Advice on extra-curriculars

soxmom
Tue, 09 Apr 2013 11:41:31 +0000

In reviewing applications, how do you think schools view an applicant’s involvement with an EC that the school doesn’t offer? Let’s say your child has been very involved with a sport like gymnastics, riding, or martial arts over the years. It’s been a major commitment by the child, but when they get to high school, they don’t intend to continue with it and would instead plan on doing whatever activities/sports are offered by the BS. Perhaps naively, I would think that a school would still view this as a positive on the application – here’s something that a kid had an obvious passion for, spent a lot of time on, and presumably learned some good life lessons from. But I could imagine that it could actually be a negative either because the school might (a) worry that your child won’t actually attend if admitted because the school doesn’t offer that activity, or (b) prefer to take kids whose ECs have been focused on things the school does have (like a mainstream team sport).

I’m not saying I’m going to tell my daughter to quit gymnastics tomorrow and start playing soccer instead, but I am starting to wonder if 5 years of gymnastics is going something that helps her on her application or not. (I know that sometimes kids make arrangements to continue with something that school doesn’t offer – like stabling a horse at a nearby barn – but that’s not what I’m talking about here.)