Should I commit to tennis for Ivy Leagues?Answered
Hello, I am looking to absolutely maximize my chances at entering an ivy league institution. Would it be best to commit hard to tennis, and possibly rank high at the state or national level, while losing some commitment to my other extracurriculars? Any advice helps, thank you.
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2 answers
hi! I think that if you are sure that putting this hard commitment into tennis can guarantee you national recognition (or even high state) I would do it. There is something called a tier one extracurricular which Ivy Leagues love to look out for when they are reviewing applications! Make sure your grades are still on top and you still participate somewhat in some other activities. But if you can enjoy and dedicate yourself to tennis and receive a high level of recognition, definitely do it!
If you can't develop enough impressive ECs, then aiming to be a recruited athlete is a good option for you. Keep in mind that you have to stay engaged with tennis, tennis stat boards, tennis camps, and tennis culture and get noticed by all the Ivy recruiters if you stand a chance. So the earlier the better. It's not a matter of just being a good tennis player but you need to get in front of these coaches during workshops, camps, etc, and stay in constant contact with them.
I would highly recommend that you transfer high schools to an elite boarding school like Deerfield or Choate or Exeter or Andover if you want to get maximum coverage. These are all IVY feeder schools and playing varsity sports is an intrinsic part of boarding school culture. One thing that is a common occurrence is that many of the boarding school teams also play against IVY teams for practice or expositions.
For example, I know that Amherst College often has scrimmages against Deerfield Academy since they are only about 20 minutes away from driving distance. Similarly, I would imagine that Choate scrimmages with Yalies since they are only 30 minutes away from Yale. During these practices, the coaches get to know the best recruitable players and start keeping tabs on them as soon as they make the Varsity teams.
Your chances of getting into an IVY go up by a factor of 20 if you attend one of these schools versus trying to get into one from a public high school.
All of them offer extremely generous financial aid as well. So that should never be a factor if you are interested in applying. About 40-50% of the students are on financial aid. Just keep in mind they are very hard to get admitted into with an acceptance rate of between 10%-12% for the most part.
Good luck.
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Thank you so much for the advice!