The Truth About Sports & Elite College Admissions

While high school sports may provide many non-admissions benefits, for the vast majority of students, they do very little to improve the odds of admission to top colleges.In this episode, we explain why sports are often highly common, non-differentiating, and irrelevant to most students’ case for admission—while also being extremely costly in terms of time. We cover some notable exceptions (e.g. niche sports, sports-related academic hooks) and offer best practices for students trying to balance athletics with building a competitive elite college candidacy.——“The Game” is hosted by Sam Hassell and brought to you by Great Minds Advising.Great Minds Advising’s unique, hands-on mentorship program and its deep strategic insight into the application review process have earned the company a nation-leading track record of excellence, with 100% of its students gaining admission to a top-choice school in the 2025–26 application cycle.Its students have recently gained admission to Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Rice, Northwestern, UC-Berkeley, and WashU (among many others) and are admitted to the Ivy League at a rate 14x the national average (90% when applying early).Web: greatmindsadvising.comContact: greatmindsadvising.com/#contactNewsletter: greatmindsadvising.com/#newsletterEmail: [email protected]: facebook.com/GreatMindsAdvising/IG: instagram.com/greatmindsadvising