Starting kids when they’re old enough to articulate an interest is so different than starting the heavy activity load at 2 or 3.
“Add that to the time demands in those sports and grades can suffer too. When you see a 3.8 or 3.9 and a 35 ACT in an athlete that is one exceptional kid.”
I think it’s underestimated how much of a difference it makes in admissions to spend 20-30 hours a week on any EC, while still getting a 4.0 GPA/35 ACT. The US testing system is really not very well designed to identify long tail intellectual ability. So achieving a high GPA and test scores, while also spending much of your time on other activities, is an easier way to differentiate the most capable kids. Unfortunately that leads to stress and overload in HS. But the 20-30 hour commitment doesn’t have to involve spending many thousands of dollars per year. And it may or may not provide attractive merit scholarships, depending on the school.
We never construed the main purpose of extracurricular activities to be college admission or preparation.
Instead we considered those activities as chances for the kids to discover their talents and interests, to work in groups and teams, and to be exposed to experiences that they couldn’t easily get at home or through passive consumption of media.
They were exposed to music and dance, athletics, and scientific adventures. As a FAMILY we visited museums, monuments, major cities, the beach, mountains, musical concerts, and sporting events.
Costly? Nothing was budget-busting. For sure, music lessons and instruments cost money. So do sporting equipment and computers. But the payoff came from the kids having discovered some talents and interests they might pursue in later life.
Did we accumulate a mountain of debt? Nah. Neither from all those activities in childhood nor from the costs of college. College costs were certainly high and we had to save a lot of money to cover them, but the costs of “activities” prior to college? These were just the price of child-raising in the modern era. They did not compete with the direct costs of college.
In my opinion, I don’t think it’s super fair that high school teams are using tax dollars to become essentially another arena for players on club teams – if they’re already playing club, they can keep on doing that and let everyone else play on high school teams (certain “club” sports at my HS, like basketball, get way more financial support than non-club sports like track, which basically gets nothing for example). I get that teams want the best players and not every team can be an intermural no-cut sport, but it’s not right imo to reserve the spots exclusively for those already on expensive pay-to-play teams (sometimes just by bias and other times directly stating only those plays will make varsity etc, as previous posters described).
Not all EC are sports. My D has danced since the age of 4, and we have spent a very large amount of money on lessons over the years, without the expectation that she ever be a professional (thank heavens).
However, that was not the EC which attracted attention and got her tapped for her scholarship. It was her leadership activity that did that, and which cost us very little money. It was the wonders she performed as leader of the GSA, as well as other leading other social action.
These are ECs that are not only extremely cheap, but have the added benefit of helping others. These are also extremely common ECs for kids, and ones not mentioned in the stupid article.
Most sports that have high school teams and club teams either do not allow the player to do both (soccer) or the club season doesn’t overlap the high school season (lacrosse). High school for lax is a spring sport, club is a summer thing. Only a few players could make it to college without playing club and high school lax. One is Christian McCaffery who played football, basketball and lacrosse in high school but didn’t play club lax in the summer. Not many like him (except his brothers!)
Glad to hear of parents’ experiences with sports travel.
It’s very common for youth orchestras to include European summer concert tours in their programs - at the parents’ expense on top of tuition for the orchestra itself, cost of tickets for parents and family at attend the home concerts, etc, etc. I put my foot down. My kids did not audition for youth orchestras that considered the foreign tours mandatory to be in the program. (Fast forward to conservatory days when the same kids won fellowships to foreign based summer festivals and travel grants to get there. They didn’t miss anything having skipped the high school versions.)
Our area public schools have overnight travel programs that the parents foot the bill for. I put my foot down on those experiences also which did not make me a popular mom with our local schools.
Many parents of orchestra kids share your sentiments on this issue of mandatory international travels. Everyone in my boy’s youth orchestra knew that there’s an international tour every other year, so many of them skip auditioning the year of the tour. What I found objectionable was that the required fees were covering all the expenses for the music director and the association director, as well. Every two years, they get a free trip to any places around the globe that they wanted to travel to and experience. Sure, these folks don’t make a good living on their salaries, but this isn’t the way to manage their vacation expenses. Many of the parents couldn’t afford $6,000 every two years, and I gave the association a piece of my mind about this.
^^^^ Yup!!
Wondering, does travel for sports teams (school EC or travel teams going out of the region) work the same way? Coaches are paid for by parents?
@TiggerDad I hear about this all the time. This is why some of these activities are so expensive…it’s these European tours…I get that going to Europe is fun, but come on!
