<p>“Unless your kid is involved with a sport every season”
Some sports are year around, including summers, weekends. Summer is just much heavier season, since they are not busy with school work. All is doable as long as there are time mangements skills. The earlier they are developed, the better. They are essential at college anyway, where most are doing several EC’s.</p>
<p>Sports ARE an EC. “vs” - replace with “instead of another type of”</p>
<p>Depending on the college program, sports might not be enough as a single EC. It is an EC and is recognized as a huge time commitment, but sometime you need to show more and sometime you do not need any.</p>
<p>Does it depend on the size of your HS? I mean being on varsity when your class size is 600a is much different than a class size of 60, at least skills wise.</p>
<p>dgilman, to be honest, MiamiDAP’s post #2 makes me feel tired just reading it. Practically no one can accomplish that level of activity with a serious involvement in each that is listed. Kudos to MiamiDAP’s D if it was possible for her. But Harvard will take a lot of students who have not participated in depth that broadly. </p>
<p>If the sport is very time consuming, and the team is not highly competitive, then I’d suggest thinking about how time can be used in the summers, for the student to explore interests. For many, summer activities can be more “serious” than school-related EC’s and thus more valuable. (Acknowledged, some schools have serious EC’s.)</p>
<p>Post #2 activity level is not that tough for a gifted student, even if unusual for most. Top (ability, not necessarily grades) 1% of a class of 300 -500 means 3- 5 students per HS class, multiply that by thousands of HS’s… not that rare. Son took AP courses- got many more 5s than 4s, did Orchestra (a class as well)- made State solo/ensemble sophomore year, did cross country- varsity among 60 boys, went to State, did local math and othe academic competitons where school did well… Good public school (in WI). Many can and do this to keep from being bored in HS. Most CC runners tend to do academically well. Many in his HS did other acitivites- and ran year round, although most didn’t do as many activites. Son spent little outside time with his instrument- had enough ability to perform well in a good HS orchestra. There are many students throughout the country who can do a lot after school and still do top academics. College choices vary with region.</p>
<p>A student should choose the activities that interest them, not what looks good on the record. A sport can be ideal for stress relief. Music likewise. Other clubs can add interest or challenges to the day. It is better to focus on one (or more) and do well in them. Being a member is not the same as getting awards in the activity. Who knows if my son put down any of his many HS activity awards in his college applications- we never saw them (too independent to let us).</p>
<p>Something I have learned from CC: Every high school is different. All of the serious musicians at QMP’s high school practiced 3-4 hours a day. They were very gifted, but they also worked at it. Post #2 listed music, art, school newspaper, volunteering, and shadowing, on top of the summer research activities, and a commitment of 18 hours a week for sports, not counting meets, some of which were out of town. </p>
<p>The ability to do all of this goes beyond time-management, in my opinion. It’s not just the gifts, it’s the local demands. It requires that several of the activities are not super-intense. I think it would be impossible if the journalism teacher is expecting 20-30 hours a week, the music teacher is expecting 20-30 hours a week, each academic class is expecting 10 hours a week (on top of time in class) . . .</p>
<p>Sports ARE extra-curricular activities. One of the reasons colleges ask you to not only list what kinds of activities you participate in, but also roughly how many hours per day/week/year you are engaged in them, is specifically to address these kinds of questions. They’ll be able to see that the student is an athlete with a sport that has a major time committment. They’ll also be able to see if a student is participating in something that leaves them with a lot of other free time. </p>
<p>So if your son is playing a sport that takes up a lot of his time, even if he’s not being recruited, he’s showing colleges that: 1) he’s good at time managment, 2) he understands what it takes to be part of a team and he has a competitive spirit that probably translates over from his sporting life, 3) he likes to take on a challenge. So don’t worry so much. If he’s doing something that he enjoys, and it’s filling up a reasonable amount of his time, then that’s great. If he has other interests that he might want to take on or some EC he wants to explore that are low-time committment (maybe something that meets over lunch period or in the off season) that’s good too, but don’t have him take on something majorly time consuming and additional just for colleges.</p>
<p>QuantMech, I will use my D as an example of how post #2 can work. In high school she was in marching band, which required 1 1/2 hours of practice a day before school outside of school, plus home football games and 4 all day Saturday compititions during the fall.</p>
<p>She was also in cross country in the fall, which required another 1 1/2 hours of practice after school, plus 2 meets a week.</p>
<p>She was also in track, which had the same schedule in the spring as XC did in the fall.</p>
