Anonymous wrote:We know plenty of lacrosse kids who got significant merit aid at low D1 or D3 schools by dropping down multiple levels academically.

This made college very affordable for their family and allowed them to continue with playing lacrosse, which were their top two priorities.

The only way to have a shot at everything (lacrosse and top-tier academics) is to be full-pay. Or to be exceptional on both fronts and get into an Ivy or Duke, Stanford, Northwestern, Vandy etc. Or to play club. It is what it is.

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Anonymous wrote:Really hard to feel sorry for people when the athletic hook doesn’t work for them.

It’s not hard if you’re not an ahole because you know how much work the kid put into it.

Our kids who study hard, act in plays, win speech & debate competitions, tutor peers, and write for the paper also are kids who put a lot a lot of work in. they just don't feel as entitled to gain admission with lower academic standards!

why should students whose EC is sports gain admission with lower academic standards to play sports that don't bring any benefit to the school's other students? who watches cross-country, volleyball, squash, etc.?

at least diversity helps everyone by not having people in bubbles.

As a parent of a D1 athlete and another who was heavily involved in school ECs, there’s no comparison. The D1 athlete’s commitment was exponentially higher, and the non-athlete child would agree. The pressure she was under to perform at her sport and to peak at exactly the right time in state and national level competition was nothing like writing for the school paper.

I’m extremely proud of both of them, but the fact that the athlete’s grades lagged in comparison to the EC kid is completely justified considering the level of commitment. And it made sense to me that the athlete ended up at an Ivy with slightly lower grades and considerably lower test scores, whereas the other student with the 1500 SAT did not.

That is so wrong. So wrong. It's sad that you, a reasonably intelligent adult, would think like this.

Being one of the best athletes in your sport ever in your 100 year old HS, and one of the top 75 athletes in your sport in the country (among thousands of participants) in your graduation year AND finishing in the top 5 percent of your class at the same time is more impressive than finishing in the top 2 percent and writing for the school paper. I witnessed the determination that both took, and it just is. No one could ever convince me otherwise.

We had one of those at my kids feeder. The kid was an all state athlete, top student and all round great kid. I don't know how she did it but it was impressive. Good for you and your child.

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Anonymous wrote:I don't think its at all called for to be snide and attack this parent. The fact is it is hard to predict ahead of time how your kid will do academically let alone athletically to be proactively ruling out whole categories of colleges

Agreed! College costs in the US are bananas. It's not OP's fault.

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Anonymous wrote:Really hard to feel sorry for people when the athletic hook doesn’t work for them.

It’s not hard if you’re not an ahole because you know how much work the kid put into it.

Our kids who study hard, act in plays, win speech & debate competitions, tutor peers, and write for the paper also are kids who put a lot a lot of work in. they just don't feel as entitled to gain admission with lower academic standards!

why should students whose EC is sports gain admission with lower academic standards to play sports that don't bring any benefit to the school's other students? who watches cross-country, volleyball, squash, etc.?

at least diversity helps everyone by not having people in bubbles.

Because sports are institutional priorities at many schools, particularly old private schools. And, these schools have every right to their priorities. Nobody complains about athletes at Towson because people don't care about athletes and athletics except when they consume seats at a school they covet. Seems like simple envy and jealousy to me.

It’s a hook, an unearned advantage that gets a student a special admissions process they otherwise wouldn’t have gotten.

It’s part of American athlete worship culture.

Athletics are an institutional priority for these schools and have been for 150 years. Why can't you get that through your head?

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Anonymous wrote:DD is at an Ivy playing her sport. She got zero financial aid. She's now a sophomore and has been a really hard road. She doesn't get much playing time and doesn't get along with her teammates very much. The students at the school are a little weird because they are so so smart and she still working on making friends. The grass is not always greener. In hindsight, I would have encouraged her skip to D1 and just go in-state as a regular applicant.

this is the problem when Ivies and other top schools relax the academic standards too much for athletes. Then if the kid doesn’t continue with the sport then they also don’t really fit in/match the level of the rest of the kids who got in on academic merit. This was my experience at one of the Ivies.