If people put their kids in sports so their kids won’t play video games all day…I think the real problem is why is the kid allowed to play video games all day? My son had plenty of free time and was not overscheduled and he wasn’t allowed to sit around playing video games all day, same with watching tv. We encouraged our kids to read, help with chores, and do other stuff. Sure, they watched plenty of tv and played plenty of video games, but we always encouraged a balance. Different strokes I guess…
I think as long as the kids are enjoying their activities and aren’t too stressed and aren’t being run ragged, then I think extracurriculars are fine. Also, as long as the family can afford without taking on debt or not saving for retirement, then it’s fine too!
@Momofadult Yes, in D’s club and others that I am familiar with, coach’s travel expenses are included in player fees.
A classmate of my D’s was in a youth choir that did some international trips, but they did fundraising. They also got donations from local businesses, bigwigs, etc.
@ TiggerDad I don’t think I would call navigating an orchestra’s worth of kids and their instruments through an international trip “a vacation.” I do agree, however, that the parents who expect these sorts of opportunities are often tone-deaf to the reasons others might find them too costly.
Typically, there’s an army of financially well off parent-chaperones who eagerly volunteer to pay their way to accompany the orchestra tour so they can be near their own kids throughout the tour, and these folks do the bulk of the work, not the music director and especially not the association director whose expenses are all covered for by the parents. There are many parents who could not have their kids participate in such tours because their income is less than either of these directors. Do these directors care about these families that can’t folk over $6,000 every two years for these trips? Nope. By the way, these international tours take place every two years; the other, alternative years is reserved for domestic tours typically to adjoining states but occasionally to the Carnegie Hall in NYC. I’m just glad that we no longer have anything to do with this orchestra. The first international tour that my son participated in as a freshman in college was all paid for by the university.
@TiggerDad I guess it’s just me, but add in a bunch of parent chaperones and it feels even less like a vacation! 
Two things that strike me as different now, not talked a lot about in this thread.:
I have heard a lot of talk on line and elsewhere that “colleges love multi-sport athletes,” I don’t see the proof of that. Gone are the days that there are the football/basketball/baseball varsity jocks – playing something year round and dominating the school culture. That is probably because of supply and demand. Colleges want the tried and true one-sport kid. So parents invest in the one sport, and kids specialize starting at around 8 years old. The upside, if there is one, is that more kids overall will be playing sports in high school. Just few kids play more than one.
The downside? Repetitive motion injuries. You invest in a sport, your kid is an amazing pitcher at 14. Then he blows out a shoulder. There goes the college scholarship, and it is almost impossible to switch to a new sport. For an athletic kid that can be devastating on multiple levels. I have seen parents and kids go through that, and it is rough. Plus I feel bad for all of the money spent on national travel, personal trainers, etc. But more importantly, that kid who truly loves a sport, and defines herself as being an elite soccer player, can be dealt a very devastating blow at such a young age.
I just wish kids didn’t have to commit to one sport so young. Lots of negative things flow from that. Kids could wait to specialize in high school – once puberty hits and you know whether you have a basketball body or not.
But understandably, parents are caught in an arms race, spending a lot of money trying to get whatever advantage they can for their kids. And there are plenty of businesses making good money off of that parental anxiety. Not knocking people who invest in EC for their kids – heck, we have spent plenty. Just musing about whether there are healthier ways (for kids, families, communities, colleges, and the culture overall).
Question: Is there a correlation between not seeing the point of spending a lot (going into debt) on college and not spending a lot on ECs (kids’ passions) when the kids are younger? Curious if there are people who have spent a lot on the latter but would balk at the cost of an expensive private. No judgments. If people have, I would be interested in hearing how those people assessed the value proposition of ECs for kids generally – when do you know it is worth the money?
@CateCAParent It’s hard to say. Both of my kids did various activities, but they were never doing it to get into college. They weren’t interested in playing a sport in college…for us it was a way to keep them busy and let them have fun trying new things. If they wanted to become a professional violin player or a sports star, we would’ve helped cultivate that as well…
@CateCAParent, people justify all sorts of things but I can see how parents could justify spending money on ECs but not paying more for College A over College B.
- If the EC expenditures are in the low thousands or hundreds every year, at most all EC expenditures added up will equal a year full-pay at a private or less and the cash flow hit isn't that big each year (compared to a 5 figure difference per year of college).
- If you don't pay for many ECs, you don't get whatever it is you're paying for (coaching, teaching, etc.) while a high-acheiving kid can often find colleges with what they deem desirable qualities for less money (than full-pay at a private). Academic talent in this country runs very deep and a ton of colleges offer a lot of resources in the US, not just the very tippy-top.