The Op refuses to actually discuss schools where this is relevant - at best at this point just appears to be a post to bash “unqualified” recruited athletes. At ALL selective universities my son spoke with - rigor of schedule was extremely important. We’ve seen dozens - if not more students go through NESAC/Ivy recruiting and they absolutely needed to be strong academic students. As I stated earlier, we absolutely know students who suffered through covid remote non-instruction and have zero doubt some students, athletes or not, are currently struggling as the academic environment was rough and hard to evaluate during some pretty critical years for these kids. But the idea that selective D3 schools are taking unqualified students - yeah not nearly enough actual evidence.
I’ve deleted posts on ap credit / strategies as off-topic.
Let’s stick to the questions asked by the OP. Unrelated questions like " How many hours does your athlete devote to the sport weekly?" “Should my kid retake calc if he got a 5 on the exam?” “What are the SAT requirements by sport?” are all valid but really deserve its own thread. Realistically, since they’ve all been asked before, the new thread should be preceded by a search, but baby steps.
Sorry, but i wont be badgered into giving names of schools, specific sports, or anything else that can be identified, for obvious reasons, and i dont know why a couple of responders keep insisting on this info. The exact specifics of each case dont matter. I gave plenty of info, more than enough for the conversation. I am seeing cases of some, not all, but some recruited athletes at selective D3 schools who seem to have been vaulted into an academic setting that is over their heads, and I was curious if others are seeing this too.
Lol. Badgered. All you had to say was, “I decline to answer that question” and we’d let it go. I think it was a pretty fair question since you were adamant that it was happening at certain caliber schools.
No. Not seeing it among my DD’s teammates. Then again, none of her team mates were admitted when they should not have been academically as they all went through the same preread process.
Haven’t seen it. Some 1st years will struggle adapting from the structure of high school to the flexibility and independence of college. Some students who were tightly wound, focused on getting admitted to the elite school, finally let loose and realize they can party, skip the reading (or class), and the sky doesn’t fall (right away). But the recruited athletes I’ve seen over the years are used to the structure their sport provides, and they carry that structure with them into the college experience. Plus their coaches are checking in about class, grades etc. I haven’t seen recruited athletes struggling because they can’t cut it academically.
Is someone aiming for pre-med going to have a harder time getting straight As when they have 25-30 hours per week of their sport in season? Perhaps yes, especially in a curved class when other students may have lots more time in the week for problem sets, practice etc. But that’s not because the athlete is mis-matched academically with their school, it’s because of the time commitment.
edited to add – we knew a D1 coach in a highly ranked program who told his players something along the lines of, in college, there’s academics, your sport, and your social life. Pick two because that’s what you’ll have time for.
Might I remind members of the forum rules: “Our forum is expected to be a friendly and welcoming place, and one in which members can post without their motives, intelligence, or other personal characteristics being questioned by others."
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/guidelines
As always, posts not in compliance with the rules are subject to deletion without notice or comment.
I will add also that out of my DD’s recruited class year for her sport at her school, only one teammate is NOT a STEM major.
Wow.
@parentologist people are asking for more information because those of us with athletes at selective schools are not seeing teammates struggle.
Alternatively how are you seeing multiple athletes over their head if you aren’t involved in any athletic team at a selective school?
You’ve posted before about your dislike of athletic recruiting. It’s hard to understand your OP as anything other than misplaced criticism of college athletes at selective schools, unless you can give more clarification that this phenomenon is actually happening. Because we are all telling you that we aren’t seeing it.
I’ve had the exact opposite experience and confirmed similar with colleagues. The athletes tend to be the stronger students, and very rarely are the weakest students the athletes.
Maybe chalk it up to different types of institutions. One with lower-tier D1 sports programs perhaps doesn’t have the same dynamics as yours.
You make an important point that I don’t think has been picked up elsewhere in this thread. College athletics at the DIII level that @Parentologist is focused on can provide valuable structure to support academic accomplishment. My son told me he believes he would never have done as well in college if he had not been participating in a demanding year-round sport - he could see that he benefited from the structure. A good DIII school (“good” as I define it) will make it clear to its athletes that academics comes first, and the coaches will reinforce that message. At my son’s school, a DIII school with a strong athletic program, I never heard of a recruited athlete struggling because they couldn’t cut it intellectually. I did hear of athletes who, after a year or two or three, decided either that they had simply had enough (some of these kids have been playing their sports at a high, and demanding, level for many years) or that they wanted to use that time for academics. In DIII, there’s no disincentive for a recruited athlete to quit if they decide that’s what they want, or need, to do. Of course, this creates an incentive for the schools to make sure their athletes have the academic support they need, as they presumably want to retain these students for their athletic programs.
Very possibly so. As I said, this is based on one university and one person’s experience (albeit over several years and several classes), so may or may not be representative of a larger trend.
This was also a large public university which may or may not have different dynamics than a smaller, private college.
So I’m just giving a single data point - for all I know, it’s an outlier.
It is probably more representative of large public universities; the OP was talking about selective liberal arts schools, an entirely different beast. It muddies the waters a bit to talk about all colleges and all athletic recruiting as if it were the same everywhere. I am glad you clarified :-).
I must have missed where the OP specified that. I only saw this qualification in the original post, but will admit I skimmed through the responses, so they may have further clarified that they were talking about LACs.
Fully agree.
Just to muddy the waters: I was talking about a non-selective large public university (with lower-tier D1 sports programs) where overall student abilities and preparation for college work are very wide-ranging from excellent to remedial. The athletes tend to be in the upper 1/3, at least in a particular department/field. Maybe one of the reasons is because even the ones in the major revenue sports likely don’t have illusions about going pro.
I’m not sure what it means to be “out of their depth academically.”
It is not in the interest of any college coach to recruit an athlete who is unlikely to meet the standards of the institution required to remain his academic eligibility to participate in varsity sports.
To my knowledge, the vast majority of varsity athletes maintain their eligibility and successfully graduate with a degree from their institution.
Field Hockey Records Second-Highest GPA in Division-III - Swarthmore College Athletics.
So if the definition of “out of their depth academically” means the inability to successfully graduate, then I think very few recruited athletes (especially at high academic universities) fall into that category.
However, if your point is that many recruited athletes take classes or choose majors that are less academically demanding. That is probably true, but there are a lot of reasons why that occurs.
There are differences among individual sports, schools, conferences, and NCAA divisions which make absolute comparisons difficult.
And to get even muddier…I was talking about a selective large public 
But I agree that maybe we need to limit it to one kind of university and perhaps LACs are a good place to examine the question. Public universities - whether selective or not - are as @cinnamon1212 notes, a different beast.
There seems to be a lot of NESCAC varsity athletes with very good GPAs.
Whatever happened to - not exactly on point here - but ten or 20 years ago, everyone was Prop 48 and had to sit out a year - i.e. they weren’t remotely ready for college.
You never hear about that anymore.
Others (at least one) just did it UNC style - much of their esteemed basketball championship team. And more.
They can act like they didn’t know - but really, many years of giving credit for non-existent classes/work…c’mon.
UNC scandal: Allegations, responses and a timeline on what’s to come - CBSSports.com
This 2017 article seems to believe “ The fact that male athletes don’t do as well in school as other students doesn’t mean they’re unable to do college-level work. Rather, they are more likely to think of themselves as athletes first and students second.”