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<p>I am not sure if this is true. After all, athletic talent is the only one getting early commits or likely letters in college admissions.</p>
<p>^^^Not true. Many schools send Likely Letters to talented students, whether for academics or music or athletics.</p>
<p>I would HAPPILY attend my #1 school and not recieve a dime.</p>
<p>Fishymom, You may be right. But I’ve never heard of a traveling orchestra conductor to recruit talent locking up an admission already in junior year. I doubt that they have slots to offer.</p>
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<p>Are YOU paying for your education, without any assistance from your parents? If so, then your comment could be valid; if not, then it is very easy spending someone else’s $$$.</p>
<p>There are a lot of bonuses that D1 athletes get aside from tuition. Getting into a school that maybe they wouldn’t qualify for academically, priority registration, priority dorm sign-up, special tutoring, etc…</p>
<p>Please, not another thread criticizing college athletics! We already have quite a few, not to mention threads on other topics which devolved into the same. Besides, that’s somewhat of a stretch given the original post, in which the poster laments no advantage to the elite Div. 1 athlete status. You may believe that other EC’s are more cultured, or more valuable from an educational standpoint than sports. Whether the emphasis and expenditures on athletics are justified or not in your opinion, please don’t take out your frustrations over it on the athletes themselves. They are just using their abilities to their advantage, the same as everyone else in this life. And let’s not forget that there is such a thing as innate ability and genetic differences. A deaf child might want for all the world to be a professional musician, but that’s unlikely to happen. My special needs daughter wants to go to a school like her sister attends. That is also highly unlikely. We all have to do the best we can with what we have. </p>
<p>And for every supposed perk a recruited athlete receives, there are an equal or greater number of disadvantages he must tolerate. An athlete has less time to focus on his studies, less time or no time for research opportunities, honors theses and the like, and greater difficulty obtaining summer internships due to needing to schedule them around training camps. He will miss quite a few campus activities due to travel, and will have to forgo parties and social events in order to get adequate sleep.</p>
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<p>Are there other academic talents / clubs / interests that require the level of travel that being an athlete does? I remember plenty of kids in college who had time-consuming EC’s (acting in plays, student government or political groups, editing the newspaper, playing in an orchestra, etc.). I don’t recall, however, that they were then entitled to miss classes to participate in those EC’s.</p>
<p>Debate. Academic Team meets. I missed class in HS for both, on occassion. The school even paid to fly me to nationals in San Antonio. Good times.</p>
<p>At my U, the administration strongly encourages faculty to allow for absences and make up work for any university-sponsored activities that may conflict with class. This doesn’t mean we allow for absence of regular practice or regular participation in other activities (you should schedule classes around your practice time), but for travel and other kinds of activities like that which can’t be scheduled around (like the ROTC kids having to spend a long weekend somewhere), most faculty generally allow it.</p>
<p>I do suspect athletes require more missed class, in season, than others. I have a lot of students doing a lot of things, both for the university and not, and every week I get email messages from all sorts of students about missing class. </p>
<p>And I agree with TheGFG here, let’s not turn this into another thread criticizing college athletics or weighing the cost/benefits of college athletics in general. Certainly missing class to participate is one of the costs. The OP was more focused on scholarships. So perhaps I just stop posting in this thread about this kind of stuff.</p>
<p>I forgot to mention that my athlete D’s financial aid package also presumed a job during the academic year. Worse, the amount she was supposed to earn was not small. Before school started, she inquired about a number of campus jobs, but they were all for federal work study which she wasn’t eligible for. She hasn’t yet found a job that fits around her class and practice schedule. After all, many days she has training obligations in both the AM and PM. All she has been able to do is some cafeteria work once or twice a week. She worked over her winter break to make up for not earning what she was supposed to this fall, but she will come up short and that shortfall will have to be paid by us, her parents.</p>
<p>Furthermore, what we didn’t realize before she started school, is that if an athlete is redshirted, he or she must PAY out of his own pocket any expenses like travel and competition fees associated with competing unattached or playing in non-league games or meets. This was a shock. So now she has to pay to play the sport, and she was recruited. So I’m not buying all the hype about rich benefits to athletes just yet. Maybe for the superstars and those in high profile sports like football, but not for the average kid.</p>
<p>I didn’t mean to turn this into athlet bashing. It was a reaction to fishy mom’s comment,</p>
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<p>I did’t know anything about looking down on athletic talents.</p>
<p>Scholarships for D1 athletes vary by sport. Son played water polo in HS and was looking at some D1 programs. NCAA limits men’s scholarships to the equivalent of 5 full rides. But, they can be split. Note, that there are 7 players in the pool at any one time, so the number of scholarships doesn’t even field a full set of players. And you need subs. Also interesting to note that women’s water polo has a NCAA limit of 12 scholarships. On the men’s side I believe that it is the football program that sucks up a lot of the scholarships and Title IX say that the total number of college scholarships have to be equal between men and women. I believe that most of the “minor” sports have the same NCAA number limits.</p>
<p>That said, the NCAA rules provide a limit. The college may not have the money to give out all it can. Some coaches will have the players “walk on” and then give out scholarships to those that actually make the team. Not a great system for the student but you can see why from the coach’s point of view. The coaches also figure in who qualifies for need based and academic aid.</p>