<p>She was also in two show choirs which practiced 2 hours a night 2 nights a week from August through March. There were 4-6 Saturday compititions during the winter time in addition to the practices.</p>
<p>The band had monthly band concerts during the school year after marching band was over and the choir had monthly choir concerts seperate from the band all school year.</p>
<p>She was in Key Club (kiwanis) all three years of high school, being VP as a JR and Pres. as a senior.</p>
<p>She was in girl scouts and worked on her gold award during her sr. year, just earning it a week or so ago.</p>
<p>Other than choir and band she was in all honors and AP classes, earning over a 4.5 weighted GPA and graduated in the top 3% of her class. She had to go early to school every day 2nd semester for PE, because she did not have time for it during the school day and couldn’t go early every other day in the fall because of early band. </p>
<p>She was at school from 7:30-5 every day because of band, PE, and practices and then again from 7-9 on show choir nights. On nights she wasn’t at show choir she was working at the store. She still got her straight A’s.</p>
<p>She also worked 15 hours a week at the local grocery store, and played piano almost weekly at church.</p>
<p>And there were kids in her high school that were in more activities and busier than she was and had higher GPA’s because they had more weighted classes if they were in only choir or only band.</p>
<p>bajamm, could you clarify for me: Your daughter was at school starting at 7:30 every day. She had an hour and a half of band before school. So did she start band at 6:00 am or did her school not start until 9:00 am? Or did she practice for an hour and a half before school started at 7:30? Couldn’t quite make that out from your post. Also, did each show choir have 4 hours of practice a week, or was that for the 2 show choirs combined? How long did she spend on activities connected with Kiwanis, and how long on Girl Scouts? Some people only require 4 hours of sleep a night. Is your daughter in that category? Did you have family meals while she was in high school?</p>
<p>QuantMech, I was a bit off with the band timing. She went to band at 7 am, school started at 8:30. When it was time to go early for PE is when she went at 7:30 for an hour of PE before the regular school day.</p>
<p>Total show choir practice was 4 hours. They both practiced from 7-9 on Mondays and Thursdays, she went back and forth between the two.</p>
<p>Key Club (HS version of Kiwanis) met every two weeks as a club for an hour, plus she had officers meetings in between times and short meetings with the advisor as President between classes or between other activities.</p>
<p>She had a 3 hours long Girl Scout meeting every two weeks, plus time as she could in between to work on her Gold Award, which she just finished. </p>
<p>I forgot to say that she volunteered at the hospital 2 hours a week on Sunday afternoons.</p>
<p>She probably usually slept 6-7 hours a night, by law all school and work activities had to be over by 10 pm for her age group. She was usually in bed by 11 or midnight. She studied on the bus to meets and the band/choir contests. She required very little studying to get her A’s and memorizes very, very quickly. I do know there was maybe 2 or three nights in her whole high school career that she maybe only received 3 hours of sleep, around 7 was much more commen.</p>
<p>We had family dinners maybe 2-3 times a week.</p>
<p>Well, I’ll be honest–your daughter’s schedule makes me feel a bit tired, too! She was lucky that school activities had to be over by 10 pm. That doesn’t happen around here. </p>
<p>Also, I think she was lucky in the nature of her homework, that it was possible to fit it in, within the time available. Locally, AP teachers sometimes go semi-berserk in order to guarantee that as many students score 5’s as possible, and 2 hours of homework per night per AP class is not uncommon.</p>
<p>"Practically no one can accomplish that level of activity with a serious involvement in each that is listed. Kudos to MiamiDAP’s D if it was possible for her. But Harvard will take a lot of students who have not participated in depth that broadly. "</p>
<p>-Great underestimation what is going on. And I was not talking about harvard at all. Many of this kids (my D. included) do not even apply to Ivy’s or any elite colleges. My D. ws not alone at all doing everything because she is interested and curious. It continued in UG, again, D. was not only one. There are kids with triple unreleated majors still doing tons of EC, all in 4 years and getting accepted to Med. School (as an example), the last one that requires most commitment. As I said, you are greatly underestimating. In addition, these kids are having great social life. It all goes down to time management.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Time management and personality. Some young people thrive on extremely busy lives, but others do not. Some people simply don’t want to have this much structure in their lives or to spread themselves so thinly.</p>
<p>For this group of people, the ECs decrease as soon as they are not needed to impress admissions officers, and one major is usually plenty. I know quite a few young people like this, and most of them ended up in good jobs or graduate programs after college.</p>
<p>"For this group of people, the ECs decrease as soon as they are not needed to impress admissions officers, and one major is usually plenty. "</p>
