<p>
One could also debate the academic nature of playing the cello, painting a still-life of flowers, or performing in musical theater.</p>
<p>
Being the offspring of an alum, in and of itself, is no achievement. </p>
<p>Colleges state that they want a diverse student body. Athletes, Cello Players, People of different backgrounds, People from different countries, People who paint, people who like Math, People who write…</p>
<p>You could say that about anyone…Is it fair that the math majors don’t have to do as well in their CR SAT scores? </p>
<p>If the OP really examines the recruited athletes’ profiles of the Ivies, she will see that the vast majority have stellar academics. Only in the helmet sports do you find lower AIs, and that must be balanced by higher AIs for the rest of the team.</p>
<p>Stanford and Duke are unique, as they do not have to adhere to the strict Ivy AI levels of recruits.</p>
<p>If you don’t like colleges with sports, bypass HYPSM and head to Oxford and Cambridge where it is all about grades and test scores.</p>
<p>@MrMom62: you idealist, you. In this world, American universities are in the business of a lot of things, including sports and wringing out alumni donations. BTW, at the big programs, athletes in the 2 big revenue sports subsidize the other sports programs. Some Ivies and NESCAC have a big proportion of athletes because that is who they are.</p>
<p>@fauve:</p>
<p>No need to leave the country. Caltech famously does not cut athletes any slack in admissions. I believe that UChicago and WashU also hold athletes to the same standards as all other applicants in admissions. MIT and JHU only care about athletic ability in one sport.</p>
<p>@PurpleTitan </p>
<p>yes, the sport of knowledge.</p>
<p>Sherpa & Dancingwriter, I completely agree:
<<<<<i think="" it’s="" unfair="" to="" assume="" that="" a="" recruited="" athlete="" is="" academically="" less="" qualified="" than="" any="" other="" student.="" some="" are="" valedictorians,="" or="" state="" national="" ap="" scholars="">>>>>>.</i></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="" national="" ap="" scholars="">
<p><<<<<i think="" it’s="" unfair="" that="" a="" lot="" of="" people="" say="" athletes="" going="" to="" top="" colleges="" is="" unfair.="" work="" really="" hard="" excel="" at="" their="" sport="" and="" if="" they="" are="" good="" enough="" get="" recruited="" into,="" say,="" stanford="" or="" duke,="" i="" don’t="" see="" problem="" with="" it.="">>>>></i></p><i think="" it’s="" unfair="" that="" a="" lot="" of="" people="" say="" athletes="" going="" to="" top="" colleges="" is="" unfair.="" work="" really="" hard="" excel="" at="" their="" sport="" and="" if="" they="" are="" good="" enough="" get="" recruited="" into,="" say,="" stanford="" or="" duke,="" i="" don’t="" see="" problem="" with="" it.="">
<p>All of my children were HS student athletes and all of my children had great stats. (My son was a NM corporate winner.) Athletes have to learn how to work in a team environment by balancing their studies, their physical and sleep needs while effectively managing their time to study and learning how to win and lose. Learning how to deal with making up tests, balancing practices twice a day, and gracefully dealing disappointment and losses were all beneficial to their adult development. </p>
<p>My eldest daughter had a biotech class in high school, and said that one of her classmates continually bragged that he was too good to be in the class with less capable people because he received perfect scores. She said she was in the class with some of the brightest and busiest students on campus-the leaders and award winners on campus: Officers, multi-sport athletes, band kids, photographers, etc. They also ignored the braggart. </p>
<p>This braggart spent his waking hours studying. She remembers walking in on a conversation he was having with the biotech teacher during college application season. He was pleading with the teacher to allow him to immediately create a Biotech Club presidency for him since he had the best grades. When my dd blurted: “we don’t have a biotech club on campus”, the teacher replied: “Exactly my point.” Apparently he spent so much time studying, he didn’t have any EC’s, and was asking the sports teams if he could just join the teams on a temporary basis during college app season. As other students entered, they asked him, “Why didn’t you join any clubs or sports throughout high school?” He responded, “Are you kidding me, I don’t have that kind of time!!” They all just laughed and said, “YOU don’t have time!”</p>
