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bloggiannasarlothings-blog · 7 years ago

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Blog on the College Process/Essay For Athletes

My college process was a lot different than others. From a young age, I knew I wanted to play collegiate softball and to make my dream a reality, I joined a club softball team in sixth grade. In February of my junior year, I committed to play at Boston College. Now that I am on the other side of this process, I am able to fully look back, digest, and reflect on the college process for an athlete.

For an athlete, the college process begins early on. Personally, the process began in eighth grade. I remember my coach sat us down, told us to make our college list, and start sending emails to coaches. Being only 12, I didn’t even know where I wanted to go to high school. I remember feeling so confused, nervous, yet excited. Generally, the recruiting process for softball goes something like the following. You travel every weekend around the country; Chicago, Colorado, Florida etc., playing at a highly competitive level. You send a college coach an email, hoping to grab their attention so they will come to your games. Until the first day of your junior year, college coaches cannot talk to you, which means all the communication is done through your club coach. Unfortunately, you would sometimes be left in the dark about what that coach thought of you.

The college process has taught me great life lessons along with the responsibilities of being an athlete. In the article, “You Can’t Talk to Your Professor Like That”, Worthen, emphasizes the importance of learning the proper way to talk to professors/adults. As I look back at all my phone calls and face to face conversations with college coaches I now understand the author’s point. I got calls from Lehigh, MIT, UPenn, and can be seen as my “college interview”. My heart would beat out of my chest every time. Worthen writes, “making it clear that learning how to write a professional email and relate to authority figures is not just preparation for a job after graduation” (Worthen). I was so grateful for those experiences, as every phone call and conversation matured me in a different way and allowed me to gain speaking skills that I will carry with me through life.

In “How Do I Bring Diversity”, Kirkland and Hansen write about how diversity is not just your race or social status, but about how you can bring your unique talents to the campus. The authors write, “Thus we come to “M’s Mom’s reassurance that being able to name all the different shapes of pasta surely counts as bringing diversity” (Kirkland and Hansen), which really reiterates the authors’ message of the importance of finding what makes you diverse. Softball is my way of bringing diversity to college. My “college essay” was my softball games, as a “college essay” is supposed to show a college why they should pick you. Only for me, I could not rewrite my “essay”. I had one shot to impress a coach and could not “delete” the outcome if I wasn’t happy with it.

In the book Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be, Bruni taps into the chaos of the college process, showing readers that they can still be successful even if they don’t attend a top college. As my final decision was nearing, I was still between Boston College and UPenn. My decision reminds me of the following quote, “The inclination to consider UPenn, not attendance at UPenn, is the key to future earnings.” (Bruni). I knew the whole time that Boston College was the perfect fit for me. It checks every box. It is just outside the city but still has a campus. BC provides me with the opportunity for a great education and an unbelievable softball program. UPenn did not make me feel as “at home” as Boston did. However, when you go to such a competitive high school, where people make going to an IVY the end all be all was the only reason I still considered attending UPenn. Although going to an IVY does have its perks, it is not the right fit for everybody, which was the author’s main claim. The moment you realize that “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be”, and make your decision based on what is best for you, is when you will truly see success and happiness. I could not be more excited to be an Eagle!

As a recruited athlete, you are expected to meet a certain SAT score, and keep your GPA above a certain point in order to guarantee admission into the College or University. An athlete who knows their college application is being ‘waved’, or essentially, you know you are getting in, you might not put as much effort into writing that “perfect essay” or making sure “you joined every extracurricular” like most people. To all athletes in the same boat as I am, I tell you to really put the time and effort into making that one application the best possible and to really make sure it represents who you truly are. I also want to shine a light on what athletes can write about in their college essays. I personally feel as though athletes should not write about their sport or an injury they had to overcome. Colleges get those types of essays all the time, and they already know all the hard work you put into that sport you were recruited for. So, my advice to you is to take those 650 words that they give you, and you write about something unexpected, something that makes you stand out, something that gives you that “diversity factor”, something other than sports for a change.

Work Cited

Bruni, Frank. Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania. Grand Central Publishing, 2016

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