Trying to get into UC Santa Cruz, yet it is a reach school for me because I have a 3.0 GPA and 1710 SAT so I’m wondering if my athletic ability(6’0, girl basketball player) would help me get in. I have contacted the coach already but I was just wondering if he had any say in admissions?
I don’t know about Santa Cruz and my child is a swimmer but my impression is that in D3 sports, the amount of pull that the coach has varies from school to school. At one school my son looked at, the coach told him she had the most pull in ED1, less pull in ED2 and no pull at all in Regular decision. I think you need to ask the coach directly about his relationship with admissions. And there is a big difference between a coach saying “I would really love to have you on the team” and saying “I will back you through the admissions process”. You definitely want to hear the second statement or something along those lines. You can also ask the coach how many athletes the coach has supported in the past have successfully been admitted.
Good luck!
April 6th:
It was recently announced ,that what we were told about athletics, has been taken off the table. Our Chancellor has decided that we do not have a guaranteed 2 years of Athletics, as announced earlier. There is an “Opinion Poll” during the student voting period, in 5 weeks, that is essentially a vote on athletics. The Chancellor is saying that if the students don’t vote to support athletics, then next year is the last year and the entire department will be cut-All sports!!! If the opinion poll is positive, then the chancellor will let the students vote on a referendum, next year, that must pass at 66% , which is highly unlikely. We are being set up.
We are beginning to organize, ASAP, to fight this and believe we will win in the long run, but all athletes need to take this into consideration. Two months ago I was very encouraged that we were headed in the right direction, before the Chancellor made this decision.
If UCSC is your first choice, this is what I recommend. You need to keep your options open. Send in your intent to register , “ITR” , to keep you option open to attend UCSC when/if we straighten this mess out, and keep you option open for your second choice. Once we know more you can make your final decision.
It never seems to be easy, but things are at a tipping point and we will know a lot more by the middle of May. I am asking all our recruits to try and hang on until then.
All our coaches are keeping the faith, and once we move forward, we should never have to deal with this again.
In theory they are not related - admission and athletics, but in practice each coach has a certain number of “favors” they can call in. I can tell you this with absolute certainty as I have had 2 kids go through the process and wrote a book on the process that has sold over 12k copies to date. i also speak with coaches all the time and can tell you that they have some sway in the admission process. It is not going to be like they student-athlete need a 3.2 gap to get in they can get him/he in with a 2.2, but a couple of tenths of points on the standardized tests can be done.