<p>Alright here's the deal. I was on my school's Cross Country team and Track & Field team for 2 years as a JV runner. However at one of the end-of-season banquets for Cross Country, the coaches gave out Varsity letters to everyone, even the JV guys. I was really surprised by this and ecstatic because I could say I was on Varsity. But now I'm having second thoughts; I mean, I do have a Varsity letter but I don't know if I should put Varsity on my application.</p>
<p>Also, this brings me to another question. My CC and Track teams were very good because they came 1st in sectionals and 2nd in states for both of the years I was on the team. Should I mention those feats even though I didn't actually help (aside from cheering)?</p>
<p>1) You can if you want (assuming he gave the varsity letters to you on purpose and not by accident). Whether you’re varsity or JV aren’t a huge deal on apps anyway due to the subjectivity of the title - varsity is much easier to make in a small school than a large public school, for example. Some schools don’t even have JV teams for certain sports. For example, at my school, if you have two arms and a pulse you can make the varsity tennis team.</p>
<p>2) Unless you contributed to the events that led to your team placing, I would say there’s really no point.</p>
<p>I am not too familiar with track and field, but I know individual sports can have a very blurred line between varsity and JV. Wrestling, for example, there are both starter positions who wrestle varsity, and back-ups who wrestle varsity sometimes in the case of injury or absence (rather often, actually) and JV at other times. To make it more confusing, if we struggle to fill a weight class, they may stick an inexperienced guy as a varsity position for team meets, but he would be entered in as a JV competitor at tournaments. And sometimes, we will stick an inexperienced guy as varsity against a really tough competitor to prevent the starter from getting an injury before a big meet. So things can get really confusing on whether someone is considered varsity or JV. I can imagine it being the same way with track, XC, or other individual sports.</p>
<p>@Rob1995, it definitely wasn’t a mistake because the team has about 30 JV guys so I don’t see how a blunder that big would go unnoticed. Also, track works similarly in that JV runners often run in Varsity races and vice versa, for strategic purposes.</p>
<p>Regardless, I have decided to take the honest path and just say JV. Based on the responses I got, the difference between Varsity and JV isn’t that big, especially if I don’t plan on running in college. Plus, if colleges saw a discrepancy between my reporting and my schools reporting of athletics, it would put a question to my integrity and leave a huge dent in my application. Thanks for all the helpful replies!</p>
<p>“I can tell you that the difference between you being on the JV or Varsity team will not make or break your admissions decision.”</p>
<p>Exactly what I was about to say.</p>
<p>Some schools are so small that there is only a Varsity team and everybody makes it. Unless you were a state placing athlete, the person evaluating your application is hardly going to use this line as a deciding factor.</p>