National competitor in Karate any good for Harvard?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
1

Would competing in the national championships for karate but not medaling be considered good enough to merit at least a 2 on Harvard’s “athletics” rating?

Also, assuming I would score a 2 on every other category (academics, extracurriculars, personality), and am close to being a 1 in academics and EC’s what would my chances be at Harvard?

2

None of us is a Harvard admissions officer, so nobody here knows the rubric for 2-6 . We know that 1 is a recruited athlete. My guess is medaling in a national competition would be a 2 and participating, but not medaling, would be a 3.

From another of your threads: “GPA:- Unweighted: 3.8”
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/2090165-hsm-penn-duke.html#latest
So, I would make no such assumption.

3

Quite frankly there’s no way for an AO to know the significance of a karate national competition. And unless you did have a frame of reference ie won first place where the competitors were USA team members, how would anyone know how good the competition was? Maybe it is an open competition where anyone is allowed to compete.

Yes, if you attained black belt while in HS you can certainly put that down as an award on your ECs. If you won some local competitions that might be good for some filler for your ECs. If karate had some sort of ELO rating system like they do in chess or ping pong you might be able to reference that too, but once again there needs to be a frame of reference. In running, for example, one might not win a competition but if they ran a 2.5 hour marathon that would be a frame of reference that would be really good.

4

Update: I was being pessimistic and actually got 3rd place.
As for an ELO System, there are 3 levels, and the ones in the highest level compete for a spot on team USA. Because I medaled in the 2nd level, that means that next year I’ll be able to compete for a spot on Team USA, but by then I’ll know what college I’m going to.
Does that make it easier?

5

Is there a website that shows your current level? If so, probably something you should hyperlink to in your application as proof. Being nationally ranked in a sport is impressive to an AO.