Any NCAA student-athletes out there?

[greenwave34]

Hi everyone,

I'm just wondering how being a college athlete (if you were one) is affecting your application/secondary/interview/acceptance process??

I haven't met any other SA's yet and I'm wondering if I'm alone...

Just finished playing women's basketball at Tulane and I'm not sure whether admissions comittees are liking that (since everything I've wirtten for secondaries has been about athletics).

Any thoughts?

GW

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[ATPase]

I played volleyball at the University of Virginia, but only for a year. I listed it on AMCAS but didn't discuss it too much in my personal statement or secondaries other than to say I had an extensive background in athletics, enjoyed sports, etc. I've had one interview so far (it was closed file) and another one this week that's open file, so I'll be curious to see if they ask me about it.

 

[cad_15]

I play basketball,
I just took the mcat this august so there is nothing much to say about my application. I will let you know how it goes in few weeks ............i guess

 

[gryff]

I played 4 years of college volleyball. I talked about my sports and sports injuries in my application. It helped in my first interview, the Dr. interviewing had a daughter that played college sports and it is pretty much all we talked about! So yes, I would say it gave me a lot to talk about!

 

[uwcoxswain]

Greenwave-
I was a member of the crew team during undergrad. I got in a few places if that helps. PM me if you have any questions.

 

[jbing]

Originally posted by uwcoxswain
Greenwave-
I was a member of the crew team during undergrad. I got in a few places if that helps. PM me if you have any questions.

crew is not a real ncaa sport. anyone can sign up for it.

 

[ewing]

I know here in NYC that medical schools brag about famous athletes they enroll. Columbia had Jenny Thompson (?) or some such who won an olympic gold medal in swimming, and NYU had Marsha Harris, who as an undergrad led NYU's women's basketball team to the division III finals a couple of times. I think they expect you to match in orthopedic surgery, which looks good on their match list, so it's a good thing to mention. Also, if you can handle the travel and practice and pre-med coursework, it's like ROTC...it convinces them of your stamina and dedication...

Good luck!!!

 

[scooter31]

yeah, ortho and athletes do go hand in hand. eric heiden (olympic speedskater) and alec kessler (college/pro hoops) are both ortho attendings... i guess it does make sense- if you cant beat the injuries, treat the injuries

oh and to add to the post, former baseball player (DI,DII,JC,pro)- but finishing ochem and dabbling in grad epi courses, so i'm of no use this to the OP this year...

 

[jbing]

Originally posted by scooter31

oh and to add to the post, former baseball player (DI,DII,JC,pro)- but finishing ochem and dabbling in grad epi courses, so i'm of no use this to the OP this year...

right on man. who drafted you and where did you play?

 

[scooter31]

I played one season overseas in Europe- I have dual citizenship, so I went over there to play. I also had a free-agent tryout w/ St Louis after my college eligibility was done. I had several teams scouting me during college, but injuries took there toll and I was left undrafted after my senior year. Oh well, such is life...

 

[brats800]

i'm in my 4th year of div3 swimming. i interned with a medschool prof who was also on the admissions committee, and he said that it really depends on committee member as to how much sports help you. personally, he said that he looks at the time commitment...swimming is like a full-time job for me, and he assumes we could've had a gpa like .2 higher if we hadn't done the sport, so my 3.3 will look like a 3.5 to him...but he said that other members look for musicians or other things...just depends. but he also said that it can't hurt

 

[applyingnotfun]

full-time job? i don't know about that. i can see sports counting as 20 maybe 25 hours per week, but there is no way you spend 40 hours at swimming practice/meets. swimming doesn't even compare to football, and football is by no means a full-time job.

 

[drlexygoat]

Originally posted by jbing
crew is not a real ncaa sport. anyone can sign up for it.

Maybe not at your school... they might not be good enough yet and are still a club sport.

At UCF (Univ of Central Florida) only the women's team is NCAA-sponsoroed. The men aren't good enough yet. I rowed in our lightweight 8 for a while and think it can only help my application.