<p>I think US universities are attractive to the world, because of the diversity factor which includes, athletes, poets, musicians, and artists. The last time I looked, colleges are here to “educate” the “business of sports”. Professional sports generates LOTS of money (Superbowl, World Series, World Cup, Wimbledon) and involves the economics/finance major. Don’t these businesses require education??? </p>
</i></i>
<p>What is fair? </p>
<p>Life is not fair.</p>
<p>People may assail big time football & basketball programs that generate so much that doesn’t seem to be directly related to education and a uni’s goals. However, for many universities, these programs are the sole source of funding for the dozens of other sports and many athletic facilities on campus. Like PurpleTitan alluded to above, why do you sneer at the linebacker when the foil or epee fencer and the women’s rower benefit enormously due to the crowds on Saturday afternoons? If not for that stadium full of fans, the TV deals and equipment endorsements, the college cross country team’s uniforms look worse than the local high school.</p>
<p>I’m not saying college athletics gets carte blanche – there’s accountability and reform needed to be sure. There’s definitely a seemly side to some programs. But the blunt “that’s not fair” proclamations w/o any regard to context are like the ramblings we see on partisan cable TV.</p>
<p>@T26E4</p>
<p>Yes I do want to be recruited myself but I also maintain a solid 4.0 weighted GPA with lots of rigorous coursework while participating in athletics. I feel like I should have some sort of advantage in recruiting over athletes who slack academically but may be slightly better than me physically. I basically have to sacrifice both social life and sleep time. </p>
<p>And also im not saying that all athletes that get to play for top colleges slack academically. Obviously there are many athletes that do well academically as well. Im just talking about those athletes who just barely pass the NCAA D1 GPA requirements and SAT scores yet they still get in anyways cause of their sport. </p>
<p>Also to add on recently Notre Dame recently caught 4 athletes who play for their football team cheating by having someone else write their papers. Also last year their quarterback also got caught cheating and a basketball player too. The quarterback was expelled but he GOT BACK IN the school in the fall. Is that fair at all? </p>
<p>Someone who wasn’t an athlete and got caught cheating would have been expelled and not readmitted. </p>
<p>And this a school like Notre Dame who takes academics on athletes seriously.</p>
<p>You are way off on your assertion that athletes get into top colleges with terrible grades. As an example the average Harvard student has an AI of 225 while the typical Harvard athlete has an AI of 210. That equates to a 3.7 unweighted GPA and a composite 30 ACT. For the amount of time most athletes put into their sport those numbers are quite impressive.</p>
<p>I know of no recruited athlete who got into any Ivy with “easy courses”. In most cases, people are like my son who has an AI of 218 - that is below that of the Ivy he is targeting by two points, but his coursework is very rigourous, he travels around the region for his sport, and practices and plays up to 20 hours per week. He has high test scores but a mediocre GPA.</p>
<p>It is not like anyone with average or below coursework and bad grades in those is getting into an Ivy.</p>
<p>The Notre Dame story is funny; however, I do know of non-athletes who have been treated with kid gloves in terms of plagiarism (in some countries, the word and concept of “plagiarism” does not exist, impacting a professor’s and a school’s response). In my department, something to the level of someone else writing a paper would be an F in the course and academic probation, it would not be automatic expulsion. You would have to come up with specific cases at Notre Dame where non-athletes were treated differently as different schools have different honor codes and different interpretations.</p>
<p>For example, last semester a student had a full graded copy of a mid-term exam in their textbook for an open-book closed notes exam. That’s cheating. But I checked each student at the beginning of class, so I took it away immediately and did not take any other action. In other cases, when I used to check halfway through, if I caught a student cheating I would take their exam away and give them a zero.</p>
