<p>..blows my mind.
Literally one of the least intelligent students at my school is signing with Stanford because he's a decent baseball player. The #3 and #4 in our class were declined EA. This kid isn't even top 25% out of 700 with a sub-2000 SAT. I just don't understand. At all. How does this happen.</p>
<p>Hey. Your anecdotal evidence does not indicate a systematic trend of acceptance of dumb jocks.</p>
<p>I can counter your anecdotes with 3 in which top athletes were recruited, but were also intelligent and active in their communities.</p>
<ol>
<li>Andrew Luck. Co-valedictorian of a competitive high school (Stratford). I go to Stratford every year for Region Band and I can tell that the level of education there is very high.
2-3. Chiney and Nneka Ogwumike. Recruited for Girls Basketball. Both went to my high school, graduated Summa Cum Laude, took all AP classes, started a charity concert and founded a club, were both class presidents their senior years. Plus they were wonderful people and their teachers loved them.</li>
</ol>
<p>These 3 people would have likely been accepted even if they had been mediocre athletes.</p>
<p>Based on your and my anecdotal evidence, who’s to say whether recruitment of weak applicants is a problem or not?</p>
<p>Everyone recruits athletes, even if they officially don’t. Just take a deep breath and realize that everyone will end up where they’re supposed to at the end of the day.</p>
<p>Understand that serious national-level athletics are incredibly important to Stanford (putting them more in the category of Duke, e.g. than Harvard). Top academic students are a dime-a-dozen, and can be expected to be viewed that way by the admissions office.</p>
<p>You understate his athletic ability. I would guess he’s far better than decent.
Also, unless the other kids from your school were also being recruited for the Stanford Baseball team, this kid did not take a spot away from them; blame that on a val from another school that had a more appealing profile.</p>
<p>Dad2, understand that Harvard, and the rest of the world, considers Harvard and Stanford in the same “category”, although Stanford does manage to maintain amazing athletics across the board along with its stellar academic programs. Duke is also very good at both, and aspires to join that echelon.</p>
<p>OP - I’m just going to show you the other side of the story here. I was a recruited athlete, EA, and basically my entire recruiting class was deferred/rejected. So congrats to him for making it though the stanford slaughter - basically no athletes did. I also agree with some other posters that you must underestimate his athletic ability… it’s incredibly hard to make it on a recruiting list, and I know from personal experience.</p>
<p>If a Stanford team wants you bad enough, you’re in. Same for Ivy League too.</p>
<p>Not true. For Ivy League, yes. However, these coaches can pull as hard as they can but there’s no sure bet. And MrOrang3, it wasn’t that they didn’t want me enough - I was at the top of my recruiting class, and all of us in the top 5 were really hurt in some way or another (either rejected or deferred).</p>
<p>I’m sorry to hear this frosty6! You must have been so understandably disappointed!! What the heck happened out there in CA??! I thought “recruits” got LL or ED acceptances if the coach was supporting them!! This sux. I know it means you gave up other EA options. I hope it all works out for you in RD. I really do, sorry to hear this.</p>
<p>Yeah this is not always true. My friend is probably going to sign with Stanford to play rugby and football and hes probably one of the smartest kids at our school…he is def top 1% and has a 4.7 and got a 35 on the act. Now if we can talk about like the top uc’s like cal and ucla…and I’m not gonna lie they have let people in who are not qualified to get into that school regularly from my school.</p>
<p>People just can’t stop exaggerating recruited athlete admissions. Literally, about 10% of the students are intercollegiate athletes. Only a fraction of those were playing that sport in high school (in other words, they walked on to the team while at Stanford). Only a fraction of those who played the sport in high school are actually recruited (i.e. talk with coaches). Only a fraction of those are actually getting a boost in admissions. And only a tiny fraction of those weren’t terribly qualified.</p>