Yes yes yes. Even when they continue it is a problem. The ivy kids who are recruited athletes are more commonly than not weaker students, sometimes signifciantly. They struggle to just be average in difficult "curved to the mean" classes paths such as physics, calc, econ, engineering. Most do not attempt such classes or if they do they switch out. To be fair, for the non-athletes it is nice to have a guaranteed group who cannot compete well, and you can beat. I realize that sounds harsh but with grades on curves it matters and the non-athletes/non-weaker other hooks are happy to have whatever advantage they can.

Easily 50% of all athletes…and more like 75% for sports like fencing or squash…have stats that are at the 50%ile+ for the Ivy school. They have to for the academic indexes to balance out.

I don’t disagree they aren’t recruiting athletes with lower stats…but you are implying a much larger %age than is actual.

As do most rejected applicants.

We get that…but PP implied most athletes are weaker students which isn’t true.

You don’t get the point: the rejected pile (where most of these athletes would have been) does indeed consist of weaker students.

No…they wouldn’t. If most of the athletes have stats equivalent to 50% of all the non-athlete existing students…why would they be rejected?

Huh? If the athletes were not athletes, they would join the non-athlete rejected applicants (who you already agreed had similar stats to the athletes) in……..(wait for it)….the rejection pile.

Why is that? You know nothing about other things that they might have done. Don't make assumptions, many could have still gotten in.

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Anonymous wrote:Really hard to feel sorry for people when the athletic hook doesn’t work for them.

It’s not hard if you’re not an ahole because you know how much work the kid put into it.

Our kids who study hard, act in plays, win speech & debate competitions, tutor peers, and write for the paper also are kids who put a lot a lot of work in. they just don't feel as entitled to gain admission with lower academic standards!

why should students whose EC is sports gain admission with lower academic standards to play sports that don't bring any benefit to the school's other students? who watches cross-country, volleyball, squash, etc.?

at least diversity helps everyone by not having people in bubbles.

Because sports are institutional priorities at many schools, particularly old private schools. And, these schools have every right to their priorities. Nobody complains about athletes at Towson because people don't care about athletes and athletics except when they consume seats at a school they covet. Seems like simple envy and jealousy to me.

It’s a hook, an unearned advantage that gets a student a special admissions process they otherwise wouldn’t have gotten.

It’s part of American athlete worship culture.

Athletics are an institutional priority for these schools and have been for 150 years. Why can't you get that through your head?

Anonymous wrote:We know plenty of lacrosse kids who got significant merit aid at low D1 or D3 schools by dropping down multiple levels academically.

This made college very affordable for their family and allowed them to continue with playing lacrosse, which were their top two priorities.

The only way to have a shot at everything (lacrosse and top-tier academics) is to be full-pay. Or to be exceptional on both fronts and get into an Ivy or Duke, Stanford, Northwestern, Vandy etc. Or to play club. It is what it is.

Anonymous wrote:We know plenty of lacrosse kids who got significant merit aid at low D1 or D3 schools by dropping down multiple levels academically.

This made college very affordable for their family and allowed them to continue with playing lacrosse, which were their top two priorities.

The only way to have a shot at everything (lacrosse and top-tier academics) is to be full-pay. Or to be exceptional on both fronts and get into an Ivy or Duke, Stanford, Northwestern, Vandy etc. Or to play club. It is what it is.

Anonymous wrote:If your kid can get D1 offers, are schools like Lafayette, HC, Davidson or Richmond not good enough? They provide athletic scholarships.

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Anonymous wrote:Really hard to feel sorry for people when the athletic hook doesn’t work for them.

It’s not hard if you’re not an ahole because you know how much work the kid put into it.

Our kids who study hard, act in plays, win speech & debate competitions, tutor peers, and write for the paper also are kids who put a lot a lot of work in. they just don't feel as entitled to gain admission with lower academic standards!

why should students whose EC is sports gain admission with lower academic standards to play sports that don't bring any benefit to the school's other students? who watches cross-country, volleyball, squash, etc.?

at least diversity helps everyone by not having people in bubbles.