Our practices were at 5 am (yeah, it's still dark then), 5 days a week plus Saturday sprints. Add weightlifting to that in the spring. Ugh. I'm hoping that shows I can still be sleep-deprived and get great grades!

 

[greenwave34]

But, athletics does become a full-time job (35 hours a week as in my case) when you are plagued by injuries that require at least 1:30 hours of therapy/rehab every other day. I played that last two years of my basketball career with a broken bone in my foot and chondromalacia in my knee and I estimated that I devoted about 35 hours a week to my sport...it's not necessarily the time you spend on the court/in the pool/on the field that matters so much. Rather, it the time it takes to do things like lift weights, go to treatment, ice down after every workout/game/practice...it all adds up.

 

[scooter31]

hear hear greenwave. i spent 2 years becomng an honorary AT, with all of the various bumps, bruises, strains and sprains... not quite like football or basketball, but still very time consuming. if anything, a SA can at least be thought of as a great time manager!

 

[jbing]

Originally posted by scooter31
I played one season overseas in Europe- I have dual citizenship, so I went over there to play. I also had a free-agent tryout w/ St Louis after my college eligibility was done. I had several teams scouting me during college, but injuries took there toll and I was left undrafted after my senior year. Oh well, such is life...

bummer man. what position did you play?

im actually considering writing about baseball in one of my secondaries that asks about my interests outside of medicine but im worried that it would sound a little flaky. should i do it?

 

[scooter31]

i was a relief pitcher and first baseman. but mostly a pitcher throughout college...i remember playing UCLA a few times at UNLV, they spanked us pretty hard most times. JR stadium is a beautiful place as well...

as for the baseball writing, i say go for it. anything that you are passionate about will be great to write about, since that will be conveyed well in writing, and it also makes you become a more unique applicant. who knows, you may get a baseball or UCLA fan reading it...

 

[southerncomfort]

Hey Greenwave!
I played volleyball in undergrad, and now I'm in the Cell and Molec master's at Tulane. You're not in molec bio this semester, are you?
My opinion on sports and apps--*if* you can maintain the grades while playing, it's wonderful, but more often than not, the grades will slip a bit. One player on our team dropped her senior year to focus on getting into med school (she did). But I think ad comms tend to look at athletics on the whole as a favorable thing.
Good luck!

 

[Cerberus]

Originally posted by drlexygoat
Maybe not at your school... they might not be good enough yet and are still a club sport.

At UCF (Univ of Central Florida) only the women's team is NCAA-sponsoroed. The men aren't good enough yet. I rowed in our lightweight 8 for a while and think it can only help my application.

Our practices were at 5 am (yeah, it's still dark then), 5 days a week plus Saturday sprints. Add weightlifting to that in the spring. Ugh. I'm hoping that shows I can still be sleep-deprived and get great grades!

I dont know that it is "good enough" that determines whether or not your team is NCAA sponsored, I know the womens team at our school has a frickin beautiful boathouse, beautiful boats, and paid coaches while we share our rundown boathouse with the local rowing club. Why? Not because they are better per say (which I dont doubt they are) but because title 9 requires the university to spend equal amounts of money on men and womens sports.

"Our practices were at 5 am (yeah, it's still dark then), 5 days a week plus Saturday sprints"

4:45am comes awefully early

We dont have saturday sprints but I do have practice number 2 of the day in a few minutes.

 

[drlexygoat]

Originally posted by Cerberus
I dont know that it is "good enough" that determines whether or not your team is NCAA sponsored, I know the womens team at our school has a frickin beautiful boathouse, beautiful boats, and paid coaches while we share our rundown boathouse with the local rowing club. Why? Not because they are better per say (which I dont doubt they are) but because title 9 requires the university to spend equal amounts of money on men and womens sports.

That's how it is at UCF too with the NCAA sports. You all don't share your boathouse? Tell your women to be nicer! We "rent" our boathouse to the men in exchange for them rigging our boats at regattas. It works out nicely.

