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<p>True. UCLA is ranked higher in some surveys.
[World’s</a> Best Colleges: Top 400 - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/worlds-best-colleges/2009/06/18/worlds-best-colleges-top-400.html]World’s”>http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/worlds-best-colleges/2009/06/18/worlds-best-colleges-top-400.html)</p>
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I’m a recruited athlete myself (only 2011 but I’m beginning to garner interest from a few schools) and I think that the recruited athlete bar is way too low. I’m sort of the unspoken recruited athlete though; the one who could get into top schools without a sport. I mean, overall I’m alright with Harvard letting in recruited athletes with 2000 SAT scores and 3.6 GPAs. But those standards really shouldn’t drop lower than that in my opinion. And Stanford/Duke drop their standards so low to a point where it’s pretty much impossible any true student-athlete to play a sport at either unless they’re God and can get 2300+ SAT scores and also be an All-American athlete.</p>
<p>Don’t know about Duke, but I definitely know that’s not true at Stanford. Many students at Stanford are recruited athletes and almost all perform just fine academically. Recruited athletes graduate from Stanford at the same rate as all the students, that is to say, virtually all. In fact, a football player (yes one of those people whom the bar is lowered so much for), won a very competitive in house CS contest. If you attend Stanford and take CS, you’ll know what I’m talking about. I doubt anyone on this thread has the combination of the intelligence and work ethic to do this. At Stanford you are a student first, an athlete second. They won’t admit kids who haven’t shown the proof that they can do the work, though I definitely don’t agree with your “cutoffs”. There are unhooked (at least in the traditional sense) kids getting admitted with weaker stats all the time.</p>
<p>OP: what you should learn now is life is not fair. It is never fair and it will not cut you a break so take what you can get. Not saying i agree or disagree with this point. But you have to learn that people make decisions. Decisions are made for the betterment of other people, not to make things “fair”. The quicker you learn this the easier the transition to the real world will be for you. Sorry 2 break it to you</p>
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If you get into Stanford as a baseball/basketball/football player then I highly doubt you will have academics as your first priority. I’ve seen what it takes to be an athlete at Stanford and the standards are extraordinarily high; they’re essentially a bigtime D1 school (bigger than Duke IMO) that happens to have the academic opportunities offered at none of the other big D1s (ASU, Oklahoma, LSU, etc). It is frankly impossible for these recruited athletes to be nearly as strong academically as the rest of the Stanford student body. In order to become the athletes they are they have had to invest the majority of their time improving. I’m not looking down upon this really; it’s essentially a fact that at bigtime D1s, including Stanford, student-athletes will usually put athletics first.</p>
<p>Also, sure, these players will be capable of graduating from Stanford, but it would be foolish to think most recruited athletes take the same rigorous courses other Stanford students take. I remember reading about Matt Leinart, former USC quarterback, and how in senior year all he took was salsa dancing. I’m not sure if this extends to most other schools but it’s certainly plausible that many athletes would take considerably less challenging courses because otherwise it would be impossible to manage both sports and academics.</p>
<p>And cutoff scores are reasonably vague at D1s, but they are certainly not non-existent. In fact, you’ll find that at D3 schools they are not only existent but are rather firm. D3 coaches have told me that I’ll need essentially a 2100 on the SAT in order to be recruited. Ivy D1s will only drop their standards a little more. And yet Stanford has taken it upon themselves to recruit the very best athletes in the nation.</p>
<p>Clearly their mission is to have college students that are the best at what they do. This is how they have arguably the best academics in the nation and also have one of the best athletics departments in the nation as well. I just simply don’t agree with their goals.</p>
<p>My take on this is, I know schools lower ther standards for a person that plays a sport and will continue to play for that school. I was in the same situation when i first transfered to USC. My gpa was below the min and they didnt even offer me a scholarship. I just got a walkon spot. USC was not the only school that did this. I had atleast 10 schools lower the standards for me.</p>
<p>^What sport? Walking on for any sport at USC is quite an accomplishment.</p>
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<p>I’m pretty sure that was because he was a 5th year senior and had already graduated with a bachelor’s degree.</p>
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Selectivity-wise, they are scarcely comparable. As a state school (and a premiere D1) UCLA’s SAT scores are considerably lower than Dartmouth’s.
Ahh, that makes more sense then. But still, odds are, if you’re a football player at an academically-demanding school you aren’t going to be majoring in something like engineering. And who could possibly expect you to? Given the time athletes, especially football players, put into their sport, it would be impossible to manage an extremely demanding major. Regardless, athletes generally choose “easier” majors and thus are able to graduate at rates similar to non-athlete graduation rates.</p>
<p>Could someone please elucidate as to the “easy” vs “difficult” majors. I don’t know that such a thing truly exists. My older son, for example, had an engineering major (space physics). It was not as difficult for him as a so-called “easier”, i.e psych major, might have been simply because it was something he excelled at that came easily to him. People generally do choose majors in areas that they excel in, so the material comes more naturally to them. Don’t you think?
