In nearly every sport and school, there are athletes who identify as student-athletes and others who identify more as athletes who are also students. Coaches often prefer the second category.
Interesting that @parentologist hasn’t returned to the thread . . .
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What I found interesting was that male athletes underperformed other students, not that they thought of themselves as athletes first. That flies in the face of what some folks have posted here which is that athletes have higher gpa’s than non-athletes. So which is it? They don’t touch on female athletes - and maybe those are the students that are outperforming the norm (as opposed to underperforming). And, I don’t think Wesleyan is alone in terms of its treatment of recruited athletes - all the NESCAC schools admit kids with much lower academic credentials if they are interested enough in them as an athlete (it’s all over SCOIR). At my own alma mater I’ve been surprised at just how low a gpa/SAT can be if they want you on the court/field enough. Despite all that - in my view it’s unlikely that most athletes struggle at elite D3 schools. It’s too important to them (the schools) to make sure kids graduate.
No one has said athletes have higher GPAs than nonathletes. I think you are thinking of what I wrote, which was that athletes have higher GPAs in season. Which was in response to the discussion about the time commitment of their sport and its possible depressing effect on gpa.
Got it.
Athletes with lesser academic accomplishments and lower test scores are admitted to highly selective D3 LACs because those very same LACs want them there. The why, and the how, isn’t really anyone’s business. No one is entitled to a spot at these schools.
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That’s also called holistic admissions.
[quote=“Thorsmom66, post:91, topic:3646192, full:true”]” I don’t think Wesleyan is alone in terms of its treatment of recruited athletes - all the NESCAC schools admit kids with much lower academic credentials if they are interested enough in them as an athlete (it’s all over SCOIR).”
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Much lower? I think it would be tough to find many recruited athletes at the NESCACs with “much lower” admission stats than the lower end of the average range as they would have very few slots, if, any in that band in a given year.
ETA: Sorry - messed up the quoting in my post. The top paragraph is quoted from Thorsmom.
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Well, an athlete went to one NESCAC last year with a sub 1000 SAT (which I’m sure they didn’t submit) and a 3.5 weighted gpa. They aren’t the only one I’ve seen. I’d consider that much lower than the norm. It’s besides the point - I’m sure this student will be just fine and I’m supporter of holistic admissions. Schools can admit who they want.
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Hence why I used the term “many.” It is not common at all. But your post does help to prove our point that we (parents of athletes) don’t tend to see this proclaimed trend of struggling academically once they get on campus.
If we are talking about NESCAC, the schools can’t just admit whichever athletes they want. Instead the NESCAC has strict rules about how low they are allowed to go, when admitting recruited athletes, and how many athletes can have lower stats than non-athletes. It’s my understand that the NESCAC permits ~2 “athletic factor” admits per non-football sport + ~14 for football, who may have relatively weaker stats than non-athletes.
The Place of Athletic at Amherst report mentioned some differences between Athletic Factor athletes vs other types of athletes. For example, the portion doing a senior thesis in the most recent available year in the report were as follows. Coded athletes who have similar stats to non-athletes were 3x more likely to do a thesis than athletic factor athletes. I realize there are many possible reasons why this difference may exist, including reasons that have nothing to do with being “out of their depth academically,” such as being more likely to have limited free time, or more likely to choose to focus on sport over optional schoolwork.
- Non-Athlete – 46% do senior thesis
- Coded Athlete – 40% do senior thesis
- Athletic Factor Athlete – 14% do senior thesis
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“Are some recruited athletes out of their depth academically?”
This is such a poorly posed topic/question. Is it meant to merely provoke? Should we infer this based on OP’s prior barbs about athletic recruiting?
Are we talking about SEC/Big12 type conferences? Schools where Bowling is an academic offering? NESCAC? Patriot? Ivy?
What do we mean by “some”? And what does “out of their depth” mean? Failing? Bottom 25%? Underrepresented in Phi Beta Kappa?