<p>-Another underestimation. Nope, still continues in Grad. / Med. School. And again, D. is not the only one. There is plenty offerred for all of them outside of academics, and they get in, becasue (according to my D., at least), they miss their Spanish, they miss tutoring others, they miss involvement with music and many other things. Believe me, Grad. level is much much more than UG, but people seem not to be able to focus on one thing, they need variety, they do it for themselves, they get satisfaction from it. There is nobody to impress, it is not on their ming at all. My own D. was at state UG. her pre-med friends did not need to impress anybody to get there.</p>
<p>From my observations, the “serious” EC’s at the local high school each required 20 hours a week, at a minimum. Students were in school for 40 hours a week, and EC time was all on top of that. Homework for AP classes took an additional 10 hours a week, typically, and it the time could not be cut down by being gifted (except, perhaps, in mathematics, where it still took quite a while to write out the solutions to the problems, even if a student “got” it immediately). So, 4 EC’s, 4 AP’s, and school would account for
160 hours a week, if my arithmetic is correct. The last time I worked it out, there were 168 hours in a week. No amount of time management is going to enable students to sleep for 8 hours a week, total.</p>
<p>bajamm’s daughter was lucky in that show choir was a serious EC (in context), but probably only took 8 hours a week, rather than 20. It depends a lot on the adult who is running the “show.” Also, I think there are schools with less neurotic AP teachers, who are not pushing for all 5’s (to the point of overkill).</p>
<p>However, when a student elsewhere can’t accomplish the sheer number of EC’s, it is not necessarily because the student lacks energy!</p>
<p>[Another underestimation]</p>
<p>Not an underestimation, MiamiDAP, just an acknowledgment that people are different. </p>
<p>There are some people, like your daughter, who want to have a wide variety of activities in their lives and don’t find the time that they take up to be a burden. There are others who have different views.</p>
<p>Again, just my son’s anecdotal experience. During high school soccer season, almost impossible to take part in another EC that would have involved a meaningful commitment of time. With varying game and practice times, almost impossible to schedule anything else. Away games often 5 plus hour ventures with travel time. Game schedule changes based on weather and other factors, coach changed practice times based on weather and other factors with virtually no notice. Very clear that soccer was first priority, no option to miss games or practice except for an academic commitment. Certainly, there were kids that did not make this commitment–I remember a kid that missed a few games one year for band commitments–but really without exception they became sort of “hangers on,” never really contributed much to the team or got any playing time. It always felt like the kids that did more than one significant EC were never quite in good standing with anyone, because they never fully committed to anything, just spread too thin. The kid who missed the games because of band commitments always seemed to be in trouble with the soccer coach AND the band director, because he missed soccer games and practices because of band and band commitments because of soccer. Son played club soccer in Winter and Spring–in our area, virtually all of the best players play year around. Again, his club made clear that it was first priority after academics. Many weekends wiped out by away tournaments and games. Because there was not practice every day during the week, he was able to do other things (Model UN, a service club, Spanish Club), but even in Winter and Spring a major commitment that would interfere with soccer really was not feasible.</p>
<p>"There are some people, like your daughter, who want to have a wide variety of activities in their lives and don’t find the time that they take up to be a burden. There are others who have different views. "</p>
<p>-Yes, agree 100%. But the question was about number of ECs. My answer is still it depends where you are applying. Fro some programs having just a sport as time consuming as it is, is just simply not enough. And there are other places that did not care about any ECs. Personality or time management skill will be irrelevant. People who meet criteria will be in, others will not make it. I am not talking about Model UN, Service Club…those things frankly my D. did not even mention. I am talking about serious involvements like sport (club and Varsity, practice up to 6 times/week), music instrument with daily practice, HS newspaper editor, volunteering, summer job, some might take 20+ hrs/week (sport), others less…</p>
<p>One of the most frustrating things about the college admissions process is that applicants are not told why they were rejected.</p>
<p>I wonder whether there may be instances when applicants believe that they were rejected because they didn’t have enough ECs, when in actuality they were not chosen for another reason. </p>
<p>Of course, it is well known that high school students are expected to do other things in addition to simply going to school, and that admissions committees are impressed by substantial leadership roles and/or significant achievements in an EC. But I wonder whether students sometimes get a little carried away with the quantity of their ECs, to the detriment of their academic work, sleep, and personal relationships, because they feel that this is necessary for college admission. Perhaps it is not as necessary as they may think.</p>