<p>A lot of you probably think I'm crazy since I've seen a lot of users here who think that sports should not be considered as highly as they currently are in the admissions process.</p>
<p>I disagree. I think playing a Varsity Sport is worth a LOT more than volunteering, research, etc. </p>
<p>I'm a cross country runner. This could apply to anyone, not just runners, but let me give you an example. We run at least an hour every practice, are expected to run 6 days a week, have to get up early in the summer to go to practice, are expected to run winter track and spring track, etc. It can become mentally and physically exhausting. We have to monitor our diets, workout, and adjust our entire lifestyles to running. Being a football player, power lifter, or other type of high school athlete could be just as easily mentally and physically demanding.</p>
<p>Compare this to someone who volunteers at a hospital. What do you need to volunteer? You fill an application online, go to orientation, and go to the hospital for a couple of hours every week to deliver papers and push around patients in wheelchairs.</p>
<p>What about research? Contact a professor, let them know you're interested, and you go to a lab over the summer to do research.</p>
<p>Don't get me wrong. Volunteering and researching are impressive.</p>
<p>However, to me, playing a Varsity Sport is MUCH MUCH MUCH more impressive and I don't get why people on CC often hate on athletes.</p>
<p>You obviously don’t realize that some people spend a huge amount of time on research and volunteering. Some people devote entire summers to research, where they work 9-5, five days a week, for the entire summer break.
Some volunteers work 10-15 hours a week volunteering at various places, year round.
And like you, some athletes spend 5 or 6 days a week practicing around 10-15 hours for their sport.
So, what do you think is really more impressive? All 3 of these things can be huge time commitments (or not… sports at my school are very uncompetitive). You don’t seem to understand that some research and some volunteers are just as involved in their respective organizations as you are in yours.
And CCers don’t necessarily hate on athletes… it’s just that many of the people using this site are very invested in their academic futures, very few of which involve sports.</p>
<p>I think it should depend on the quality of the team you’re on. For some teams in my school like the track team for instance, pretty much anyone can get on the varsity team if he/she goes to a certain amount of meets, and being on varsity in something like track (at least in my school) doesn’t seem too impressive. However, if you’re on a varsity team that competes in state championships or something, then that’s impressive, at least in my opinion.</p>
<p>I would say that a wise admissions officer would take into account that whatever grades you have earned were earned despite the fact you spent a lot of time on track.</p>
<p>But I don’t think that simply being on the track team, or the tennis team, carries that much weight.</p>
<p>Captain of the football team is what they are looking for.</p>
<p>By the way, chess is an Olympic sport. Competitive chess players spend as much time practicing per week as those playing varsity sports, yet they barely get any recognition in the admissions process. I can imagine the same for many other sports that are not varsity. I hope you will see my point.</p>
<p>No because you have schools like mine where anyone could make the varsity Football team, Track is no cut and there’s no JV (at my school), and all the girls only sports (minus soccer) are you show up to try out you just made varsity. I don’t go to a small school either 500+ kids in each grade, the sports program is just not good (with the exception of soccer some years and boys basketball)</p>
<p>I agree with runnerxc, sports can be really really exhausting. </p>
<p>My freshman year I played baseball and we had practice at 5 in the morning until 7:15 and then after school for another practice (which was usually shorter but it varied).</p>
<p>I run cross country too, but I’m not good. That doesn’t change the fact that I’m still expected to run anywhere from 5-10 miles at every practice. Coming home exhausted to a bunch of AP homework is difficult.</p>
<p>I’ve played baseball, basketball, and run cross country in high school. It can be really, really difficult to keep grades up when you have 3 games a week and have to sit on a bus for 3 hours, play your game, get back super late, then try to do homework.</p>
<p>My friend plays golf and every year the golf team misses around 10 complete school days in the spring going to tournaments and meets. It takes a lot of planning to keep up with school when that happens. </p>
<p>I’m not saying that doing a sport is a better activity than doing research or volunteering, I’m just saying that it’s harder to turn in that huge project on time, or to ace that test when you’re playing a sport.</p>
<p>When I first joined here, after lurking a long time, I innocently asked a sports-related question and created a firestorm. Hoping this stays civil. :)</p>
<p>My older ds was a four-year varsity athlete, and, yeah, it does take a lot of time and dedication. But a kid who is passionate about something else may invest a lot of time in that. My ds2 is interning this summer, from 16-24 hours a week, and loves it, but there’s plenty of outside time involved, like reading to stay on top of current events and ironing his dress shirts. He also plays soccer and started cross-country this week. Right now, he’s definitely spending more time on the internship.</p>
<p>Yeah, there are kids who try to rack up volunteer/research hours and aren’t very committed. Just like there are kids playing sports who don’t do the off-season work etc. to be really good at it or quit midseason just to have it to put on their resumes. But you can’t make a blanket statement that one “should” be valued more than another.</p>
<p>I have an honest question, something I never really understood and might come off as ignorant; but I’m honestly just looking for an answer:</p>
<p>Why do people spend so much time on sports? Yeah, it’s hard, time-consuming, etc. But what do you get out of it in exchange for all of that time spent? Only so many of those high school varsity athletes go on to make significant contributions to lucrative college programs, and even fewer of those go pro and make a living off of it. Take a sport versus say research. In research, you’re delving further into a field of your interest, experiencing a possible future career, doing mental work that will enhance your thinking skills, etc. Now sports: maybe I’m missing something, never having been extremely involved in a sport myself, but it seems like all you’re doing is having fun and doing manual labor (i.e. practicing/working out).</p>
<p>I guess my question is, where is the value in devoting yourself to a sport?</p>
<p>^^^ We do sports because we happen to be passionate about them, similar to how debaters are passionate about debate and researchers are passionate about research. I thought you’re supposed to do things that you enjoy in high school/college??</p>
<p>@youdon’tsay you’ve hit it right on the nail with that</p>
<p>I think that many people in sports fail to realize those other people spend a lot of time (and work very hard) with other ECs and volunteer work.
