Is being fast useful for college admissions?

I expect it will be most useful at larger campuses where students are frequently late for class. This problem has reached epidemic proportions at many universities and admissions staff are finally understanding that the only solution is to recruit fast students.

No. People working in admissions don't care what your mile PR is and they wouldn't even know if it was good or not.

At the top colleges, tons of people did XC or track recreationally in HS and sucked. So unless you're being recruited, admissions doesn't care.

Only insofar as excelling at any extracurricular activity will be viewed in a positive light. Everyone does ECs. Not everyone takes them seriously. "I ran XC" could mean that you signed up for the team because your mom made you do a sport. "I ran XC and was our number one runner" shows that you took your activity seriously.

It's not going to take your application from the bottom of the pile and put it on the top, but if you have some running accomplishments that you can put on paper, they could give you a push in the right direction.

if you're being offered a scholarship a coach will help push you in through admissions. blue chip runners get into stanford and ivys with like 3.60 gpas

Maybe you can use it in your college essay somehow as part of a narrative about achieving a goal or something like that.

Do not list your PR's on your application.

recruitment wrote:

if you're being offered a scholarship a coach will help push you in through admissions. blue chip runners get into stanford and ivys with like 3.60 gpas

I agree with this statement. If you are fast, as you claim, then you would approach the coach, not the admissions office. The coach will then make an effort to help your admissions, if you are something the coach feels is worthy.

At many universities coaches have a certain number of admissions slots for athletes who meet the academic minimums for admission to the university. Coaches may use these independent of whether they also are offering an athlete a partial scholarship. Like a scholarship, the coach has to specifically designate you. Admissions offices don't care if you have run or not.

diversity rabbit hole wrote:

At many universities coaches have a certain number of admissions slots for athletes who meet the academic minimums for admission to the university. Coaches may use these independent of whether they also are offering an athlete a partial scholarship. Like a scholarship, the coach has to specifically designate you. Admissions offices don't care if you have run or not.

Correct. I was going to walk on at a prominent D1 school but told the coach I hadn't decided for sure. But he wanted to make sure I got into the school, so my application was literally stamped by the athletic department. So yeah, you could say being a 1:54 guy got me into college. And I never ran a step for them.

You absolutely have to contact the coach. My son was a mediocre student although with great test scores and got into schools (Div 3) that he would have been rejected for had it not been for the coaches that recruited him. If fact, they contacted him to let him know he was admitted even before we got the official letters from the schools.