I'm out this year due to some back problems, though! Never thought I'd miss the erg this much.

 

[brats800]

the idea behind an adcom looking at a sport as a full time job is probably 1) the time commitment and 2) the fact that after a hard practice you don't really want to study or do anything but eat and sleep...

 

[SJBX]

Ran DI cross country and track...I took the Aug. MCATs, so hopefully I'll start to hear from some schools once I get my scores in about a week.

I fully understand what greenwave is saying about being hurt. I got hurt (a relatively minor injury) my first year of xc and all of a sudden I was spending my life in the training room. Honestly, you can not afford to be injured becasue you spend sooooo much time in the training room doing therapy....and once you are "healthy" you still had to go. I really have not been injury prone, but after that first experience any little injury that occured I just more or less kept it to myself and tried to handle it on my own.

 

[greenwave34]

amen to that SGBX!

our trainers used to get mad at me for reading/doing homework while I was in the cold whirlpool! The nerve of them! sheesh!

where did you run xc?

 

[Treg]

and my husband was a D1 All-American XC/distance runner. We are wondering which sport our daughter will adopt!

 

[umass rower]

Whether or not a crew team is NCAA sponsored or even school sponsored doesn't make a difference. Technically, the NCAA doesn't support ANY men's crew team, but that mean that we don't train like it. Just because anyone can sign up for it doesn't mean that everyone can handle it, jbing. People who can't hack it are essentially kicked off the team. We train as much as if not more than our NCAA, D1 women's team, and anyone on our team or the women's team would get pretty pissed if they referred to our team as "just a club team", as many do.

Also, to applyingnotfun, training and competing is a full-time job in a lot of sports I think. I know that I train for around 30 hours every week just to fulfill my scheduled workouts. Also, when you factor in races, winter training, and spring break triple sessions, the hours start to seriously add up. When I was filling out my AMCAS, I actually went and counted out the hours that I devote to crew. Even considering the lighter training during the summer (and yes, I averaged my hours over the ENTIRE year, not just the competitive seasons), I spend an average of 45 hours per week doing crew. When you consider the exhaustion factor, crew at least is definitely more than a full-time job.

 

[JDAD]

I currently am a junior in college that plays D1 baseball. Any suggestions or ideas on what I should be doing in order to get in to med school? I don't have time to volunteer at hospitals or even get involved with research due to practice, games and studying for the classes that I am currently taking (PHYS, GENETICS, BIOCHEM, PCHEM and PHIL)

I have so far made it work, but I am scared about this semester and the following season. I was injured last year and had elbow reconstruction where a ligament was removed from my hamstring and screwed into my elbow. So I know what it feels like to spend hours in the training room. Anyway, nice to know that I am not the only one trying to do these difficult things. Any pointers would be nice.

 

[Cerberus]

I am training roughly twice a day right now I agree with Umass Rower - the "just a club sport" thing is sort of annoying.

 

[scooter31]

Hey jarrod dale- our stories our hauntingly similar, up until the ligament transplant (which I declined, but was about to get). feel free to PM if you have any questions, but just from hindsight, do everything you can to keep the GPA up. it will be tough, but if you can steer away fromt he pitfalls i encountered, you will be golden. as well as that, just be active outside of class and practice- if you like spanish, join spanish club. volunteer in the SUMMER, when you have more of an opportunity. even if its 4 hours a week in the ER, take it. summer school is feasible too, but keep it a 2 classes max. and hey, keep playing, keep up with the rehab, and enjoy the college life... best of luck to you, PM if needed, and GO SOX (since my Angels were far form contending this year...)

 

[uwcoxswain]

Originally posted by jbing
crew is not a real ncaa sport. anyone can sign up for it.

You obviously know nothing about crew, especially schools with competitive programs like Wisco, Cal, Washington, Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, etc... (do I need to continue?)

I do not know about other schools, but we followed every single NCAA rule at my school.

It makes me laugh when people talk about something that they obviously know nothing about.