My grades and SAT Scores are decent, Top 3% of my class and 2230 on my SATs. What I believe ruined me was taking up volleyball from freshman year to senior year.
As many of you might know, volleyball is a spring sport, which usually takes place around March - May. What many people don’t know is that many sports have a pre-season, where people practice and workout, which starts around January. Volleyball took up so much of my time. Everyday, I would have to stay after-school to practice, workout, or go to the game. This took up more than 200+ hours of my time. Despite being part of the clubs that I joined in the Fall, I eventually could not stay committed to them. One meeting after another, I missed everyone of them. Sure, I could miss volleyball practice to go to a club meeting, but if I did, I would eventually get cut from the team. At the time, volleyball meant so much to me cause I genuinely enjoyed playing the sport. The rules were if you miss a practice before a game, you couldn’t play. Eventually, if you missed more than X amount of practices, you were cut from the team. The worse thing that happen was when I would have Saturday practice. Usually, during the weekend mornings, I would work at a restaurant. But when I had to practice, I ended up taking the entire day off because volleyball was so physically taxing.
In the grand scheme, volleyball is just one extracurricular activity. I wish I had joined other clubs instead of playing a sport, because I would be considered a well-rounded person by admission officers. Moreover, volleyball only gave me one chance for leadership, which was captain. Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of the those incredibly skilled players who were captain or made national rankings; I just enjoyed playing the sport. I believe that if I joined other clubs, I would have more opportunities for leadership: treasurer, co-president, founder, secretary, etc. All in all, I sacrificed too much time doing one thing that I loved, when instead, I should have taken up other opportunities that would help me define who I am to a college. As college decisions come along and I get rejected from each the Ivy League schools, it’ll hurt knowing that I could have spent my time more wisely.
You should always do activities you like and that give you something AT THE TIME, not because they are going to get you into college or look good on a resume. My daughter played a sport because she loved it. I paid for camps and club teams and tournaments because she enjoyed it at the time. I really didn’t think she was going to play in college, but it turns out she is and it is a very nice bonus. Only two kids on her entire team are playing in college, but they all put in the time and had a great time. My daughter will be a captain this year, but it wasn’t on her applications because, like yours, hers is a spring sport and doesn’t really count for college admissions past junior year.
Please don’t look back and think you wasted 200 hours. Did you like it at the time? Did it teach you about team work and commitment? Did you volunteer any time helping younger players learn the sport?
I loved playing it. The problem was that it occupied so much of my time, I never really got to explore other activities or other clubs. They say high school is a great time to explore your interests and to see what you would like to major in. Obviously, I can’t major in volleyball, and to this day, I’m still undecided.
You don’t need amazing extracurriculars if your essays and scores and grades are good. The captain of the track team in my school was in track and nothing else… She’s now happily in Yale.
Colleges look for quality not quantity in extracurriculars. You have clearly shown that you are extremely dedicated to volleyball, and that dedication is what counts, not the number of clubs you’re in.
walking: you may get rejected from Ivy schools but it won’t be because you’re not well-rounded. It’s absurd to think that the combination of your academic and athletic achievement (and your perceived lack of ECs) will hurt you. Top college admissions see through the resume padding posers daily. You wish you’d dropped your commmitment VB and the team to be the officer of some impressive titled group but, in reality, only organized a weekend volunteer workday and sold some cookies as a fundraiser?
Leadership is not solely demonstrated in your groups. If you’re a person of impact, that will have been shown in the classroom and your teacher recs.
You’ve done fine. Have no regrets. Believe me, if you were a college grad applying for a job, I’d pick your resume over the scattered kid who wanted to paste as many fluff clubs on his resume any day of the week.
To be honest I think only a few people are “quirky” when so many students are getting 2300+ SATs, 3.8+ unweighted GPAs, a million leadership positions and awards, 5000+community service hours, etc.
I’m exaggerating of course, but my point still stands.
My oldest did a spring sport, track, and every year we had to consider the schedule of final and district meets intermixed with AP exam prep and exams. I remember driving him 3 hours for a weekend meet, and driving him back the same night, because he couldn’t afford to spend the whole weekend when he had 4 AP exams to study for. I agree with what you are saying, though perhaps not for the same reasons. A fall or winter sport simply won’t cause the same problems. In fact, a fall sport is great because you do some of the work over the summer, freshman year you meet kids right away at school, or even before school starts in lots of cases. And the season is half over before your classes even start getting serious. If you get behind, you still have December and January to catch up and improve your grade. Now my youngest is interested in track, and I am trying not to let him get so interested that he wants to do it in HS, at least not after freshman year.