I went to Holy Cross (way back in the day) and one of my classmates was a star football and baseball player. He was also 4.0gpa pre-law student and an accomplished classical pianist. He was recruited by some pro football team but went on to an Ivy to get his law degree. So…there is an example of someone who is doubly blessed, but that is quite rare. Schools would have no competitive athletics if they closed their doors to those of only slightly above average intelligence (aka “oafs”).</p>
<p>As much as sports can be an incredible hook, I think those students with stellar standardized test scores, great GPA and class rank, and significant ECs will almost always find an acceptance to at least one of the most highly competitive colleges or universities in this country. Of course there will be an exceptions, but with a 2200+ SAT, 4.0 or higher GPA, top 5% class rank and some significant out of classroom EC, I feel confident that such a student would find an acceptance to at least one school in the Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Duke, Georgetown, UChicago etc. or one of the the top LACs–Amherst, Williams, Bowdoin etc. Such a student may not get into his or her first choice, but it is more than likely that he or she will get into the ‘upper tier’ of colleges. </p>
<p>So it’s not like the system is ‘broken’, in that top students are being turned away in droves from the most competitive colleges to make space for sub-par student athletes. Top students find their way into the top, competitive universities.</p>
<p>And as the parent of a student-athlete, let me tell you it is not easy getting recruited to any of these top universities or LACs. For his particular sport, it’s not like you just play your sport and wait to see if some coach will recruit you, because my son was out-of-area for all the top universities. He needed to contact the coaches himself and try to get them interested.</p>
<p>The whole college selection process and time table was pushed at least a year or a year and a half earlier. Starting in his sophomore year, he needed to figure out which schools he was interested in and competitive for. During the end of his sophomore year, he started emailing coaches his schedule and asking them to come see him play in some of the national tournaments and showcases.</p>
<p>All during his junior year, he needed to update coaches weekly on his athletic and academic progress, collect film to make tapes to send coaches, etc. And there were incredible ups and downs. Some coaches that expressed an interest early on contacted him later to say that he needed to consider other schools. Some coaches that at first seemed lukewarm began to express more interest later on. </p>
<p>In the end, a lot depended on how he played in a particular national tournament over one weekend that most coaches would be attending. If he had a bad game, or if the team he was playing turned out to be weak, then that was it-the coach would move on (and did!)</p>
<p>My son’s academics and non-sports ECs would have made him competitive without support from a coach. </p>
<p>It seemed as though trying to be recruited simply added another layer of pressure and anxiety to the whole college admission process. Although it all worked out in the end, there were times in which I wondered if it was really worth it to try to be recruited.</p>
<p>^^What is your son’s sport?</p>
<p>Soccer (can you tell from the screen name?)</p>
<p>^^No, I am dense. I was thinking skiing.</p>
<p>The coaches my S has spoken with for football were all quite happy with his GPA (esp. given the difficulty of his schedule) and his SAT score. He won’t be getting a tip, which none of us expected anyway, but figures that the academics are enough to be competitive everywhere he’s applying.</p>
<p>Yakyu, I walked on for football. oh yeah well before anyone says anything i know usc doesnt have a minimum requirement for GPA but i didnt meet what other students were coming in with.</p>
<p>monstor344…we put put TONS of effort into our sport but if you think we cant get a degree in somtin demanding you got somtin coming. People just always assume we get everything handed to us and thats far from the truth. you gotta realize we have to keep up with our school work just like everyone else and if we got below a 2.0 we were considered ineligible. one of our starting O lineman graduated with his MBA in three years.</p>
<p>Getting a 2.0 or above is not exactly impressive you realize.</p>
<p>And the point isn’t that athletes can’t possibly be smart, or that they can’t possibly do well in a challenging major. It’s not even that the effort they put into sports is somehow less impressive than the effort a really strong student puts into academics.</p>
<p>The thing is this. If you play football in college, good for you, you worked hard and hopefully had fun. But unless you are one of the very few players who makes it into the NFL, nobody is going to care much what particular college you played at. Maybe you’ll be able to impress your friends with stories of all the games your team won, and that’s about it.</p>
<p>But for your DEGREE, the college you went to matters quite a bit. If I apply for a job with a bachelor’s degree from San Francisco State, it will not look nearly as good as a degree from USC would. Why should I have a lower chance of being able to get that USC degree, just because I don’t happen to be good at sports?</p>
<p>^^Many employers actually hold the fact that you played a varsity sport in college in high regard. </p>
<p>I was/am an extremely strong student (again, back in the day…haha/oldster). I think with a bit of math refresher, I could probably ace my SAT’s again. Two of my children are high level athletes and they work a heck of a lot harder to excel in their sport than I ever had to work to earn top grades. I also did a lot of community service, had great ec’s etc. None of it was as demanding/physically and mentally painful as elite athletics. I think it is more difficult to be an athlete. Both of my children had to learn to do hw in the car and give up w/e’s and social functions to get school work done and fit in their training and meets. My daugher currently competes at a DI school that is in the top 25% for her sport. Her team boasted a 90% rate of dean’s list students (out of 22 women). As a matter of fact, this school (not Ivy, but a state Uni) boasts one of the highest gpa rates for its NCAA participants…football is actually one of the highest. My daughter’s team currently has two pre-med students; two graduated last year…one with a 4.0 gpa and both are currently in med school.
My younger son is at a college prep bs and is in the midst of all of this, shooting for an academically strong (possibly Ivy) DI.</p>
<p>Sorry for a rambling post, but I am rushing to get to work. Just wanted to get in some of my thoughts/experiences on this hot topic.</p>
<p>I know a 2.0 isnt amazing lol. I was just saying what we had to atleast maintain to play. Most players that aernt strongly recruited go and work really hard for a degree. where as the 5 star prospects normaly slack off and just skim by with waht they need cause they know where their future lies.</p>
<p>Not every football player cares about making it to the NFL. Some just like the game. Some football players even choose their college for the academics rather than fpr the football team.</p>