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"At a D1 school - depending how big the sport is, athletes have tutors assigned to them. Some big programs even have tutors travel with the team. Kids will be tutored in the bus. There is a lot of hand holding of these athletes.
This is not true at Ivies. It definitely is true at D1 schools, but not Ivies." Which part is not true at Ivies? I'll believe the specifics like tutoring on the bus are questionable. I'll believe that other than the coach asking about grades a couple times each semester athletes aren't treated differently than other students. But if you think there isn't hand holding at Ivies, if the student looks for it[i][u], you aren't very in touch. My DC is at a school that has an endowment about 1% of Harvard's. They have more different types of office hours, tutoring and support classes that you get signed up for automatically depending on your placement grades in August, your first test grades the first week in October and your second test grades before Thanksgiving. Freshman seminar meets weekly and includes some talk about keeping up and they schedule individual meeting with advisors a couple times per semester. This all doesn't include the freshman dorm community meetings (with bakery level food bribes to ensure attendance) to keep things going smoothly. Many schools understand that freshman retention numbers and graduation rates matter. At HYP they know that if their rates drop, Columbia et al will close the ratings gap. |
| So OP- if your kid can get recruited at Ivy, go for it. Ignore the part that he wants to quit. This opportunity won’t come again. |
You do know that there are 8 Ivies -- not 7 right? |
I guess there are 8 if you insist on including Cornell... |
Mea culpa. And I even went to an Ivy! Slip of the mind. But I’m still curious what this school is. |
| I knew people who did this at Yale. We thought they were jerks. Deciding to quit later is one thing, but going into it planning to quit is scummy. It’s like taking a paid maternity leave when you know you’re not going back. |
| Everyone games the system. Being athlete is one way if one does not have $$$ or legacy. Do u think the Harvard Z list kids feel guilty for taking a spot not based on their merits but those of their parents/grandparents? |
Nice rationalization. First of all legacy is not as big a hook as people would like to think. Secondly it is not based on deception or anyone going to bat for you and planning on your being there. |
Not mom/dad legacy but multi generational legacy. For those only 1 generation, legacy doesn’t matter unless u had whacked it out of the park... |
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It's not gaming the system. The Ivies don't provide athletic scholarships and students are students first, not semi-pro athletes. It is really hard to be an excellent student and play sports. Many students drop out of sports in college, because of this and it is perfectly fine. Many others manage to do both and benefit from it.
Keep in mind that the AD and coaches at the schools and your DC's own high school coaches can tell if he has a passion for the sport and wants to keep competing. They will be loathe to use one of their slots with the admissions office for someone who hints at dropping the sport. |
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This would be a very unethical thing for a kid to do, especially if he's highly recruited. The coach and assistant coaches put a lot of time into trying to shape the best team they can, and they are 100% going to be assuming that their top recruits plan to play and hopefully end up as cornerstones of the team--their jobs depend in part on how well their recruits perform. Other kids around the country will be choosing schools in part based on which players have already committed, with an expectation of what sort of team they expect to join. Everyone understands if a kid arrives and finds he can't balance the sports and academics, but a kid dropping sports in that circumstance is very different from one used the commitment as a scam to get into the college with no plan to help the team or coaches.
I also don't understand why there is any reason to think the kid won't be able to balance school and sports once he gets there if he's been able to do it so far. Ivy sports are not nearly as intense as most D1 sports, and as mentioned earlier, there will be good tutoring and other academic resources available to all the students at the school. Also, as others have said, a kid who took this sort of selfish approach to his commitment would make it much harder for other kids from his school or club team to get offers. He would be embarrassing the HS or club coach who vouched for him too. I would have a very low opinion of any kid who did this, and any parents who encouraged it. The fact that other unethical people game the system all the time has no bearing on the issue--they all suck too. |
| Our new casually unethical low trust society in the USA. Thanks to third world invasion this is the new normal. Sad as hell. |
| I think your kid should play for at least a year. I'm not a hockey parent, but I have kids in several other high level sports and what does not ring true to me is that you are so blase about your kids abilities. I'm pretty certain that most athletes at the Ivy League were hoping and training to do just that -- for years. |
I don't think it is particularly ethical how colleges treat "scholar athletes" but, hey, that's the game they play. |
I have an ivy athlete - my DC is still in his sport but it is not the be all. And he stared as HS sophomore. |