<p>I would say that certain schools do admit kids with horrible GPAs and SAT/ACT scores. But you need to face facts - MANY schools are admitting non-athletes with the same not college prep / GPA 2.0 at best / SAT / ACT not worth mentioning (1200 total was mentioned at my school). The dumbing down of education is pervasive, and it is not just student athletes. To take someone with subpar scores who is a recruited athlete is better than all of those who have subpar scores and aren’t contributing anything to the university.</p>
<p>There is a lot of jealousy towards athletes. To be a recruited athlete, you have to be a leader, you have to be a team player, you have to show dedication. Starting a club senior year that has five members isn’t going to cut it. Band is not going to cut it. To be an athlete shows something difficult to show in other realms.</p>
<p>@foolish:</p>
<p>Actually, crew for MIT and lacrosse for JHU. Look up what sports they offer athletic scholarships in.</p>
<p>To the OP: find me a Stanford athlete who got in with a 2.0 GPA and low SAT and we can resume the discussion. ND is a football factory (Duke and G’Town don’t have high academic standards for the sports they care about either, BTW). That doesn’t mean that all elite privates will accept athletes with poor academics.</p>
<p>@rhandco
Im not talking about the Ivy Leagues, i never mentioned it yet everyone is… I know that their athletes have high GPA and SAT scores.
Im talking about colleges like UCLA, Duke, Notre Dame, Kentucky. </p>
<p>Im gunna admit I made the Stanford statement wrong. I meant to say Duke (which has a 10.8% accept rate)
I know not all elite colleges accept athletes with poor academics, but some colleges do.</p>
<p>. </p>
<p>OP, well your college dorm maintenance, student bus, clubs, and facilities, aren’t entirely funded by tuition. Someone has to pay for it and a lot of that money comes from athletics. Yeah, a college may slightly lower it’s standards for a recruited athlete. But that’s so that you can have all the perks of being part of that college. I find it unfair that students complain about athletes having a slight upper hand in admissions. Being a scholarship D1 athlete isn’t easy either. You practically just prostitute yourself in hopes that you get drafted. These kids don’t get paid and up until recently, they had terrible meal plans to. They cannot make money for themselves and and live off of what their parents give them ONLY. You can lose everything if you get anything for free, if someone pays for a meal for you, if you exchange your signature for money, or make one simple college mistake. It’s not as easy as you think. You think it’s unfair that they get in? They think it’s unfair that their worth is measured by how much money they bring in and how many championships they win.</p>
<p>I have no problem with it whatsoever…those athletes help colleges by raising its profile and attracting more students…and, trust me, they work their butts off to get there…</p>
<p>I recommend Reclaiming the Game, by Bowen and Levin, for a full discussion of the issue. The advantage is not slight.</p>
<p>It would be a good idea if colleges were to prioritize academics in admissions. It would be a good idea if colleges were to treat athletes as students first, rather than athletes. (I won’t hold my breath.). The recent court decisions paving the way to treating athletes as employees are laudable. </p>
<p>@university89 You want to be recruited by these schools and are upset with them that they are taking students that you fear may not have performed as well as you academically. But I am guessing part of the reason you want to be an athlete at one of these is due to the resources they put into their athletes and the success they have on the national stage. If you just want to go to an elite academic school where you are surrounded by athletes like yourself, go to Chicago, Rochester, NYU, Williams, or Tufts. </p>
<p>But if you want to be treated special, if you want to be given lots or resources and compete on championship teams you will need championship level teammates and that means you want these people that may have lower scores to be on your team with you.</p>
<p>You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Without Duke, UCLA and others allowing high level athletes in with lower academic scores, it sounds like you wouldn’t want to be playing there.</p>
<p>I understand. I guess winning a championship is very important to colleges like Duke and Notre Dame so doing whatever it takes is necessary. Its all about the money.</p>
<p>As long as they aren’t breaking any laws, these private schools are free to define their own institutional priorities and admit whomever they want. </p>
<p>Get over it.</p>