<p>Having spent many years working on Title IX issues, and reviewing the sports programs of numerous colleges from the community college level to the ACC, I am amazed that any college athletes, particularly those in the head count sports, ever graduate. If you receive a scholarship you are pretty much owned by the coach. It’s like having a physically demanding job during the entire school year on top of your academics. Between the school and the NCAA what you can do with your free time, and often who you can associate with and who you can work for, is strictly regulated. Coaches are banning their athletes from Twitter and Facebook. You often have to give up your FERPA rights. At some schools, athletes are subjected to stricter disciplinary procedures than other students. </p>
<p>Athletes’ failures on the field and otherwise are known to all and many 20-year olds find themselves humiliated in front of the whole world for transgressions associated with their age. Athletes are constantly being judged by adults who seem to believe they have a right to publicly criticize young people who are developmentally (emotionally if not physically) still children. College athletes are often injured, sometimes quite seriously, e.g., Eric LeGrand of Rutgers, miss substantial amount of class time, and risk not having their their scholarships renewed should their level of play disappoint the coach. In some cases, especially with the SEC schools, coaches over recruit so the scholarship you think you have is often yanked before school starts. At one college I visited, the quality of the facility for one sport was so bad that I thought that it represented a danger to the participants.</p>
<p>Better to go with an academic scholarship if you can; there are less rules.</p>
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<p>Wrong. </p>
<p>Scholarships do not have to be equal. The percentage of money allocated for athletic financial assistance for the men’s and women’s programs have to be within one percent of the percentage of males and females in the entire athletic program, not the undergraduate student body. So, if men represent 60% of the athletes, and women 40%, the dollars allocated to the male athletes should be between 59-61%. The percentage in this scenario going to female athletes could be between 39-41%. </p>
<p>The one percent figure was chosen by the US Department of Education because colleges have absolute control over the awarding of scholarships. Colleges are expected to budget for compliance. To the extent that the expenditures are not within the one percent, colleges can cite legitimate non-discriminatory reasons for the discrepancy. Such reasons would include: student-athletes withdrawing or being suspended or expelled during the school year leaving the the money unspent; students not showing up; students accepting academic scholarships; coaches being hired too late in the academic year to do a substantial amount of recruiting; summer school expenditures for athletes; failure to find the quality of athletes appropriate for the program (assuming that program was permitted to have the necessary money to adequately recruit); and attempts to develop an athletic program that meets the demonstrated interest and ability of the underrepresented sex.</p>
<p>“Kid is like every other teenager who is not a recording star, kid certainly does not have 50K lying around”</p>
<p>-Nobody does. That is why we choose less expensive schools that offer full ride/ full tuition/ large Merit scholarships based on academic performance even though a kid used to be a decent athlete (still holds many of her team records - were not broken for 13 years). D. has never pursue athletic schlarships, she has been contacted and pushed by few coaches. She is graduating in May from state school, going to Med. School next year, we have paid zero tuition for her UG education which has exceeded all of our expectations in all aspects of her college experience.</p>
<p>From today’s Chronicle of Higher Education.</p>
<p>[At</a> Many Colleges, No Health Insurance Means No Playing Time - Players - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/blogs/players/at-many-colleges-no-health-insurance-means-no-playing-time/28004?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en]At”>http://chronicle.com/blogs/players/at-many-colleges-no-health-insurance-means-no-playing-time/28004?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en)</p>
<p>Many thanks to ALL OF YOU for much good advice and helpful insight, we greatly appreciate it and continue to look forward to your thought-provoking replies.</p>
<p>And to MiamiDAP thanks as well but it seems you misread my original post. These are NOT schools we selected–they came after our kid, courted our kid, offered NCAA official overnights, OKed grades/transcripts with Admissions, had us fork over tax info and fill out the time-consuming forms, detailed the all-year involvement they wanted…and then our 17-year old was offered a spot with zero aid as if the kid was paying and they were merely a rec league coach hoping the kid would agree to pay for them, as opposed to the kid having other choices regarding schools and offers!</p>
<p>^I am sorry I did not see all details. But about the same has happened to our D. with several schools, including overnight at one of them. We just did not go so far as to fill forms, because she seemed never sirously considered choosing UG based on her sport. All schools were awesome and at one of them she actually received huge Merit Scholarship (about $28,000/year out of $33,000). However, she was pursuing academic goals and ended up at school that met all of her requirements. D. has tried to participate in her sport at club level in freshman year, but then realized that she did not have time (as vast majority of her teammates from HS years). One more reason for NOT pursuing athletic scholarships - huge time commitment at all levels. However, participating in sport club lis possible, depending on college major, some majors are more demanding than others. Looking back, I can say one thing with certainty - everything works out for the better, do not get discouraged with current events of college application. If kid continues working hard at whatever is important in his life, he will be successful and it will be recognized by those around him.</p>
<p>Contacted Overrated LAC FA office to ask why zero aid, hoping for CC story like they miscalculated or could point kid toward some available grant based on major, etc. They were unhelpful to the point of being rude. Coach constantly compares school to HYP, which it is not. Ivies seem to find grants that would suit admits but this place won’t suggest, search, or offer, nor answer my questions about grants they proudly list that would be a match (ie need-blind, etc.) Any new new thoughts? Should I ask this on the Athelete thread?</p>