<p>I know this girl through a friend that has just signed onto Cal Berkeley to play D1 volleyball for them. I was also browsing a local high school sports site that has articles about athletes in the area I live in and there was an article about her that stated that she had gotten recruit offers from Stanford, Notre Dame, and Texas (as well as Berk). Also a quote from her saying she visited Stanford and Berk on the same trip, but the Berkeley team chemistry was much better for her. So, just curious, to even show up like Stanford's radar, do you have to be pretty good academically? I mean obviously not 2100+SAT scores, but probably a 4.0gpa? I'm just curious...because Stanford's NCAA Women's volleyball is second in the nation, so for this girl to be getting offers from them, she is probably VERY good, but just curious if these schools (Notre Dame, Stanford, UCB) also care about academics?</p>
<p>I don't know about other recruits and other sports, but I'm a lightweight rowing recruit and I'm smart... 2300, 4.0, national merit semifinalist, etc. I guess that's not that helpful because I can't tell you if I would have been recruited with lower stats.</p>
<p>I'm an athletic recruit and I'm valedictorian of my class. I know that to even get recruited any student needs to be OK'd by Stanford Admissions first. If the student has any C's, ACT's below 27, or any other unsatisfactory scores the coaches can't pursue that student as a recruit. </p>
<p>Also, if a student does get accepted to Stanford, they can still get their acceptance revoked. I know a football player who was a great student and third quarter he had a C in AP Calculus. Stanford sent him a letter saying that if that wasn't a B by the end of the year his acceptance would be rescinded. </p>
<p>So, yes. Stanford cares a lot about academics. The coaches were complaining to me when I was out there that it is a lot harder to recruit athletes for Stanford than it is to any of the Ivys. Kids who Standford Admissions would not accept are getting recruited at Princeton and Harvard. One of the Stanford coaches, who used to work at Colombia, said that kids he used to recruit there would never meet the academic requirements here.</p>
<p>i would imagine the better you are in the sport, especially basketball and football since they're the biggest programs, the more leeway you have for grades. I would think a top 10 national football or basketball player would have no problem getting on the team with sub par grades (GPA ~ 2.50). at least that's what i think.</p>
<p>Not always. Very often, yes, but sometimes... well, I know someone who was accepted as a recruited athlete and his SAT was a 1400 -- on the new scale. Not that the SAT is a definitive measure of intelligence, but that, to me, is just a testament to his caliber (as a student).</p>
<p>Two people from school were recruited by Stanford
One is a football player, URM, 3.0 GPA, 1600 SAT
The other is a cross country runner who I don't know much about
So Stanford recruits dumb athletes, at least for football</p>
<p>I wouldn't call a kid with slightly above average SATs and a B average "dumb"--that is insulting
Obviously these stats are low for Stanford, but admissions must have felt he could do the work at Stanford or he would not have been admitted.</p>
<p>99% of the time, athletes that are good enough to be recruited by D1 schools, aren't going to have the time to invest in grades that others have. So a 3.0+ is good for them, though on the low end of the athletes.</p>
<p>Most stanford athletes are smart and good at sports. I think your one example is an outlier to the whole and that your simply trying to pin up the "dumb black athlete" while not paying any attention to the cross country runner.</p>
<p>The majority of athletes that I know personally, ranging from runners to swimmers to gymnasts, are extremely intelligent, and in some cases, even at the top of the class. I'm very impressed by how they handle academics as well as athletics.</p>
<p>after stanford beat SC in football, there was an article in the LA times about this...yes stanford recruits are very smart. stanford does very little to lower the academic standards bar for athletic recruits...while schools like cal, ucla, and usc have football team graduation rates in the mid-50%, stanford's is in the high 80s or 90s (forget which)</p>
<p>Well, having studied this a bit, here's some data for the top schools. In most sports other than M basketball and M football and M ice-hockey, athletes are pretty competitive students, though many may not have been admitted without the athletic tag just because of the strenght of the applicant pool, not because they are not strong students. </p>
<p>Even in those 3 sports, Stanford and the Ivies have many excellent students, who would have gotten in without being recruited.</p>
<p>In some (track comes to mind) the athletes tend to be exceptionally good students (I am not implying causation, just noting correlation).</p>
