all be all… marching band rocks… its everything else that sucks… 13 years of girl scouts and not even HALF as much money for that scholarship</p>
<p>***OH, OK. Got it. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Oh, and one question…you say 40 hours per week required of band practice? So, on Monday through Friday, would that be four hours per day and then ten hours each and every Sat. and Sun.? My kids were in heavy duty extracurriculars but I can’t think of just ONE that was 40 hours per week alone. They may have spent close to 40 hours per week on ECs, but I don’t know of a single EC that requires 40 hours every week.</p>
<p>When my son did band, he had 2 hours a day of band class, then 4 hours twice a week in the evening, 4 hours practice/performance at home football games, and 1 full saturday most weeks in the fall, usually there was an all day practice or a tournament/practice. It all added up to about 30 hours a week.</p>
<p>30 hours is believable…40 hours, not really</p>
<p>“30 hours is believable…40 hours, not really”</p>
<p>…in our school’s theatre program kids put in 50 hour weeks for the three weeks leading up to the spring musical. ( 3-9 PM M-F, 9-9 Sat., 11-6 Sun.). The week of the opening they are there around 55 hours. Before that it’s usually around 25 hours (auditions first week of December, opening night second or third week of March).</p>
<p>I thought my S had it bad getting home at 7 after football and then having to face 3-4 hours of homework. How the heck do these kids putting in 30-40 hours towards drama/band find time to do homework and sleep?</p>
<p>I can say that with both of my kids (at two different High Schools), grades are MUCH higher during MB season than during sports season in the Spring. My mom said the same was true for me too. Now, it could just be MB is in the fall and by spring semester they are starting to get tired of being at school.</p>
<p>cadad wrote:</p>
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<p>Yes, I am well aware of that, since afterall, one of my kids did musical theater her whole life (both in and out of school), went to college for musical theater and is an Equity actor. But the “hell week (s)” leading up to a show are not the same as the kid who is saying that every week, he had 40 hours of practice in the schedule. My kids did about 40 hours of ECs per week too but one single activity did not require 40 hours (I did not count hell week for school musicals, but was talking about on a REGULAR basis for the school year, like the student above was referring to with marching band).</p>
<p>That said, I think it is kind of unusual to have three hell weeks leading up to the show, whereas many schools have one.</p>
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<p>My son got very little sleep, and he was rather proud of that. Most nights he got to bed after midnight and was awake the next day at 6 in the morning. He learned how to budget his time. We dropped him off at school at 6:30 every morning, the band director always got to school early and opened up the band room. The band kids all did homework in there before school started at 8. At lunch and after school they did the same. When they rode the band bus to tournaments, they brought along their homework and did it on the road. On Sundays we let him sleep in as long as he wanted. The band director bent over backwards to make sure that the band members grades did not slip, because if they got too low they could not participate in band, leaving “holes” in the drill formation. So he followed their gpa’s closely, and announced to the entire band who had the highest gpa each term. The ones whose grades fell too low had to watch the band practice from the sidelines. This gave the kids great incentive to keep their gpa’s up, and to get to the band room early every morning to study.</p>
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<p>Our coaches used to do the same, until I politely informed them that such an announcement was a direct violation of both California and federal privacy laws. I suggested he seek guidance from the District’s legal counsel prior to making such announcements in the future. :rolleyes:</p>