LilStriker
SILVER
Unless she's aiming for Stanford (not an Ivy but on par), with the Ivy's its hard to say. The quality of the teams vary greatly (Harvard, IIRC, is ranked in the 40s, for example). If you are going the soccer route into college, it's more a question of getting into the best soccer program available given where the teams are on any particular year...you are kind of dependent on how the soccer team is doing in recent years and where it's ranked and what positions they need. The Ivy's generally care that the student excels and stands out at one thing-- and if soccer is the one thing, then that doesn't leave her with a bunch of other arrows in her quiver-- her application will rise and fall by whether she is recruited onto the soccer team (I just went through this with a basketball applicant, for example, who wasn't recruited). Soccer isn't a great route into the Ivys as a result. It's more a question of serendipity (right time, right place, right team, right spot) and you can't really game that, but DA as a result isn't an absolute must. If it's Stanford...well, good luck to you...and yes, making the national team would help there.
Thanks for the info Grace! Question - You mentioned Stanford being the exception to the rule - why? Also, when you say they're looking for a student that excels and stands out in one thing - do they look down on it if they excel at two or three and one of them is soccer?
Right now, while her teammates are training 3-4x/week outside of practice, she's getting into robotics, extending research projects for school, writing her own music, etc.... she just has a passion for learning, whether soccer or otherwise. And yet, while her physical size and strength is probably her weakest asset right now, she's still easily top three on the team when it comes to combined speed & skill and regularly outperforms her teammates in practice. Multiple outside coaches have said they could see her playing ODP, she was player of the week at their last camp where her age group was grouped with the year olders. Most recent coach said that he saw no flaws in her game, only to be more confident and trust her skills more. She's naturally athletic and has played multiple sports very well for her age - from basketball to golf, but there's only so much time in the day. We've been encouraging her to explore because she's young, but it's coming to a point where she needs to be more selective with her time and starting next year she's probably going to start private training and narrowing it down. Our deal with her was to pick one sport you love and excel at it (she chose soccer hands down), an academically related EC that she's passionate about and do something amazing with it, and get good grades.
I know we're digressing a bit, but also a bit related because again, if this is one of a handful of options for DA - and that's the path to national team and playing college, it has implications if we walk away - are we taking the right approach? I feel like it's so competitive that grades alone aren't enough and while her end goal is probably not a professional soccer player because she'll likely do a lot better in a different profession, she loves to play and it would be great to get to at least play at the college level when that time comes. Is National Team and DA necessary for that? As for schools she's interested in, again, it's a ways, but looking at Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, UPenn...
In other words, we're not entirely counting on soccer to get into the school of her choice, but hoping it will help and that she would get to play at that level... wrong approach?