| Rh, I think you need to plead ignorance on this one. First of all, having only one serious activity is not a bad thing. For someone to be 20th in the country in a demanding, skilled sport (or in any sport) requires a tremendous amount of single-minded devotion that, combined with schoolwork, leaves little time for anything. Even more critical, it is not just "an EC;" It is a varsity sport at many of the top universities in the country (6 of the 8 Ivies, Stanford, Northwestern, Duke, Hopkins, Tufts and yes, MIT) and all of these schools recruit their athletes. Being in the top 20, I would think, should make you highly recruitable at least at some of those schools - and if you're a good enough student to even consider MIT, then it's likely that you would be competitive - even moreso as a recruited athlete - an all of the others. For better or worse, particularly in the Ivy League, being an athletic recruit puts you in a highly favorable position for admission (though less for a fencer than say, for a football player) |