I feel like we don't talk enough that top LACs are 40%+ recruited athletes.
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Anonymous
| can we get the NYT on this? |
Anonymous
| What’s the problem? How else are they supposed to field their teams? |
Anonymous
yeah? who will think of the sail team's future???? |
Anonymous
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WAPO had a story in in 2019: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/06/12/varsity-athletes-admissions-enrollment-top-colleges/ |
Anonymous
Imagine if the fencing team's fan didn't have anyone to root for? |
Anonymous
| This is a very tired topic. Parents without athletes hate the recruited athlete hook. We get it. |
Anonymous
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Why does this even matter?
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Anonymous
| It is ridiculous. I went to a very selective SLAC. There was someone on my freshman hall who was not academically qualified to be there. She had been planning to go to Colorado but got off the waitlist because of the coach’s pull. |
Anonymous
I don't care about the hook at all. I just dislike the vibe at these very small schools that don't really have a sport culture, yet have a student body that is divided by sports! It's like an upside down michigan or ND where sports bring the students together! and yet they're there to learn shit and not play games. |
Anonymous
With students they admit for academics. How does your high school do it? |
Anonymous
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On a related topic, do any of the SLACs have a decent sports culture? Meaning, kids actually go to the football, basketball, etc. games and while they know they are not competing for the NCAA championship...at least care about winning whatever D3 division in which they compete?
It is comical that if you go to the MIT baseball field, they don't have just one set of bleachers...they literally just have one bleacher (other people call that a bench). |
Anonymous
| a friend recently describe her experience at a LAC as: it's like half the kids are in a bunch of different chamber groups and they spend all their time doing that and hang with their chamber group. all the groups are small and nobody has any interest in any other chamber group - nobody ever sees each other chamber groups play - and the people who aren't in a chamber group doesn't understand why they came to THIS ACADEMIC COLLEGE just to play chamber music. |
Anonymous
| Yes, that is part of the culture. If you are going in as a non-athlete you know this and, in fact, our experience is that the tours tell you the % of student athletes. What is the problem? It's like going to University of Miami and then complaining that it is hot. |
Anonymous
This is backwards thinking. The mission of a college is not to field athletic teams and then fill in the rest of the academic seats with students as an afterthought. The mission of a school is to educate students. Because you want students to exercise and be fit and develop school spirit, you let them form athletic teams and compete with other schools. This is how college athletics started. You field the teams that current student are interested in playing, and you field those teams with existing students. If no one wants to play a given sport this year, you drop that team until enough kids sign up; but given the number of students athletes in the country, this is unlikely to be a problem anywhere. Pick your college, then try out for the team when you get there. |
Anonymous
Not really. A very high number of recruited athletes quit after they get there. |