Because sports are institutional priorities at many schools, particularly old private schools. And, these schools have every right to their priorities. Nobody complains about athletes at Towson because people don't care about athletes and athletics except when they consume seats at a school they covet. Seems like simple envy and jealousy to me.

It’s a hook, an unearned advantage that gets a student a special admissions process they otherwise wouldn’t have gotten.

It’s part of American athlete worship culture.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Really hard to feel sorry for people when the athletic hook doesn’t work for them.

It’s not hard if you’re not an ahole because you know how much work the kid put into it.

Our kids who study hard, act in plays, win speech & debate competitions, tutor peers, and write for the paper also are kids who put a lot a lot of work in. they just don't feel as entitled to gain admission with lower academic standards!

why should students whose EC is sports gain admission with lower academic standards to play sports that don't bring any benefit to the school's other students? who watches cross-country, volleyball, squash, etc.?

at least diversity helps everyone by not having people in bubbles.

As a parent of a D1 athlete and another who was heavily involved in school ECs, there’s no comparison. The D1 athlete’s commitment was exponentially higher, and the non-athlete child would agree. The pressure she was under to perform at her sport and to peak at exactly the right time in state and national level competition was nothing like writing for the school paper.

I’m extremely proud of both of them, but the fact that the athlete’s grades lagged in comparison to the EC kid is completely justified considering the level of commitment. And it made sense to me that the athlete ended up at an Ivy with slightly lower grades and considerably lower test scores, whereas the other student with the 1500 SAT did not.

That is so wrong. So wrong. It's sad that you, a reasonably intelligent adult, would think like this.

Being one of the best athletes in your sport ever in your 100 year old HS, and one of the top 75 athletes in your sport in the country (among thousands of participants) in your graduation year AND finishing in the top 5 percent of your class at the same time is more impressive than finishing in the top 2 percent and writing for the school paper. I witnessed the determination that both took, and it just is. No one could ever convince me otherwise.

Anonymous wrote:Some D3 schools give generous merit aid for athletes.

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Anonymous wrote:DD is at an Ivy playing her sport. She got zero financial aid. She's now a sophomore and has been a really hard road. She doesn't get much playing time and doesn't get along with her teammates very much. The students at the school are a little weird because they are so so smart and she still working on making friends. The grass is not always greener. In hindsight, I would have encouraged her skip to D1 and just go in-state as a regular applicant.

this is the problem when Ivies and other top schools relax the academic standards too much for athletes. Then if the kid doesn’t continue with the sport then they also don’t really fit in/match the level of the rest of the kids who got in on academic merit. This was my experience at one of the Ivies.

Yes yes yes. Even when they continue it is a problem. The ivy kids who are recruited athletes are more commonly than not weaker students, sometimes signifciantly. They struggle to just be average in difficult "curved to the mean" classes paths such as physics, calc, econ, engineering. Most do not attempt such classes or if they do they switch out. To be fair, for the non-athletes it is nice to have a guaranteed group who cannot compete well, and you can beat. I realize that sounds harsh but with grades on curves it matters and the non-athletes/non-weaker other hooks are happy to have whatever advantage they can.

Easily 50% of all athletes…and more like 75% for sports like fencing or squash…have stats that are at the 50%ile+ for the Ivy school. They have to for the academic indexes to balance out.

I don’t disagree they aren’t recruiting athletes with lower stats…but you are implying a much larger %age than is actual.

As do most rejected applicants.

We get that…but PP implied most athletes are weaker students which isn’t true.

You don’t get the point: the rejected pile (where most of these athletes would have been) does indeed consist of weaker students.

No…they wouldn’t. If most of the athletes have stats equivalent to 50% of all the non-athlete existing students…why would they be rejected?

Huh? If the athletes were not athletes, they would join the non-athlete rejected applicants (who you already agreed had similar stats to the athletes) in……..(wait for it)….the rejection pile.