For years now I have wanted to be a West Point Cadet. I know understand the rigor and have prepared myself academically. I also became the president for one club and the VP for two others. My only concern is the physical portion. I have been doing Tae Kwon Do since the 4th grade and I absolutely love it. I became a black belt in the 8th grade and since then I have tried very hard to get my 2nd degree black belt. Since I was doing Tae Kwon Do, I did no have the chance to participate in Varsity sports at school. If I were to apply to West Point, would I need to be in Varsity sports?
1156 cadets out of the 1257 cadets in the class of 2018 were Varsity athletes. So can you get in without varsity sports? Yes, but statistically the odds are greatly against you. Good luck.
Thank you for your help 
More than half of the cadets were team captains. It is sort of obvious how that applies. Some sports also have pretty heavy workouts, which would prepare one for marches and obstacle courses and so on. So martial arts is better than nothing, but maybe not what they are looking for.
I agree with sattut , in that the Academies value team sports over individual sports. There is a lot to be said for having to work together in a team environment is very important to the military.
I went to West Point in the early 1980s. Basically the expectation is that an Army Officer is fit enough to lead soliders and while maybe not all cadets were varsity athletes in high school they are all athetic enough to run 5 miles without falling behind the group or march 20 miles with a rucksack once in a while. An individual martial arts would work but you had better perform well on the Candidate Fitness Assesment or it raise questions. Sports outside the school are fine as well. Train for a triathlon or run a half marathon. The Academy is physically challenging for students who are not athletic
They will look for a team sport. So while martial arts is excellent, you do need to a team sport as well. My son has a black belt in karate (trained in this dojo for many years) but he also is in a hockey league and was team captain a few times. It was not a varsity team (he’s homeschooled, so a varsity team wasn’t an option) but it was a team sport. He most likely would not have been accepted to WP had he only had karate as his sport.
Thank you for all your help! I will take everything said here into consideration. It is probably too late for me to do a team sport now since I am at the end of my junior year. I now am the California State Vice-President for an organization so hopefully I will be able to have a teamwork experience similar to those seen in team sports. Of course I’m not saying that this will compensate for a team sport, but hopefully I can learn something from this experience as well.
I don’t know anything really but have you entered into any competitions? I would imagine if you were top in the state for your level that would be helpful.