Maybe sounds like an overgeneralization to some, but that’s the takeaway I’ve gotten from my kids’ experience in the admissions process this year.
I have twin boys, both good students who took essentially the same core classes, lots of APs, close GPAs, both got National Merit Commended, both with SATs in the high 1400s.
One son, I’ll call him Sports Son, his main extracurricular activity is sports, namely basketball and soccer. He was a starter on both teams, captain of the soccer team this year, basketball team went to State the last two years. He is also secretary of the French club and in a club focused on community service.
The other son, I’ll call him Debate Son, he is president of the Speech and Debate Team, and News Editor on the school newspaper. Consistently places at 1 or 2 events at almost every speech tournament he goes to, qualified for state speech tournament every year except freshman year, got to semifinals last year, qualified for national tournament last year.
Both sons applied to UT Austin business school, and SMU. Sports Son also applied to UC Irvine as a reach school, and Arkansas. Debate Son also applied to George Washington.
Sports Son got into UT, but not the business school, and to SMU and Arkansas, not accepted at other schools. Debate Son was accepted at UT and SMU already, hasn’t heard back from GW yet (he applied regular decison). SMU offered both sons merit scholarships, but Debate Son’s is significantly higher than Sports Son’s. This is causing a little bit of friction between the two, especially as Sports Son, who wants to major in business, convinced Debate Son to apply to business school at UT even though Debate Son doesn’t really want to major in business, on the rationale that if you get into business school you can always change to a non-business major, but not the other way.
The only real difference between my two boys is the extracurriculars. I remember back when the boys were starting middle school I attended a talk with two college admissions consultants, basically a sales pitch for their services, but a lot of good general information, too, and one thing I really remember them stressing was that unless your child is likely to be recruited as a D-I athlete, being on a sports team, or drill team or cheerleader is not going to do much for their chances of getting into college, and if the sports commitment is making the difference between getting a B+ and an A-, they’re better off dropping the sports and focusing on grades. Because Sports Son overall was getting good grades, I didn’t really think about this advice when he was in high school, but now I’m kicking myself. I see how the heavy time commitment in sports precluded him participating in another, more academically focused activities that would have better prepared him for college - or at least for college applications.
I feel like sports coaches, and sports culture in general, sell kids a bill of goods. They make it sound like sports is the only way that kids can learn teamwork and leadership, but frankly I see that Debate Son had way more opportunity to learn real leadership and teamwork in his extracurricular activities. Everything in sports is so coach-driven, even the team captains are just running the coach’s plays, and everything is regimented by the coaches, you go to the practices that the coach sets, and do what the coach dictates at practice. And ultimately, you’re just a cog in the team. You can be a talented player, and be unlucky to be on a team that is overall not that good, or you can luck out and be a middle-of-the-road player on a team that has enough better players that you can ride their coattails to a state championship. And ultimately the skills you learn have nothing to do with succeeding in college.
Debate Son, on the other hand, sank or swam on his own talents and work. His individual wins in speech and debate competitions directly show that, no matter how anyone else on his team did in their events. His success in debate didn’t come from just attending regular practices and doing what his judge said, he researched and wrote and practiced his cases and speeches on his own time and initiative. I also saw how this made him so much better a researcher and writer, and better informed about the world than his brother. Ditto for his work on the newspaper. And this fall he was tournament director when his school hosted many schools from around the state to compete. The speech coach was there for backup if something went wrong, but he led a team that ran a two day tournament with multiple events running from prelims to quarters to semifinals to finals, they were responsible for organizing that, making sure it ran on time, that rooms and judges were assigned, managed volunteers, made sure results were correctly tabulated, that showed a lot more leadership and teamwork that is more like what people have to do in their careers than anything being a sports team captain can do.
Oh, I know how people will say that kids need to be well-rounded, not just be academically/intellectually minded, but develop a lifelong love of physical activity for their health, etc., and I agree - but do youth sports as we do them here in America really accomplish this? It seems like from a very young age, even at the peewee level, kids who don’t “show potential” are winnowed out of sports and relegated to being at best, lifelong spectators, by coaches and youth sports leagues more concerned with winning than giving equal playing time to encourage lifelong participation regardless of ability. But I digress. Ultimately given the low ROI of high school sports in terms of college/life skills prep and college resume for the high amount of time requirement, that precludes participation in more useful extracurriculars, I am surprised that so many parents who want their kids to get into competitive schools still also encourage them to be involved in athletics.