Today we’re going to start a series talking about specific student spikes. As many readers know, the building of a spike is something I talk about a lot in my Hopeless to Harvard admissions guide.
Building a spike is critical to standing out in Ivy League admissions. Its critical to focusing your energies in your interests on a specific area and not becoming too scattered and trying to do too much.
In those scenarios, you always end up not doing anything very well. As I always like to say, admissions committees want well-rounded student bodies but would rather have a diverse collection of students with different strengths.
Today’s spike will be the student athlete.
As I mentioned earlier in an article about Stanford, some of the top universities really prefer students who show athletic prowess and success beyond classroom learning. Stanford and Princeton are the most prominent examples of this.
To be a student athlete, my personal take is that you should play at least two sports – two varsity sports – well enough to be either regional or state quality.
This means either receiving specific honors or playing on a team that competes for the state championship, something like that. One thing you want to keep in mind though is that for student athletes, unless you’re of a Division II athletic scholarship caliber or higher, it can’t be your only spike.
That’s important!
But I can tell you how to make the athletic spike strong enough that you’ll have as good a chance as anybody else as good a chance as any other two sport star of getting into Harvard.
The first criterion that you must demonstrate is leadership.
People naturally associate athletics with leadership, but most athletes are not good at marketing themselves as leaders!
So how do you demonstrate leadership as a tennis player? How do you demonstrate leadership as an offensive lineman on your high school football team? Or as the starting catcher on the baseball team?
It’s simple: you must be captain or co-captain of your team. This is non-negotiable. This is something that you simply have to prepare for - you have to run for it, you have to want it.
To become captain of your sports team usually takes a few qualities:
-You must be liked by most of the other people on the team
-You must be one of the hardest working people on the team
-You must have a strong relationship with the coach
None of these characteristics are beyond your control. Regardless of how talented you are, you should be able to do that well.
So the first criteria is to be captain of your sports team in high school
The second criteria is something that is a little unexpected but equally important, which is to demonstrate community involvement, volunteer work, community service.
As an athlete, you naturally have a higher profile in your community and your neighborhood. Most admissions committees feel that volunteer work should be a natural component of sports teams in giving back to the people who support them.
As I say over and over again in my admissions guide, volunteer work does not mean putting in 200 hours at the soup kitchen or 300 hours at the help desk of your local hospital.
You really want to think about where your strengths and your experiences can contribute the most to community service.
Let’s give an example. If you’re a member of the wrestling team, a great way to contribute in community service is to host wrestling tournaments for local elementary schools. Another thing you can do is to provide free lessons to underprivileged city kids.
You can also go around to local schools and talk about drug education, study skills, and how to be successful. Kids will look up to you and it will look extremely good on your Ivy League application.
It is absolutely key that whatever sport you’re involved in, you really think about how you can take those skills and really contribute to your community
The third criterion is that you must not make your Common Application one-dimensional.
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve read applications from varsity football players or varsity basketball players where at least two of the required essays are about challenging moments in sports games.
It’s great if it was a central part of your life and it’s great if competition and hard work taught you many useful skills, but by focusing too much on one aspect of your high school experience you become a very one-dimensional Ivy League candidate.
Unless you’re a scholarship caliber athlete, that just won’t be enough of a reason to admit you to Stanford or Princeton.
It’s okay to talk about a tough game, a tough loss, a high pressure moment where you had to deliver in a competition, but at most I would make it only one story in your Common Application. The others I would focus on other aspects of your experiences whether that’s extracurriculars, classes, summer experiences, even role models, although in this case I would avoid athletic role models!
Just to wrap up our tour here, as a student athlete who’s building a spike, I would focus on three things: demonstrate leadership, get involved in your community in ways that relate directly to your sport, and make sure that your application paints a picture of you that is not one-dimensional.
By doing these things you greatly enhance your chances of getting into Ivy League schools as a sports star.
Just one last thing to remember if you’re not a scholarship caliber athlete - the athletic spike by itself will not be enough!
I would continue to focus on doing well in academics and also think about other areas and other passions that you can build upon. Good luck.
Applying to Ivy League schools? Learn how average students can get into Harvard.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey is there any chance you could talk about a music spike and a little more about international students as I am from Australia and I am really interested in applying for an Ivy Legue.
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I too am interested in hearing about the music spike. But what if one has multiple spikes? Does that make him or her seem too well rounded? What is the best way to portray these spikes?
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