I’m a senior and currently on my school’s golf team but I’m not enjoying it all that much this year and I’m pretty mediocre at it anyways. I’ve got 4.0 uw, have taken almost all APs my school offers, and all that fun stuff, but my extracurriculars are kinda lacking. These aren’t my only ecs, but I did tennis sophmore year, then golf last year and I’m wondering if quitting will just make me look even more flimsy. I have 5 APs currently, so I’d rather just use the time for hw or participate in more clubs, but if I have to, then I’ll stick it out.
Do what you want to do. It seems silly to do an activity you do not enjoy in an attempt to impress someone else! But try to do at least one activity with depth and passion, even if it is a newly discovered interest this fall.
Quitting anything is fine, but you should replace it with something so that you continue to show commitment to life outside the classroom. If you quit a sport, for example, and replace it with nothing–not even a tougher courseload–then you do risk being perceived as taking an easy senior year.
Dropping a sport is only tougher in that they are such a time sink–if you play a varsity sport, colleges know you are committing anywhere from 15-20 hours per week to the activity. If you drop it and nothing else changes (not even your grades) colleges will assume you just took that time off. Use the time to join a club or two, volunteer, or get a part time job.
@TheGreyKing Yeah, you’ve got a point. I’ve got debate, a couple clubs and another I’m VP of, and tutoring that I know for sure I’ll do again this year. I think I just needed to hear it from someone else, haha. Thanks so much!!
A bad case of tennis elbow is the perfect alibi for quitting tennis. Just sayin. No one questions an injury.
Add some volunteer work. Volunteerism is big brownie points and shows you have good character. Hint: people really like kids and dogs. Do something that helps kids or dogs that could apply in some abstract way to your intended major.
@BooBooBear My grades are as high as they can go right now and, if the last few years are anything to go by, it’ll stay that way! I have a few clubs/activities I was involved in last year that’ll carry over to this one, but there are a couple more that interest me that I’ll definitely check out. Thanks for the advice!
Go ahead and quit if you don’t like it. There will be no effect on your admissions. Why? Because at most schools ECs play a small role in admissions, as you can see from their common data set reports, and you have other ECs so you still get the checkbox. At very selective colleges that DO care a lot about ECs, member of this or that team/club is not the level of EC that makes a difference. So no matter what selectivity you are considering, quitting the team won’t affect your admission chances.
This is one of those HS lunchroom rumors, gotta “give back”. In fact plenty of people get accepted to very selective colleges with absolutely no volunteer work. Colleges don’t prefer one area over another. As the Dean of Admissions at Vanderbilt said
I totally agree. Maybe you can take one interest to a deeper level.
Check out “How to be a High School Superstar” by Cal Newport.
“The basic message of the book is this: Don’t wear yourself out taking as many classes as you can and being involved in every club and sport. Instead, leave yourself enough free time to explore your interests. Cultivate one interest and make it into something special that will make you stand out among the other applicants and get you into the toughest schools, even if your grades and scores aren’t stellar. Newport calls this the “relaxed superstar approach,” and he shows you how to really do this, breaking the process down into three principles, explained and illustrated with real life examples of students who got into top schools: (1) underscheduling—making sure you have copious amounts of free time to pursue interesting things, (2) focusing on one or two pursuits instead of trying to be a “jack of all trades,” and (3) innovation—developing an interesting and important activity or project in your area of interest. This fruit yielded by this strategy, an interesting life and real, meaningful achievements, is sure to help not only with college admissions, but getting a job, starting a business, or whatever your goals.”
Doing golf for one or two years won’t move the needle on any admission decision. Unless you are a recruited athlete a sport counts for no more than any other EC. So if there are other things you’d prefer to spend your time on go for it.
You can get tennis elbow playing golf, too. Or a back injury can derail a golf game. No school really questions a HS kid finding what they like/don’t like. They might question a kid who wrote “two weeks on the golf team”. They want to see that if you made a commitment for a season, you stuck with it. If you write in your essay about how you are looking forward to playing again once you heal, or once you hit winter break, blah blah blah, it turns a lemon into lemonade. Lots of kids write wonderful essays about learning their limits, not to stress themselves out too much, and how they enjoy a few activities more when they aren’t trying to do everything. Schools eat that up.
As you have "dabbled ", consider using an essay or short answer to explain how you explore possible interests and what you learn from that process. While it’s great to find what you like so you can be a superstar, finding what you don’t like is equally important.
