Any fellow Division1 athletes applying this year?

[MedQuest]

Just thought i would make a special thread for us. I will be taking the MCAT this August and will be applying this year. I'm so excited . I know i will have my ups and downs in both MCAT studying and the Application cycle. Feel free to share your progress.

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[drkingdingaling]

whats your sport, sport....get it sport sport

 

[tcerm16]

I am not a D-1 athlete however I play D-2 football and i am applying this year.

 

[lebolax]

eventually applying, to the D1 athlete, what's your major? what's your sport? how have you managed your time?

 

[LoggerLnMn]

hehe... any love for a D III football player?

 

[Iron Horse]

Originally posted by LoggerLnMn
hehe... any love for a D III football player?

Is the Mn for Minn? Where did you play? I played D3 FB for a couple of years before I saw the light and playued rugby year round.

 

[LoggerLnMn]

Sorry man... I play in WA state, University of Puget Sound

 

[Chode]

I am on

chess club
glee club
drama club
the golf team
show jumping

and last year our team went to the national finals for pocket pool

 

[brats800]

div 3 swimmer and trackster here

 

[umass rower]

As the name suggests, I row crew for UMass. Not a varsity sport, but we train like it (we do more than the women's team, which is varsity thanks to Title IX and our craptacular football team). It made things interesting to be in the middle of the racing season when the April MCAT rolled around. Didn't have a ton of time to prepare for it because of that, but it all worked out in the end. What schools do people play for?

 

[brown04]

i run track at brown as you may have guessed. hopefully being athletes will give us a little something extra in the admissions process, but who knows.

 

[umass rower]

Whether it does help or not, it should. I suspect it's a similar deal with other sports, for me at least being on the team is the equivalent of having a full-time job. It was even more time-consuming when I was on the executive board for the team, that was an extra 20 hours of work per week at some points in the season. Ideally, adcoms would look and see time management, commitment, group skills, and all the other things that sports are known to build. In reality? Who knows other than the committees, but it'll at least give something fun to talk about in interviews.

 

[Mrs.S]

i'm a former dI tennis player applying right now. hope it sets me apart a little from other applicants.

 

[brats800]

i talked to a guy on the admissions committee i know who said that different committee members look for different things but he really likes athletes and usually gives them credit for being in a full-time job (essentially)...he said that this could reflect in making your actual GPA look a bit higher (like a 3.4 might be looked at as a 3.5) because they know you could do better if you weren't working out for 20-30 hours/week. (i know that for swimming, even d3, we are in the pool or weight room or at meets like 25+ hours/week most of the 7 month season...)

even if it doesn't help in a concrete way, they must look at it in a positive light and it'll give ya stuff to talk about in your essays/interviews

 

[thewebthsp]

D3/D1 Fencing

 

[SM-UCLA tech]

I played baseball and am starting med school this fall.....

good luck to you guys......i know that my grades sufferred because of my sport. baseball was a 7 day a week/ 365 days per year commitment, and my grades really sufferred because of it. I got a C in a math class one time because the professor would not let me make-up an exam i missed because of a tournament. even though he was suppossed to let me make it up, he basically said "too bad". i think he hated athletes.

i know that i would not give up any of those experiences for anything. make sure you talk about your sport and how it has affected you and helped you to grow in your personal statements/interviews.

 

[AlternateSome1]

Why not complain to the dean?

 

[IrishOarsman]

Originally posted by umass rower
As the name suggests, I row crew for UMass. Not a varsity sport, but we train like it (we do more than the women's team, which is varsity thanks to Title IX and our craptacular football team). It made things interesting to be in the middle of the racing season when the April MCAT rolled around. Didn't have a ton of time to prepare for it because of that, but it all worked out in the end. What schools do people play for?

Amen to that... good luck umass. Let's just hope our interviewers aren't wierded out by our hands

 

[SM-UCLA tech]

Originally posted by AlternateSome1
Why not complain to the dean?

well....the main reason i didn't complain was the fact that i really didn't care at the time. as long as i passed the class i was happy. i was not pre-med at the time so i didn't care what my grade was, as long as i was eligible to play baseball.

in the end i am starting med school now, so it really doesn't matter.

 

[umass rower]

Let's just hope our interviewers aren't wierded out by our hands

Definitely, I know I have some great rowing wounds on me right now that have been the cause of endless questions. I have some hideous track-bite on both my calves that I had to keep bandaged for over a week. And, at a race just last weekend I ended up having to stroke a 4 from the wrong side, and because I was holding the oar a little bit wrong I ended up with a hole in the middle of my palm that looks like the beginnings of stigmata.

By the way, where do you row?

 

[IrishOarsman]

Ahh yes, the ever-popular "my hand keeps sliding off the oar end" stigmata.

I rowed at Notre Dame (big surprize) and just finished my Jr year while not rowing (I was in europe)... still debating whether or not I'm going to go back and distracting myself from that decision with a jam-packed triathlon schedule.

 

[Noeljan]

DIA cheerleading here
It was a full time job and then some. We had to cheer football, mens and womens basketball!!! And then nationals. It never, ever ended. I had to workout at least two times a day!
Oh well, I am not taking the MCAT until April.

 

[ColdChillin]

I played D-I baseball and will be starting med school here in a couple weeks. I can attest to both the astronomical time commitment and the astronomical payoff from playing college sports. It is a totally awesome experience and I applaud all of you for playing for all these years and still being in a position to apply to med school. I thought I would share a little of my experience in the application process so maybe some of you can benefit from my mistakes.

As far as sports helping in the admissions process, it only helps if you play a sport and still do all the other stuff that the normal people do. Admissions committees won't give you a break on grades, MCATs, and/or health-related extracurricular activities just because of the huge time commitment associated with playing a varsity sport. I came to this conclusion because I had good grades and MCATs, but no research experience and not too much volunteer experience as compared to most premed people because I was always at a game or practice. I thought people reading my application would be like, "wow, this guy played varsity baseball, so that makes up for the extracurriculars." But I was wrong. I happened to get lucky and get into one school off a waitlist, which I am very thankful for, but the schools I did not get into all told me it was because I did not have enough clinical or research experience. So, all of you jocks should still try and do the research and clinical stuff when you have time during the summer or something to maximize your chances. I know you'll still have training and summer leagues or practices or whatever, but you should still try and squeeze something in there that could help.

Maybe you all already knew this, but hopefully it helped those who didn't. Good luck everyone.