> sports practice until 5:00. Gotta have that activity on your college application, not counting other volunteering and clubs in the open spaces.
Still baffles me why is that even a thing that's considered at the colleges. I thought it was just a relic of Soviet past but no, apparently it exists in the US and other first world countries as well for some strange reason.
It really isn't. I've never played formalized sports in my life and had no problem getting into multiple universities (yes, a few decades ago but I doubt if society has become more sports driven; on the contrary people often say that due to the tech boom we now live in an era where if anything, unsporty nerds have too much power)
A few decades ago is a millennium in college admissions for top schools. I went to a top 20 university. My kid, who was a way better hs student than I was and state ranked in music with a ISEF engineering award couldn’t get into any of his top 10 schools. Got waitlisted as a dual legacy from my university and ultimately settled for a top 35 school.
It was during COVID, when testing didn’t happen and schools had to rely on gut feel and high school reputation, so that may have played a role too.
He’s started his career now and wondering what to do with all his free time after eight years of living on six hours of sleep or less.
> Got waitlisted as a dual legacy from my university and ultimately settled for a top 35 school.
Oh how tragic!
Went to a very average school - well below 35 - and a top grad school. Definitely benefited from not going to a top school for undergrad. Some details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49293077
(Been planning for years to write a much more detailed blog post about this. Maybe one day...)
I have heard that it began to try to keep certain ethnic groups out of university and continued because sports bring in scholarship and (for D1 schools) sponsor money.
Not just ethnic groups. Schools mostly can't say "we only want rich people" but they definitely want to prefer students who will contribute to the donation revenue stream either themselves or through their parents. Signals like "doesn't have a job to take up their time in high school" and "parents can afford (and have the free time to enable) expensive, time-consuming activities" are really good proxies for that.
Yes, absolutely. The kids who can assemble a resume of primo extra-ciriculars and volunteer experience are the ones from wealthy and well-connected families. Even the kids who can write the best essays about their troubled upbringings are the ones with access to lots of coaching lol. If they just have to be smart and show up for their government mandated 7 hours of classes, the poor kids can keep up. They can't keep up with another 5 hours of homework and resume-sweeteners every day.
I knew someone who got into a good school on a crew (rowing) scholarship. I remember thinking "wait doesn't almost everyone who rows crew go to a wealthy private school?"
It's pretty reasonable IMO. Shows the person can commit to something, can work hard, is competitive, likely social. Sports are also very humbling because natural differences in ability are very obvious, and chances are there is someone more gifted than you.
I think participating in a fairly competitive sports league tells you more than most other activities you can do.
Only in a world where people act logically and also honestly...
The college may have an ulterior motive, as others in this discussion say: to select for scions of richer families and increase the likelihood of gaining an alumn that they can siphon some money from. If someone spends their afternoon playing polo, it is a good signal of riches to be inherited.
One thing that always surprises me during American conversations on wealth and greed is how the academic sector somehow gets a moral pass, even though it is quite obviously geared towards milking young people for every penny.
A sound mind in a sound body. Everything you do is improved if you're physically active.
I think sports are just easy to categorize when you're trying to figure out what some kid's been up to. Admissions gets to check a box instead of reading essays.
> You have 100 places on the course next year. You have 10,000 applications with straight A's. You need to put ~9,000 in the bin.
This is the situation for less than 10% of universities in the US. Likely a lot less than 5%.
I wish I could find the source (a university president), but over 70% of public universities simply set a bar, and whoever meets the bar is admitted. There's no notion of "limited seats".
I just checked 3 decent state universities near me. Admission rates are 76, 77 and 87%.
One of them has a 75th percentile SAT score of 1230. 25th percentile is in the 900's. Another's range is from mid 1100's to 1400.
I've worked in multiple top tech companies. I know plenty of alumni from these 3 universities working there - with several doing quite well (and very technically competent). Most of them did not even go to grad school, so it's not as if an advanced degree from a good name place helped them.
This idea that you need to go to a top school to get good salaries and careers is something only people who live in a bubble believe. It's true for law school, and not that true for business school, and really not true for engineering.
If I had to summarize my experience: Motivated students going to very average schools for engineering do quite well. Average students who go to top engineering schools almost always change their career path at some point because they don't grow well in a technical career. Top schools don't provide a magical recipe.
(OK, as a footnote, having gone to both a low ranked and a top 10 school, the one thing I will admit is better in a top 10 school is that networking is easier - which I'm sure does help in one's career).
Still baffles me why is that even a thing that's considered at the colleges. I thought it was just a relic of Soviet past but no, apparently it exists in the US and other first world countries as well for some strange reason.