Hello, I am currently a junior and I am really thinking of quitting the soccer team. It’s a major time commitment and I do not enjoy playing that much anymore (too much stress and not enough fun). However, I will stick with the team if it means I have a better chance of getting into my choice schools. If I don’t quit, I will have lettered all four years of playing. In other areas of my application, I have a 4.0 unweighted GPA, take all available honors and ap classes, have a 35 ACT, am the class treasurer, and have over 100 hours working as a board member for a nonprofit dog training organization. However, I feel that quitting soccer will take away one of my only impressive extracurricular activities. If I quit soccer, will I be unlikely to get accepted into my choice schools? I’m thinking about Case Western Reserve, Carnegie Mellon, UPenn, Notre Dame, or maybe any other different Ivy/Top Tier school. Please offer me advice. Thanks!
Unless you are a recruited athlete (or perhaps if you will be captain) I don’t think it is a huge deal. You have other strong activities. If you want to show a continued commitment to soccer maybe you can find a lower key league to play in, help coach a kids soccer team or something along those lines – but I don’t think it is necessary.
sorry to say, but team member is not that impressive. Being named team captain, being voted all-league, named to a state soccer team, being a recruited soccer player, those are impressive things. Belonging to a team shows a certain degree of committment, to be sure, and at schools that don’t put a lot of emphasis on ECs it is fine but at the level where they care a lot about ECs (certainly for UPenn, you can look up what the others say in their Common Data Set) being a team member is not a strong EC.
@mikemac would you say my work with the dog training organization is impressive?
Don’t stay a part of the team unless you really want to. By staying on the team, you’ll only make yourself more stressed and miserable. If you quit soccer, that will not make a difference as to whether you’ll get accepted. Like everyone else said, unless you plan on playing soccer in college, or are a team captain, then soccer is just another extracurricular on your list. I would focus on the extracurriculars that you already have (and enjoy). You look like a competitive applicant based on the rest of the information. Dropping soccer won’t harm your chances at all.
@LionKing2398 Thanks, I may or may not be a captain next year. There are 9 players in my grade and 2 captains are chosen, and we do not find out captains until the week before the first game. I think it would be better to find a different activity I enjoy.
Quit if you are not fully committed. I quit soccer for my upcoming senior year and I don’t look back on my decision at all. Although it is a good extracurricular, it also takes a lot of time up that I could better use studying and getting better grades.