So recently when filling out college apps I have been feeling worse and worse about my extracurricular activities, as I don’t have much. My main activity is swimming, and I have done that for 25 hours per week since I turned 13, getting up at 4:20 a.m. for practice and getting home around 7:30 p.m. . When I get home I immediately go to home work and try to salvage out 5-6 hours of sleep with my course load. I have had a lot of success with swimming and I am a nationally ranked swimmer who is getting recruited, but the schools I am looking at are D-3 as they have the best education for what I want, so there is less pull to get me in. Due to my swimming I do not have a lot of free time, and on weekends I decompress by playing beach volleyball, surfing, doing yoga, and playing video games. My only community service was in freshman year when I volunteered on weekends at my local library helping them arrange books and put things back in their place. So recently there was a a question on an app about how I have helped to improve my people in my community for humankind, and to be honest I was stumped. I wrote a response about improving my friends and this is when it hit me that my application may be weak. I have a 2090 sat(760 math, 680 critical writing, and 650 writing), 800 math 2, and 780 chemistry subjects tests with an unweighted 3.93 GPA. I am talking to schools like MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Cal Tech, and I have talked to the coaches to get letters of rec, but I am still extremely scared at my lack of interactions outside of sports and school, which basically make up my life. So will I be crippled in the admissions process for this? And yes, I know that a letter of rec in D-3 is absolutely no guarantee, though I’ve been told I’m at the top of the recruiting list for what its worth, I am not assuming by any means that a letter of rec will get me in.
Many schools prefer to see a passion. Depth is good. Make sure they know how many hours you dedicated to swimming and any associated honors, rankings, awards, etc. You just need to know how to package yourself. Also, there may be some good essay ideas from swimming. Not a broad essay about swimming, but moments with details that really tell a story about you, show how you think, etc.
You may also want to post this question on the forum for athletic recruits and see how others in your situation have handled this. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/athletic-recruits/
Thanks for your thoughts @twicearound , and I do plan on applying life changing moments that I have had in the sport to my essays/writing supplements.
@Corinthian Thanks, I’ll check it out
If you are a nationally ranked swimmer, your lack of interactions outside of swimming will almost assuredly not affect your application negatively. I applaud you for thinking about your life and about ways you have or have not helped your community or humankind. You are in the same boat with many others - athletes in particular. Your success in swimming does help to show that you most likely have characteristics that many schools are looking for.
At MIT, as you know, getting on the list of recruited swimmers is far from a guarantee of admission. I believe the better swimmer you are, the better chance you have though. Still MIT Admissions will only accept you if they feel you can do the work and they hold the ultimate power. CalTech is similar although the coach has even less of a say. I’m not sure about Carnegie Mellon, but I think a nationally ranked swimmer with your stats would stand a very good chance.
Have you ever thought of applying to Harvey Mudd? It’s a much smaller school of course, but it is on similar footing in the engineering arena as the other schools you are interested in. At the same time getting recruited to swim at Claremont McKenna, Mudd, Scripps (CMS) may give you a bigger boost. The coach at CMS is terrific and the Claremont Consortium is hard to beat. Good luck to you.
Sure there are always one or two wonder kids who manage to be Olympic level at their event, have a 4.0 in AP classes and volunteer every week at one cause or another but the rest of the athletes in the world who want to compete in college, are in the same situation as you. You wouldn’t be at the level you were if you didn’t commit everything to your sport. So learn the athletic recruiting process to make the system work for you at the schools you are interested in.
Read through some of the other posts in the athletic recruiting forum. You don’t say at what level you are being recruited. For D3, that could be anything from phone calls from the coach, to invites to an “Athlete Day” from a recruiting coordinator, to a form letter in the mail.
Contact the coaches of the schools you are interested in and see what help with admissions if any, they can give you. Help with admissions, even for D3 schools varies significantly. D3 may not give athletic scholarships but if the team is in need of your skills, the coach may be able to help you get in. You are not asking the college coach for a letter of recommendation, you get those from your HS or club coach. What you need to find out from the college coach is if they have any “slots” for admissions or can exert any influence at all.
Contact them directly via email, even if they cannot help specifically, many schools have a code to give you or can route your app through the athletic department. What you don’t want to have happen is your application goes into the larger pool without any mention or official designation of your being recruited.
@GrudeMonk thanks for your advice and I am looking at a school like Harvey Mudd.
@OnTrack2013 I would hold the school record at MIT and Caltech for my events, so I have been invited on visits and have had calls from all 3 schools. I can swim d-1 easily at an okay school, I just prefer these schools as they are very strong in engineering and at the end of the day my education is the most important thing to me.
You are in a strong position to simply come out and ask the coach point blank if he can and/or will get you in. I don’t know about MIT, but at many schools the coach may advise you to apply ED or EA if you want them to support you.
Either way, coach-speak is notoriously vague, so with your stats, I would advise you just ask them to define exactly what they will do for you.
@OnTrack2013 nailed it. For D3 you’ll have to do this via the ED route, but the coach should be able to tell you point blank whether he’s going to get you in or not. Of course there are no guarantees, but a coach who can’t deliver on a promise like this will have his reputation trashed among the better club team swim coaches across the country.
And as the parent of a swimmer, congrats on your accomplishments. Although you’re undoubtedly blessed with natural ability, no one swims that fast without a lot of early mornings/late afternoons, hard work, discipline, and assiduous attention to stroke and underwater technique. You are to be commended.
@OnTrack2013 and @AsleepAtTheWheel I talked to the coach and she said I have a “good chance” of getting in and that I am among the top of the recruiting list as I’m by far the best at my event among the recruits(since I’m a distance swimmer, I can’t do relays so I can’t really be a schools top recruit) so I’m going to do early action and hopefully I’ll get in. I just get freaked out by all of the horror stories I hear of kids not getting in, though swimming is pretty cut and dry as results are quantitative.