I’m in marching band, it isn’t a sport but it is just as physically demanding as all the other sports in my school. Where other sports have water breaks every half hour or hour, we get them when we are told. I’ve gone 4 hours in 90 degree weather on black top without a water break and still played and marched my best. Meal breaks can last anywhere from 10 to 30 min. There are a bunch of diet restrictions we have to follow at practice. So why should I get less credit for that when I’ve worked just as hard (if not harder) than someone on a sports team? We practice in the summer from 9 to 8 and we’re expected to be at the school no later than 8:30. During school we’ll have practice from 2 to 5:30 and then late nights at least 1 a week in October until 8 or 9.
If you don’t march or play an instrument understand that it is not as easy as it looks.</p>
<p>@bart2385 - By that definition, someone who is passionate about playing video games would fit in the same category.</p>
<p>I’m just saying that I see very obvious benefits in doing certain activities (debate, research, etc), but the benefit doesn’t seem so obvious when it comes to sports - at least not to me. Can anyone enlighten me?</p>
<p>“However, to me, playing a Varsity Sport is MUCH MUCH MUCH more impressive and I don’t get why people on CC often hate on athletes.”</p>
<p>Hmmmm. Very interesting sentence…</p>
<p>1) Varsity sports can be very exhausting. That’s a given. As to whether it should be given more prominence, that’s an opinion issue don’t you agree?</p>
<p>2) Why do people on CC hate on athletes? I don’t see that frankly. What I see is little tolerance for uninformed generalizations that sixteen year olds posit as gospel truth and they wrap it in a blanket of “if you disagree, you’re stupid” – all the while titling their post “Should this be given more weight in admissions?” when clearly it’s not a question but a blunt missive. Dear me, I can’t imagine your first real job interview… That’ll be a juicy one.</p>
<p>And by the way, I’m the father of a multi-sport four year varsity athlete whose team has the most intense workouts of any in her 4000 person HS and a collective 3.4 team GPA.</p>
<p>Many, many volunteer and internship opportunities are competitive. My son applied for an internship this summer that had over 150 applications for 6 positions. The application took over an hour to fill out, minus the essay that needed to be completed. He is also on the HS Robotics team, which requires a long and more intense time committment than any HS sport does. So making a generalization about internships/academic groups/volunteering is not really accurate. And in our school, track is a no cut sport, so not impressive unless you personally win regionals.</p>
<p>I used to be a cross runner as well. Dude, I know exactly what are you talking about. Currently I am practicing a hour and half a day, 5 days a week for hurdles. The reason I switched to focus on indoor and outdoor season is due to the fact that crossing country is way too time-consuming.</p>
<p>@Caperi: To what “category” are you referring to? Video games are obviously not part of the “category” you’re talking about, because they were never considered extracurriculars in the first place. Sports, debate, student council, NHS, and volunteering are inherently different from video games.</p>
<p>sports teach people discipline and hard work like many other activities like marching band. one is not necessarily better than the other and the admin people take that into consideration. they like to see people involved in their school because it means they will be involved in the college they attend. team sports teach people how to work with others like debate or robotics. research pushes the mind to see how much it can understand, while sports push athletes to their physical and mental limits. some sports require an extraordinary amount of dedication, like marching band or debate team. some people may be able to find the easy way out on paper, just doing the minimum for the college apps, but the character building that sports (or other activities) provide won’t be there. i play lacrosse, but my friend who is involved in theater is much more crunched for time than i as opening day draws near. but neither of us compare our activities in terms of difficulty or admin viability. we do them because we love them. people find their passions in different places.</p>
<p>I ran cross country for the first time last year (I had been running track (hurdles) for about seven years but the coach decided to make everyone including the sprinters do cross country) and it was one of the hardest things that I’ve ever done. Practice started at 7, officially but if you didn’t get there by 6:40 you’d be considered late, and ended around 9:30 every weekday except friday. Fridays in preparation for the meets we’d swim at 6 AM. Saturdays we’d get to the school at around 6 and go to the meet. Sundays we were expected to run 8 miles on our own and the cycle started again. It was exhausting. A few times I got back from the meet on Saturday at around four and just slept through the night. The physical and mental commitment that you have to have is much greater with sports than other extracurriculars. </p>
<p>And to the guy who said that they are tougher than us because they stand in 90 degree heat try running in hundred degree heat without any water. The reason we get water breaks is because tons of kids have died from heat exhaustion. It is incredibly dangerous not to have water breaks.</p>
He also plays soccer and started cross-country this week. Right now, he’s definitely spending more time on the internship.</p>