<p>I am a senior at a competitive high school in New Jersey. I have a 3.96 GPA (unweighted) and scored 2230 on my SAT.</p>
<p>My extracurriculars are the Math Club, Science Club and I am a cellist in the school band which has won numerous awards.</p>
<p>In order to look "different" I went out for the football team this year. Our team has a "no cut" policy. We have about 90 kids on the team and the coach doesn't even know my name. I haven't played in any games this season and the season is almost over. </p>
<p>I know football helps a lot of students get into Ivy League schools. Do you think this strategy will help me? I applied ED to Cornell. I'll be honest, the only reason I went out for the team was so it would help me get into Cornell. I don't even like football or the kids on the team.</p>
<p>Joining ANY club senior year looks kind of suspicious. I think the AD Coms will probably see right through this and it won't help you. Good way to waste time with all the practices and stuff like that though.</p>
<p>I need to differentiate myself. A lot of students from of my ethnicity have the same kind of grades and extracurriculars so I wanted to do something that no one else was doing. </p>
<p>You would have differentiated yourself had you joined freshman year and shown some sort of passion in it, rather than joined your senior year and DONE nothing. You wasted time you could have been doing something you were truly passionate about.</p>
<p>Stop thinking about your ethnicity. It is not the only thing that defines you.</p>
<p>Sports is a big deal if you are a recruited athlete. That is a category of its own in many schools, including the ivies. But you don't just go on the team. Being a recruited athlete is a lot of work. THose students have often spent many years getting their sports skills up to where they are competitive college athletes. </p>
<p>Sports can also be a good EC if you show leadership, dedication, for it. My son is not a college level athlete, but he played 3 sports each year, all 4 years. It was a major part of his school participation. In looking at his app, admissions could see someone who is likely to use the sports facilities actively. It gives another dimension to his profile. Going out for a sport one time is not going to have a big impact unless there is a story to go with it.</p>
<p>I think football discriminates against Asians. There aren't many Asian students who play football in our league. That was the subject of my essay.</p>
<p>Signing up to play football senior year, a sport you don't even like, will not differentiate yourself from any other applicants. If you had played starting in 9th grade, or even better, in youth leagues then it would differentiate yourself from other applicants. Football is not a "club" that you can just join whenever you want, it takes years and years to get the correct techniques. I've played since sixth grade and I can tell the people from my school who are doing it to "get into college," and to be honest, I would respect them much more if they just quit and did something they're interested in and are good at.
I'm Asian and I can truthfully say that there is no prejudice/discrimination against Asians in contact sports. If you're good and work hard, then the coaches will let you play, but if you don't take time to work hard, then why should the coaches take time to help you? If you wrote about achieving in a sport that is underrepresented by your ethnicity, then that's a good topic, but writing about the coaches discriminating against you cause of your race is just bogus.</p>