Recruited athletes don’t have lower stats!
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Anonymous
| OP here. To clarify, they were referring to D3 athletes at competitive schools. |
Anonymous
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Some do and some don't.
Our school publishes the Cum laude society which is the top 20% of GPAs. The recruited Ivy athletes are almost always below this mark. They're still strong students and very capable of doing the work but they're by no means the top students in the school. |
Anonymous
My understanding is that the top D3 schools' prereads are hard to get through. The amount of help an athlete gets varies. For NESCAC's, a coach submits paperwork and is told "if you support this kid we will accept them", and then the coach makes an offer. But to get that nod from admissions that student needs to have stats that are similar to other students that are accepted. So, basically, the coach can move the kids from "would have a chance" to "yes", but not from "no" to "yes". At other schools like MIT or JHU, the coach can help but not quite as much, so they can tell admissions, "I'd like you took carefully at this kid", but it's not a sure thing. And then there are schools like Caltech where athletics aren't weighed into the admissions decision at all. |
Anonymous
Very helpful response. |
Anonymous
Ivy is D1. OP is asking about D3. Very different situations. |
Anonymous
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Swarthmore soccer is full of sub 1500 scorers
It was the same at Williams and Amherst maybe it’s different in other sports The two I know best is soccer and baseball and you get a big boost vs unhooked |
Anonymous
| The jealousy that nerdy kids and parents on DCUM have towards athletes is really funny. |
Anonymous
Bitter much? |
Anonymous
Swarthmore is test optional, and half of Swarthmore’s students who do submit scores are below 1500. So that doesn’t sound like the soccer athletes don’t fit in. No one is saying that going from academically qualified to getting in isn’t a huge boost, that doesn’t change the fact that those kids are academically qualified. |
Anonymous
All of those schools are currently test optional. No recruited athlete (or, really, anyone who is moderately well-advised) has been submitting test scores to a test optional school if their schools are below the school's medians. For Amherst and Williams, only 40% of those admitted submitted SAT scores and 21% submitted ACT scores (with probably a healthy amount of overlap). For Swarthmore, the percentages of those admitted submitting SAT are 42% and ACT 19%. So, it stands to reason that all of those schools are full of sub 1500 (or whatever the median is) scorers. So, no real boost versus everyone else on the test score criterion. |
Anonymous
| Listen to “playing to Win” by Michael Lewis. It’s a pretty interesting. among other things he demonstrates that the bump from athletics is THE biggest hook out there. This is not to say that athletes aren’t deserving, don’t work hard, etc. But in terms of admissions they are held to a different initial academic standard than somebody who is not a recruited athlete. I mean you can see this yourself -,kids are committing to schools long before they have all of the stats that they would have if they applied like everyone else sometime in their senior year of high school. |
Anonymous
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I want to say not all sports are equal... Also, not all athletes are equal... Football and basketball are revenue-driven sports, meaning you can charge top dollar at the door and people will pay. So for these sports, although the top athletes do not have to be as smart as the average kid at the school, they are still smarter than most other athletic peers. For the non-revenue driven sport, those kids have to be smarter than the average athlete to attend, same can be said for the average footballer-- basketball is a different beast because there is not a lot of scholarship to distribute.
From: Former HS track coach who helped multiple kids get recruited and current college track coach whose job is to recruit athletes. |
Anonymous
I have soccer players. For high academic D3 and Ivies, you need to basically be able to get on on your own merit. Every coach my kid talked to said that if a kid doesn’t have grades/scores that would be acceptable, they don’t bother. Of course, now there is test optional but many coaches still said to test/get scores. |
Anonymous
| This is true-D3 athletes still need scores and they want 1500/34 + at places like JHU and the top SLAC’s. That plus the athletic piece is a major advantage. |
Anonymous
No, I just don’t sniff their jocks. They’re getting in with lesser stats. If the schools wants to admit them, they’re free to do so. Why should I make excuses for them? They’re inferior students being admitted because they can play sports. You’re the ones making excuses. |