What’s the real deal with athletic recruiting?

[Anonymous]

This is VERY sport-dependent.

For non-revenue generating sports, it’s a way to get into a school when you pretty much fit their academic profile.

For revenue-generating sports like football and basketball, GPA and sat score standards are very much relaxed depending on how good you are and how much the school cares about the sport.

[Anonymous]

We're in the thick of this with baseball recruiting for academic D3 and D1 schools. A few things I've learned:

There's a balancing act between athletic and academic abilities. If you are a superstar athlete, you'll get a little more leeway with grades and scores.

The coaches want test scores even at test optional schools. They do matter, even if recruited athletes may get away with slightly lower numbers.

At some schools, the coaches have a lot of pull with admissions, at others not so much.

For the Ivies, a team's academic index matters, so they need recruits with higher grades and tests scores to balance things out if they want to bring on a superstar athlete whose numbers pull down the average.

Anecdotally, MIT, JHU, and Swarthmore are particularly strict about recruits' academic credentials. Amherst, Williams, and some of the Ivies? Less strict than you might think.

Football is a whole other story. Those recruits get more leeway than do those for other sports.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can see that at an MIT - not really an athletic powerhouse, but Stanford? D1 schools? Interesting.

Stanford, Duke they are certainly relaxing the academic standards for some of their recruited athletes.

Ivies relax them too, but the overall recruiting class needs to be somewhat in line with the student body as a whole. So the goal numbers might be 1400 instead of 1550 to clear the hurdle as a recruited athlete. If you google ivy academic index you can read more about this mystery way they make these calculations

High academic D3 typically don’t have much wiggle room except for 1 or 2 athletes per sport.

Overall we’ve seen kids end up at an academic fit (except for the high academic P4 schools).

This is accurate.

[Anonymous]

My DD...4.0 GPA (Literally like everyone else), 24 ACT score. Admitted to Duke with 70% soccer scholarship.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DD...4.0 GPA (Literally like everyone else), 24 ACT score. Admitted to Duke with 70% soccer scholarship.

Wow she’s dumb but she must be great at soccer

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DD...4.0 GPA (Literally like everyone else), 24 ACT score. Admitted to Duke with 70% soccer scholarship.

Wow she’s dumb but she must be great at soccer

How rude.
His/her DD is certainly not dumb

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DD...4.0 GPA (Literally like everyone else), 24 ACT score. Admitted to Duke with 70% soccer scholarship.

Wow she’s dumb but she must be great at soccer

And she’ll be laughing from Durham at your kid who got into what…Auburn University?

[Anonymous]

Sorry what’s all this with MIT?? What sports? I just can’t see very serious athletes wanting to go to MIT…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We're in the thick of this with baseball recruiting for academic D3 and D1 schools. A few things I've learned:

There's a balancing act between athletic and academic abilities. If you are a superstar athlete, you'll get a little more leeway with grades and scores.

The coaches want test scores even at test optional schools. They do matter, even if recruited athletes may get away with slightly lower numbers.

At some schools, the coaches have a lot of pull with admissions, at others not so much.

For the Ivies, a team's academic index matters, so they need recruits with higher grades and tests scores to balance things out if they want to bring on a superstar athlete whose numbers pull down the average.

Anecdotally, MIT, JHU, and Swarthmore are particularly strict about recruits' academic credentials. Amherst, Williams, and some of the Ivies? Less strict than you might think.

Football is a whole other story. Those recruits get more leeway than do those for other sports.

Thanks, this is great info!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DD...4.0 GPA (Literally like everyone else), 24 ACT score. Admitted to Duke with 70% soccer scholarship.

Wow she’s dumb but she must be great at soccer

Sorry, but being gifted in a sport is much more important than her ACT score

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sorry what’s all this with MIT?? What sports? I just can’t see very serious athletes wanting to go to MIT…

At least not for football undergrad. After sports? Grad school, yes. John Urshel comes to mind. https://libguides.mit.edu/mindandmatter

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is VERY sport-dependent.

For non-revenue generating sports, it’s a way to get into a school when you pretty much fit their academic profile.

For revenue-generating sports like football and basketball, GPA and sat score standards are very much relaxed depending on how good you are and how much the school cares about the sport.

DD is in process for a non-revenue generating sport. What we want and need is some merit money and I'm curious if the coach will influence admissions in any way. The school is a hard target for her and T50 so I'm hopeful that academics and sports will influence them to free up some merit $ to at least bring the tuition from 90K to 70K.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is VERY sport-dependent.

For non-revenue generating sports, it’s a way to get into a school when you pretty much fit their academic profile.

For revenue-generating sports like football and basketball, GPA and sat score standards are very much relaxed depending on how good you are and how much the school cares about the sport.

DD is in process for a non-revenue generating sport. What we want and need is some merit money and I'm curious if the coach will influence admissions in any way. The school is a hard target for her and T50 so I'm hopeful that academics and sports will influence them to free up some merit $ to at least bring the tuition from 90K to 70K.

Read up on Title 9. Income generation has nothing to do with scholarships for females now. In many ways it's easier for a female. In some sports there are more scholarships available than there are athletes to fill them.

[Anonymous]

D3 schools say they don't offer athletic scholarships. They will figure out how to get your athlete money if he/she is a very good athlete. Division 1 will bend the academic rules to get all star level player in. One of my kids is a D1 athlete. The school had an immediate need for his specialized position. He was accepted, enrolled and had a class schedule within an hour of agreeing to go in. Most kids in his sport have to play a year or two of Jr's, which is why he was able to go in on a days notice basically.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DD...4.0 GPA (Literally like everyone else), 24 ACT score. Admitted to Duke with 70% soccer scholarship.

Wow she’s dumb but she must be great at soccer

Sorry, but being gifted in a sport is much more important than her ACT score

Soccer at Duke gets dumb kids into Duke (oh and basketball)