Sports/Activities

This is another grey area for many students and parents. How many activities or sports should I participate?

My answer is simple – Focus on having fun AND NOT on college admissions.

It is important for the child to really enjoy the activities. Doing too many activities will lead to burnout and impact grades. In order to maintain well rounded college application, it is important to show a balance. For example, if you participate in 5 different sports in school, and end up with a GPA of 2.0, it doesn’t help. Instead if your GPA is 3.5 and you participated in 2 sports, it is a much better case from college application point of view.

With that said, if you are looking for my recommendation, I suggest 2 sports in school and 1 out of school activity like martial arts, dance, painting, piano...

Based on my experience with my daughter, I felt the total of 3 activities gives her a good balance of participating in her choice of sports/activities and gives her sufficient time for school work as well as volunteering.