<p>The Ivy coaches complain that Stanford lowers its academic standards too much for athletes, and Stanford coaches apparently have the same complaint about the Ivies (see Crut's post). I am guessing it is not actually very different between them. Stanford of course has one huge advantage if they are competing with an Ivy - they have athletic scholarships, and the Ivies don't, even though they are D1 schools. The Ivy League agreement prohibits athletic scholarships.</p>
<p>At both Stanford and the Ivies, the admissions office ALONE decides if a recruit will be admitted - coaches only flag who their recruits are. Coaches cannot admit a student. This is different from most D1 schools, where if the athlete meets the NCAA academic requirements, the athletic dept can admit him/her, often without an app being filled out initially, leaving the formalities only for the admissions office. Duke comes to mind as a school that is very selective, but the coaches can admit students.</p>
<p>I think that the only sports where the bar is lowered a bit are football, basketball and baseball. But emphasis on "a bit". They are still pretty smart, and the coaches continue to say that there are usually only a handful of the top recruits in those sports who even have a chance to be admitted at Stanford because of the high academic standards. </p>
<p>I know several of this year's athletic recruits are all also at the top of their classes at competitive high schools. (How do those kids DO it :)??)</p>
<p>I read an article somewhere where over half the football team consisted of national merit finalists.</p>
<p>I might be slightly wrong, but I don't think I'm too far off.</p>
<p>My friend is currently getting recruited for baseball for stanford and he tells me that they said he must be at the top of the class, have good grades, other extra curriculars, and that being a top-notch athlete does not guarantee him acceptance.</p>
<p>The article that you're probably talking about is here. <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/400958-stanford-defeats-usc-2.html%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/400958-stanford-defeats-usc-2.html</a> The link is in post 17, and the rest of the thread is kinda neat too :)</p>
<p>"So, yes. Stanford cares a lot about academics. The coaches were complaining to me when I was out there that it is a lot harder to recruit athletes for Stanford than it is to any of the Ivys. Kids who Standford Admissions would not accept are getting recruited at Princeton and Harvard. One of the Stanford coaches, who used to work at Colombia, said that kids he used to recruit there would never meet the academic requirements here."</p>
<p>You do know it is Columbia not Colombia...not one for spelling corrections, but please at least get the schools correct... ;)</p>
<p>There are exceptions to the rule everywhere, including all of the Ivies, but I can say from firsthand (sort of) experience that Stanford cares dearly about academics -- and that the school is attracting top-level student athletes. My daughter has opted for Stanford next year, after being heavily recruited by Princeton, Yale and Harvard among others. She was virtually guaranteed acceptance at those places (4.0 and over 2300 on boards) but chose to become a Cardinal because of the stellar academics, friendliness of the campus and high-caliber students (in addition to her sport). Despite being a top level recruit, her application still had to go through a thorough assessment process. There were no guarantees.</p>
<p>Since the OP made a reference to ND, I guess I'll answer about my school. Notre Dame also cares a lot about academics. The team average GPA is a 3.2. My neighbor, Jashaad Gaines, turned down Stanford for ND. He's majoring in mechanical engineering and had a 3.9 in high school. I know that's a limited sample size but I believe it to be representative of a lot of our athletes. However, like most schools, we do lower admissions standards a bit for our athletes. It's a tough tradeoff, but I think that it's worth it.</p>
<p>^^I can speak from similar experience at Harvard - my daughter had 1600 single sitting (not superscore) in the old SAT I and 4 SAT II 800s in Physics, Math II , Writing and USH, and had all 5s in her many APs, but there were no guarantees at Harvard , Princeton or Columbia - she had to be admitted by the admissions office, with no guarantees at all.</p>
<p>I would have to say there really is no difference between the Ivies and Stanford in this respect - although if you listen to the coaches, they all feel that the other schools they compete with have lower standards.</p>
<p>"...although if you listen to the coaches, they all feel
that the other schools they compete with have lower standards."</p>
<p>In my son's sport (not football or basketball) the other Division 1 schools that compete with Stanford actually do have embarrassingly low standards. Princeton, Harvard, and Brown accept students-athletes who are as academically qualified as those admitted to Stanford, but have much less competitive teams in my son's sport. Stanford is one the rare schools with high academic standards and mostly excellent athletics.</p>