<p>Is it fair that the very selective top colleges accept athletes with the bare minimum GPA and could have took the easiest classes and done no other extracurriculars other than their sport?</p>
<p>Won't this bring down the school's average GPA by a lot?</p>
<p>An athlete who could have done nothing in high school and basically slacked can get accepted to a top tier selective colleges while someone with much better grades and ECs and SAT score who worked their butt off can get rejected. The athlete also gets a free ride. </p>
<p>A college like Stanford could let in an athlete with a 2.0 GPA by taking the easiest classes with no EC's and low SAT score while reject a 4.0 valedictorian? That doesn't sound right.</p>
<p>Not enough athletes to make a difference. To answer your question, yes, it is unfair. Some athletes bring in big bucks for the schools, so they think it is worthwhile. </p>
<p>I think the NCAA should just mandate that scholarship athletes need to be in at least the middle 50% of students at that school. Then they need to split into two major divisions the Students Division and the Athletes Division.</p>
<p>Many athletes work hard for it, but being 7 feet tall or left-handed is not something that is practiced. Some of the best athletes are simply physically gifted and apply it to a sport. </p>
<p>Its the choice of the university. If they want to do so, they can. If they don’t want to, they don’t have to. Sure it may be unfair to you, but it could actually make financial sense for the university (And that determines everything).</p>
<p>Getting good enough at a sport to be able to be recruited to a top college is hardly “doing nothing in high school.” I know several athletes who have been recruited to play at top colleges. All of them have worked extremely hard in their sport. Most sacrificed the whole social experience of high school for their dreams of playing in college. </p>
<p>A large percentage of those athletes are being used by the school. They help the school make money and build a reputation, but do not end up graduating with a usable degree.</p>
<p>^^I believe the OP asked about top academic schools like S, H, Y, P, etc…student-athletes at these institutions graduate at the same/similar rates like non-athletes. Sorry, I don’t believe the OP was talking about Alabama or LSU…</p>
<p>Athletes at those schools, while not generally the caliber of the rest of the student body academically, will still usually be above average in smarts and academics.</p>
<p>Not saying that it’s definitely impossible, but find me a real-life example of an athlete that Stanford took with a 2.0 GPA and low SAT score and we can resume the discussion. </p>
<p>"A college like Stanford could let in an athlete with a 2.0 GPA by taking the easiest classes with no EC’s and low SAT score while reject a 4.0 valedictorian? That doesn’t sound right. "</p>
<p>A Pac-12 athlete recruit is a rare commodity – thus higher demand. A HS Val is among 36,000. Sounds right to me.</p>
<p>OP: Isn’t it a bit hypocritical of you to take this stance considering you were looking to be recruited yourself save for an injury?</p>
<p>BTW: to say a Stanford recruited athlete has “no ECs” is the second ludicrous thing you’ve said.</p>
<p>Being an elite athletic is an achievement. It takes talent, a lot of hard work and personal commitment. </p>
<p>I’d much rather give admissions preference to someone on the basis of their athletic achievement, than on the basis of having a parent who is an alum, or on the basis of having a grandparent from spain.</p>
<p>The athletes from our school district must maintain decent grades in order to play for any school team. Most of the student athletes at our local high school are intelligent and gifted. They have been recruited by top schools and their grades are impressive. Each year they compete for scholar athlete scholarships at the end of each school year and the competition continues to increase. Our top football player got into Stanford, Harvard and UCLA but his grades were as impressive as his AP scores and SATs. These kids work hard. They deserve to go if they’ve earned their spot. </p>
<p>The idea that athletes should be cut a break because they bring in money to a school is simply false. Out of all the athletic programs at public universities, only seven (Georgia, LSU, Penn State, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and UT-Austin) had a net profit each year from 2005-09. I haven’t found any data for private schools yet, but I don’t imagine the numbers are much better, and taken as a whole, collegiate athletics is certainly a money-losing proposition. On a purely financial basis, just about every school in the country would be better off financially if they eliminated their athletic programs.</p>
<p>The argument that athletes earn their accomplishment and are somehow more worthy in gaining an advantage than legacy, developmental, or URM students is only an argument of degree - it still doesn’t justify the granting of preference and I could just as easily argue that none of them should gain an advantage. In the case of athletes, I didn’t realize colleges and universities were in the business of sports, I thought they were here to educate. And if they were in the business of sports, they are certainly bad at it - see the previous paragraph.</p>
<p>If we want to go back to the argument of the student-athlete ideal, perhaps we need to renegotiate the balance between student and athlete. Maybe more students need to be athletes, as in everyone is required to play a sport at some level. And all athletes need to be students at a level representative of their institution - so they need to be admitted on close to the same academic criteria as their non-athletic peers. In other words, non-athletes with extraordinary accomplishments should have roughly the same chance of getting in with stats in the bottom 25% as do athletes - and those admissions should be transparent. </p>
<p>The only problem is, sports are a lot more fun if your team wins and few are willing to maintain integrity in the face of constantly losing to those willing to be less pure.</p>
<p>I think it’s unfair that a lot of people say that athletes going to top colleges is unfair. Athletes work really hard to excel at their sport and if they are good enough to get recruited into, say, Stanford or Duke, I don’t see a problem with it.</p>
<p>I think it’s unfair to assume that a recruited athlete is academically less qualified than any other student. Some are valedictorians, or State or National AP Scholars.</p>