I’m going to assume OP means “academically selective schools”.
Yes, some recruited athletes are out of their depth academically. As in, bottom quarter GPA. So are some URMs. And some ORMs. A whole bunch of Test Optional kids too. Some Legacies. Some Donors’ kids. Some public school kids with inflated GPAs. Plus some prep school kids whose parents paid for a lot of tutoring to inflate those GPAs and SATs. Not to mention the high school standouts who peaked in high school and aren’t able to handle the independence and self-steering required in college.
To help formulate a more factual response, I think I’ll go ask my 3 family members who played Ivy/NESCAC how under prepared they were when they got to Med School. 
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I’m.surprised no one has pointed out that this is seemingly exactly what happened, the lacrosse team is boasting about how a 3.71 team GPA puts them at the top of all D1 programs, but that would appear to put them at the bottom of the Harvard class?
Isn’t grade inflation great!
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Also we seldom see major distribution relative to non-athletes. I pulled up the Harvard Lacrosse roster, and they don’t list majors.
On the other hand, athletes are no different than other students as @SportyPrep points out. Students settle academically where they are comfortable in terms of major/class rigor based on interest, academic talent and time/effort priorities whether they are athletes or not and there are enough easy majors and classes at the top academic schools that they can get through.
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That the median GPA at Harvard is 3.9 out of 4.0 seems very fluffy to me.
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The Stanford newspaper did a deep dive on athlete majors for 2021-2022. They don’t do the comparison to non-athletes, but you can find pointers to less-precise data in various places online, including Stanford Facts: Top 5 majors by enrollment.
It’s self-reported based on the senior survey, so it is possible that people lied or selectively responded (high GPA persons may be more likely to report their GPA than low GPA persons). However, more official sources at similar highly selective, private colleges also usually report very high GPAs. For example, Yale has an honors cutoff that corresponds to 70th percentile. In the most recent report I could find, that 70th percentile honors cutoff was 3.89/4.0 If 70th percentile is 3.89, I’d expect median to be between 3.8 and 3.9… not far from the 3.9 median reported in Harvard’s senior survey.
In the most recent Harvard senior survey, the specific numbers were as follows. Athletes were reported to have a smaller portion 4.0s than any of the other 7 reported subgroups. However, they don’t delve further in to the specific GPAs for athletes.
4.0 – 22%
3.9 – 35%
3.8 – 19%
3.7 – 8%
3.6 – 5.5%
3.5 – 5%
Below 3.5 – 6%
Princeton has a history of grade deflation, so they have notable lower median GPAs than typical colleges of a similar selectivity, such as Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. Princeton’s senior survey does separate athlete vs non-athlete. Specific numbers are below:
Non-athlete: Median GPA = 3.8, 11% have GPA below 3.5
Athlete: Median GPA = 3.5, 43% have GPA below 3.5
I got tired of being pilloried for having dared to ask if anyone else was seeing what I had seen a few cases of: D3 recruited athletes who were admitted to play a sport, with"good enough" academic qualifcations for pretty selective LACs, then having trouble in demanding STEM classes for which they were not prepared. Ready, set, pillory!
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I think the pillorying (Yes, I had to look up the verb tense for pillory, because I never use that word) is due in large measure to many parents of SLAC athletes (myself included) being tired of assumptions made about our kids that basically amount to a pillory of their intelligence and qualifications. I don’t say that to accuse you of the same, but just to provide some context for defensive reactions.
I think @BKSquared 's response hit the nail on the head: lots of kids wash out in STEM and for all kinds of reasons that include being unprepared, but also include losing interest and having other passions. This isn’t peculiar to athletes, it’s just that it doesn’t get broken down this way for the non-athlete cohort. And the other point is crucial: being a D3 athlete is a massive commitment. My rower’s grad school GPA was a 4.0 (pure math, no other classes), and she did not have that GPA as an undergrad while rowing.
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