alt Hacker News> sports practice until 5:00. Gotta have that activity on your college application, not counting other volunteering and clubs in the open spaces.
Still baffles me why is that even a thing that's considered at the colleges. I thought it was just a relic of Soviet past but no, apparently it exists in the US and other first world countries as well for some strange reason.
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I have heard that it began to try to keep certain ethnic groups out of university and continued because sports bring in scholarship and (for D1 schools) sponsor money.
A sound mind in a sound body. Everything you do is improved if you're physically active.
I think sports are just easy to categorize when you're trying to figure out what some kid's been up to. Admissions gets to check a box instead of reading essays.
Indeed it doesn't make sense to require sports achievements from someone wanting to study math.
It really isn't. I've never played formalized sports in my life and had no problem getting into multiple universities (yes, a few decades ago but I doubt if society has become more sports driven; on the contrary people often say that due to the tech boom we now live in an era where if anything, unsporty nerds have too much power)