Athletes have such an edge

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you think an athlete should get an edge in applying to medical school? Mediocre MCATs, far below the average grades of most applicants, but the kid could play football.

Undergrad and grad two different things. Not a valid argument.

OK, should an athlete get an edge in applying to an engineering program?

The more common scenario is that the athlete wants to major in engineering or a hard science and their coach not so gently suggests they consider something less demanding so that they can concentrate on training and playing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you think an athlete should get an edge in applying to medical school? Mediocre MCATs, far below the average grades of most applicants, but the kid could play football.

Undergrad and grad two different things. Not a valid argument.

OK, should an athlete get an edge in applying to an engineering program?

The more common scenario is that the athlete wants to major in engineering or a hard science and their coach not so gently suggests they consider something less demanding so that they can concentrate on training and playing

More common coaches get athletes into the school of communication, athletes grades get athletes into engineering.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yawn. Let’s looks at UVA 750 student athletes out of 11,786 undergrads and another 7,000 grad students. That’s just about 4% student athletes. Remember they put 5,000 kids on the wait list. If your kid got reject it is not because of the student athlete.

If they did away with athletic that would be 188 spots. So they would take 188 off the wait list. That’s the last 4% your kid is competing with(if you made the wait list).

UVA has a Legacy admissions preference at roughly 30% per class. Yes they let a legacy kids in with lower scores vs non legacy kid.

Harvard competes in every sport and has a relative small student population. I think they are at 10% student athletes. Their legacy program was about 33%. They have another category of big donors/ important people’s kids. Some of those kids need special tutoring before attending.

You can do this for each and every college and university. Legacy is a bigger problem vs athletes. No one talks about it because those students do not have a high profile and are mostly white.

Check out swimming, golf, tennis, sailing, lax, hockey, crew, field hockey, etc. If you would like to talk about mostly white.

Yep but most people are only thinking about the minor playing football or basketball who stole their kids spot. Student athletes are such a small % of the student body it is stupid to spend much time on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most athletes who are successful in their chosen sport spends hours and hours of training and have the discipline & work ethics to be successful.

Having a specific skill - a sport, musical instrument, singing, dancing is MUCH more rare than a kid with high stats.

Scarcity creates demand thus colleges will fight over an athlete much more than a kid with 1600 SAT/4.0+ GPA.

I have one kid who is academic and another who is athletic but I guild them not to be defined by it. You are more than your grades, school or sport.

Be a good person and kind to others!

Nobody is being unkind. They are just noting the significant imbalance toward recruited athletes. Who are going to be the doctors, scientists, micro-biologists, philosophers, data scientists, computer programmers of the future? It's the high stats kids. I would rather have my future surgeon be a smart kid who earned his/her way to college than someone recruited for athletics.

[Anonymous]

I don't like my tax dollars being used to subsidize athletes and sport facilities so disproportionately (vs other EC's).

They certainly don't bring the biggest return back to society in my book.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most athletes who are successful in their chosen sport spends hours and hours of training and have the discipline & work ethics to be successful.

Having a specific skill - a sport, musical instrument, singing, dancing is MUCH more rare than a kid with high stats.

Scarcity creates demand thus colleges will fight over an athlete much more than a kid with 1600 SAT/4.0+ GPA.

I have one kid who is academic and another who is athletic but I guild them not to be defined by it. You are more than your grades, school or sport.

Be a good person and kind to others!

Nobody is being unkind. They are just noting the significant imbalance toward recruited athletes. Who are going to be the doctors, scientists, micro-biologists, philosophers, data scientists, computer programmers of the future? It's the high stats kids. I would rather have my future surgeon be a smart kid who earned his/her way to college than someone recruited for athletics.

My knee surgeon was an Olympic athlete and I think I subconsciously attributed his athleticism to his skills as a surgeon. Also, I was only a pretty good student while I was a competitive athlete, but I still got into a pretty good law school, but in law school I ended up top 5% of my class and on law review. I just transferred the intensity of training to school. I don't think my story is uncommon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you think an athlete should get an edge in applying to medical school? Mediocre MCATs, far below the average grades of most applicants, but the kid could play football.

