Best advice for students of average-above average intelligence to get into elite schools?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:-- $2 million gift (see: Jared Kushner, Harvard)
-- recruited athlete
-- URM with decent grades/scores

I am so tired of this crap about URMs and recruited athletes having it made. My kid is both. College admissions was still stressful and difficult and it didn't help that people would say he "had it easy." He got into a couple of 'elite' schools but turned them down for a school ( and a coach) who cared more about him as a person, not just an athletic asset. And a school where he felt at home and at ease, rather than having to be 'on' all the time.

It’s factually correct that being a URM recruiter athlete is a tremendous advantage in admissions, whether you like it or not. Glad your child chose a college that was a good fit.....very smart and much more important in the long run then a meaningless ranking.

The thing people forget about recruited athletes is the statement above is like saying “It’s factually correct that being admitted is a tremendous advantage in admissions”. What you neglect is that recruited athletes have already run a different and equally incredibly competitive gamut to get recruited. For every kid recruited to Harvard there are hundreds that tried and failed. It’s just that rat race was run before true actual admissions. (And even then the recruited athlete might not get in as Harvard only accepted 83% of their recruits according to the lawsuit data).

It ain’t the Sunday picnic people think it is. Most fail. Read the book “Recruiting in The Ivy Leauge” and you’ll learn the horror stories. It’s WAY worse for most kids than just getting rejected, and way more expensive and time consuming.

For the record I am not a recruited athlete nor a parent of one. Just interested.

Yes, but all those kids who tried and failed had a 99.9% better chance of admissions than the kid who wasn't an athlete, but was only brilliant at physics.

No, they didn't -- that's the point. And they spend thousands of dollars and a great deal of time on the journey. Seriously, read the book, you'll change your mind. It is WAY better to be brilliant at physics. Way, way better.

I get the point the book is making, but another way to look at it is that the athlete runs a single competitive race to become great at their sport and then has an 83% chance of being admitted. The kid who is brilliant at physics runs a race to become brilliant at physics and then at the end that race, has to run another race where only 5% or less of the runners win.

Which makes them both about equal, it just depends on where you start counting.

You end up with 95%+ disappointed kids in each race -- except that the athletes are out a lot of time, a lot of money, have possibly been mislead and lied to, and most of the time don't have the strong academic record to get them in somewhere else strong.

You're tracking your competition against those who have already won another qualifying competition. Yes those that have already won that competition have an easier time at admissions -- of course they do.

My current junior is going through lacrosse recruiting and I could not agree more. I long for the past when her older sister, who is not an athlete, was looking at colleges. It was still stressful and we did a lot of work but no comparison to this go around. My younger one has been at this for two years already with coach communication, attending SO MANY showcases and clinics and tournaments, talking to coaches and also trying to figure out if the school is a fit. Just exhausting!

She has a few great D3 schools interested where she loves the coach, the school and they like her back but it is far from over. They suggest sending coaches weekly updates of how your preseason is going and then during season to update on that. Meanwhile she's starting some Official Visits in January so that means even more weekends on the road to evaluate the school on a Friday for academics and then all day Saturday to play in a clinic and be "on".

She really wants to play, which is great, but that also means she has let some schools fall off her list because she didn't like the coach or they moved her to their second tier - and these are schools I know she would have loved. Oh well, you need to move on! Once the pre reads happen this summer she may move up or down on lists again. Poor kid is just tired and so are we!