<p>Remember that there are really great athletes, and then there are really great athletes that are also top scholars. The most desirable kind is the latter. Most of Stanford’s athletes are the latter, because Stanford offers athletic scholarships to lure them away from other schools. Almost half of Stanford’s intercollegiate athletes are on an athletic scholarship (which varies in amount), a proxy, I think, for the quality of the athletes as scholars. But even those who aren’t on an athletic scholarship are usually top students as well, simply because a lot of the varsity sports do not recruit much if at all, and definitely don’t confer an advantage in admissions, so the students in those sports (e.g. rowing) have to be extremely well-qualified to get in.</p>
<p>So let’s stop blowing up the importance of athletics in admissions. Seriously, it’s not that big a deal. People are just bitter they didn’t get in, the same reason why they blame everything on affirmative action, legacies, and athletes, when the difference these groups make is far smaller than people want to think.</p>
<p>phantasmagoric-- are you saying the majority of college athletes never played the sport in high school?! That the majority of college athletes are walk-ons? This sounds a bit off to me…</p>
<p>"Only a fraction of those were playing that sport in high school (in other words, they walked on to the team while at Stanford). "</p>
<p>Phantasmagoric</p>
<p>Your assertions are wrong. Most athletes at elite universities are recruited and have lower stats. They get a boost in admissions because teams need players. Sporting events are social activities that a majority of students enjoy. Nationally ranked athletes, in my opinion, deserve a boost in admissions.</p>
<p>How did 5 recruited athletes get deferred/rejected from Stanford EA, and all from the same sport? I thought Stanford had NLI’s!</p>
<p>No, smileygerl, “most athletes” at elite universities are not recruited. Only the absolute top athletes are genuinely recruited, but there are many other competitive athletes at these schools. What phantasmagoric was explaining is that, amongst the athletes at Stanford, only those who were actually recruited for their sports benefit from that status when it comes to admissions. So it’s not such a big deal, nor such a common advantage, as people might think. And yes, Stanford has large numbers of scholar-athletes. Our school does extremely well at having these students matriculate, because it offers an unrivaled combination of superb academics and amazing athletics, so they can have it all here.</p>
<p>Don’t forget, sometimes funny things happen during “holistic” evaluation of applications.</p>
<p>
If he truly got recruited by Stanford, don’t complain. Nobody in your school had a chance going against him anyways. Stanford is ridiculously good at baseball and he is far more than a decent baseball player if that gave him an admissions boost.
If we’re talking strictly varsity athletes here, you’re wrong. The baseball team at Princeton, for example, has like 2-3 walk-ons with ~30 recruited varsity players.</p>
<p>It’s unfortunate to hear frosty6’s example, but most sports at elite schools do not recruit with ambiguity - they use LLs/NLIs.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, that’s not what I’m suggesting. I am saying that the following is true for a portion of the 800 intercollegiate sports athletes: whether they played the sport before college or not, they never had anything to do with athletic recruiting, and so they got in 100% on their own merits.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t know whether it’s a majority or just a large portion, but don’t forget that there are 34 intercollegiate teams at Stanford, and most don’t recruit aggressively if at all. Do you honestly think that Stanford heavily recruits for synchronized swimming, sailing, or squash? This corroborates my own personal experience (read: anecdotal evidence) that walk-ons are quite common, especially for non-big-time sports, like rowing. Again, I don’t know what the statistics are, but I also know quite a few walk-ons who had never played the sport before.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Read: “You’re wrong because I believe in this general stereotype about elite universities and have no data to actually show that you’re wrong.”</p>
<p>I am not even denying the core of what you’re saying (though “most” probably is an exaggeration), but, if you re-read my post, I’m giving you a basis of actual data upon which you can make additional assumptions (many of which are true of Stanford). The numbers I give are from Stanford Facts.</p>
<p>Monster…</p>
<p>I agree with you. I know several athletes who technically were “not recruited”. Ivys use likely letter, which is the same as recruited. The athletes I know who were received likely letters played a different sport. </p>
<p>Nationally ranked athletes(top 25) for any sport are with out a doubt recruited or receive a likely letter.</p>
<p>Zenkoan
My knowledge is with ivy and division 1 sports.</p>