Again, colleges are not trade schools. Medical schools, however, are trade schools.

Are we comprehending yet?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't like my tax dollars being used to subsidize athletes and sport facilities so disproportionately (vs other EC's).

They certainly don't bring the biggest return back to society in my book.

There's a lot of things I don't like supporting with my tax dollars. Like the war machine. I'd rather support athletes over that.

Next argument?

[Anonymous]

I argue that athlete candidates do not have an advantage. All of the potential athletes have already been culled by the time they apply to the school, dramatically inflating their acceptance rate. There are 15-20 kids who are contacting the coach to want to be on the team with only 1 or 2 being picked by the coach. The athlete is not applying unless he is supported by the coach and able to be in the team. The only advantage is that their test scores/grades may be lower than the average, but not dramatically lower.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you think an athlete should get an edge in applying to medical school? Mediocre MCATs, far below the average grades of most applicants, but the kid could play football.

Again, colleges are not trade schools. Medical schools, however, are trade schools.

Are we comprehending yet?

If far below, no.

But if reasonable but not at the top, and the student was spending 30+ hours/week on football that's a reason to think perhaps the person wasn't able to commit as much time to studies as others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you think an athlete should get an edge in applying to medical school? Mediocre MCATs, far below the average grades of most applicants, but the kid could play football.

Undergrad and grad two different things. Not a valid argument.

OK, should an athlete get an edge in applying to an engineering program?

I don't get the big deal with engineering programs. Athletes can make a whole lot more money in technology/software sales than engineers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I argue that athlete candidates do not have an advantage. All of the potential athletes have already been culled by the time they apply to the school, dramatically inflating their acceptance rate. There are 15-20 kids who are contacting the coach to want to be on the team with only 1 or 2 being picked by the coach. The athlete is not applying unless he is supported by the coach and able to be in the team. The only advantage is that their test scores/grades may be lower than the average, but not dramatically lower.

100% the grades and scores are dramatically lower.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I argue that athlete candidates do not have an advantage. All of the potential athletes have already been culled by the time they apply to the school, dramatically inflating their acceptance rate. There are 15-20 kids who are contacting the coach to want to be on the team with only 1 or 2 being picked by the coach. The athlete is not applying unless he is supported by the coach and able to be in the team. The only advantage is that their test scores/grades may be lower than the average, but not dramatically lower.

100% the grades and scores are dramatically lower.

Not true. Could be 50%, but not 100%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most athletes who are successful in their chosen sport spends hours and hours of training and have the discipline & work ethics to be successful.

Having a specific skill - a sport, musical instrument, singing, dancing is MUCH more rare than a kid with high stats.

Scarcity creates demand thus colleges will fight over an athlete much more than a kid with 1600 SAT/4.0+ GPA.

I have one kid who is academic and another who is athletic but I guild them not to be defined by it. You are more than your grades, school or sport.

Be a good person and kind to others!

Nobody is being unkind. They are just noting the significant imbalance toward recruited athletes. Who are going to be the doctors, scientists, micro-biologists, philosophers, data scientists, computer programmers of the future? It's the high stats kids. I would rather have my future surgeon be a smart kid who earned his/her way to college than someone recruited for athletics.

It has already been explained multiple times in this thread that your future and existing surgeons are in fact likely to be athletes given the higher-than-average representation of college athletes in surgical specialties.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You haven’t figured out that our society values sports over education?

But you can get into a good school with amazing academics and zero athletics, but if you have amazing athletics you still need academics that are far above average.

It's higher EDUCATION...not higher athletics.

Then you don't understand EDUCATION.

I don't give a rats ass if my lawyer or my investment advisor or my doctor can catch a ball. I need their brains...period.

Then you don't know what you are talking about.