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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]NP. The people who really, really love TO the most are D1 coaches of men’s sports that are played internationally. It means they can now recruit young men who have been semi-pro in their home countries regardless of how paltry their high school education was (and often, it was very paltry) because there is no objective academic measure to be met. No 18-year-old US senior can compete against a 22-year-old semipro who doesn’t have to get a minimum SAT score any more, so TO is changing the face of D1 recruiting very quickly. Men’s swimming, water polo, tennis, golf, soccer, basketball, hockey, etc. are all impacted by this. [/quote]

This is fascinating.  Do you have any additional information or links to articles?

This will also apply to women’s sports as well I’m sure.  [/quote]

Sports admit should be limited to certain majors like physical education[/quote]

You can tell a lot about the priorities and values of a school by looking at their current rosters, which usually have a bio section for at least the starters. You'll see where they are from and their majors. SM will also usually communicate some of this (with top schools broadcasting their team GPAs). Many, many schools recruit from out of the country. For my child's sport, for example, if you plan on going Ivy and playing- forget it. Harvard, for example, has a roster that is 3/4 out of the country. Even lots of d3 schools recruit from out of the country. I don't know if they are all test optional or not. Do they have SAT in Argentina? Netherlands? Etc.?

Top academic schools let you major in whatever you want, but USUALLY (not always)  the sport success suffers. For top sports teams (again, not all) you will see a lot of "communications" and "exercise science" majors. You can forget a lot of the stem pathways b/c it's just not doable. My neighbor was a D1 athlete and was told he could pick his sport or engineering (he picked the sport). And I have other friends whose kids have similar stories. [/quote]

I’m the original PP in this thread who started the post about coaches. To be entirely clear, I have no problems whatsoever with schools choosing to admit athletes. Those students have traditionally gone on to be very successful and are disproportionately big donors, so they give back in a way other alumni don’t. I also like the team spirit they bring to campuses, and at the top level schools the athletes have traditionally been very good students themselves, while also excelling at their sport. As a group they tend to be driven and campus contributors. I do not share some DCUM posters’ anti-athlete fervor (in fact I think it’s ridiculous for the most part). FWIW the only category of admits I think should be removed or restricted are legacies.

But I do wonder if the profile of athletes at schools will be changed because of TO. Now coaches can freely recruit globally and do — for instance D1 mens soccer rosters are filling up quickly with 22-year-old freshmen who played essentially semi-pro in their home countries — because the removal of testing means international candidates no longer have to show any real academic proficiency to get in (note this doesn’t apply to US athlete applicants the same way — in fact high SATs will be valued for US athlete applicants because a high GPA and test scores means a coach doesn’t have to use a preferred slot for that admit).

There used to be a sort of academic quid pro quo for non-revenue sports on the men’s side: schools (up to and including Ivies) would let coaches in revenue sports take kids who somewhat skewed the incoming GPAs and SAT scores downwards with the understanding that the non-revenue sports would admit athletes with higher GPAs and SAT scores, so that the athlete population as a whole wasn’t actually too far off from the general pool. But now, with GPAs only considered, there isn’t really anything blocking international applicants in non-revenue sports, whereas their very low SATs used to make them non-starters for admissions. It has vastly expanded the potential player pool for certain sports. [/quote]

I'm who you are responding to and I have no issue with athletes, either. My child is one but will not be TO. I was just responding to those posts who were commenting on TO and other flexibilities for athletes.[/quote]

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