^^ There is an absolute minimum AI of 176, which is roughly a 26 ACT/1230 SAT score with a 2.5 uw gpa (using an online calculator), so it would take a lot of very high stat recruits to pull the average to within 1 standard deviation of the campus at large. Using an ACT of 33/SAT of 1500 with a 3.9 UW gpa, you get about a 225 AI. Football is a “banded” sport within the overall AI system at the Ivies. For my kids’ sports, softball and baseball, the coaches said they like to see ACT’s 30+ in our direct conversations, although I suspect there was some leeway for truly stellar athletic kids.
@waitingmomla I can’t point to specific cases, but as a follower of Purdue football, I can think of 4-5 cases in the past ten years where signed LOI never arrived in the fall because the failed to clear admissions conditions. I think we’re splitting hairs, they were originally conditionally admitted. Did not meet the criteria set in the admission and their admission was rescinded. So yes, in the true letter of the law they were technically admitted, but then un-admitted by admissions.
The ND quote has come up at least twice. It’s subject to interpretation. It’s not insight into the process. All it says is the NLI isn’t an offer.
Saying "as long as they are accepted for admission " doesn’t mean the adcom is going to challenge the coach’s preferences, (unless, as one said, the kid had a major screw up.) I said I’ve seen this deference in words, giving the decision to the coach-- the *admit * final say to the coach. The kids in question would otherwise have not made it.
Look, I get that we’ve got parents here whose kids were (or hope to be) recruited. The fact your kids did well academically in hs is great. I respect that. But it doesn’t mean the process is flawless, that all sports kids are chosen just as all the other admits are, that each and every athlete is academically as able. Or holistically as compelling.
It doesn’t diminish your kids if I say there are problems, in general and at the lower end. Ime/imo.
@BKSquared
That was our experience as well. A 30ACT min would get you a look but higher would get you into serious recruiting. GPA and course load high and APs.
Lou Holtz lost Randy Moss after the NLI was signed. It was because of conduct, but I suspect Holtz was told Moss would not be admitted. Holtz, being the saint like person he is, got Moss taken by FSU, but if Moss was NCAA eligible at FSU he would have been at ND too, but ND no longer wanted him. I think that came from admissions but that’s just my feeling, no proof.
@lookingforward I agree that the quote is open to interpretation, and I understand the way you view it. But to me, the phrase “as long as” implies a conditional relationship to a later event. Meaning acceptance, which comes later, validates the letter. And, as you said, acceptance can only be offered by admissions…We can certainly agree to disagree here.
“Look, I get that we’ve got parents here whose kids were (or hope to be) recruited. The fact your kids did well academically in hs is great. I respect that. But it doesn’t mean the process is flawless, that all sports kids are chosen just as all the other admits are, that each and every athlete is academically as able. Or holistically as compelling”
I agree with all of this. And I’m actually not a parent of an athlete, but my D does attend ND and husband is an alum, which is why I’m referencing that school because I’m familiar with it. But as I said, I’m not trying to make this about ND, I am referencing the larger group of non-ivy D1 schools that are also elite academically. Particularly those with the really high GSRs (ND, Duke, Northwestern, Vandy, etc.) My question is not whether sometimes athletes are admitted at lower standards than the general pop. I’m not looking to make a statement on the facts or merits of that one way or the other. I simply believe that, if they are, there is a limit to that discretion. And that the ivy league/Stanford are not the only nine D1 schools out there where the final say - re that limit - lies with admissions. As I said in a prior post, that might be true at some D1 schools. I don’t believe it’s true at all D1 schools other than Ivy/Stanford.
This is simply my belief based on what I’ve read off of this site and on the opinions on this thread. And nothing that I’ve read here so far - somewhat unsubstantiated opinion - has convinced me otherwise.
One of the ways to be released from the NLI is if you are not admitted to the school.
The wording on the ND website is standard, not specific to ND.
@homerdog
Both of my kids ran cross and track. One also ran indoor track. The other did basketball. Yes, running is a tough sport. Indoor track can be a particularly annoying time sink. However, they can study while events are going on. In basketball, they have very little down time once the coach has them. And they get pushed to 2 a day practices and summer leagues and summer camps. Basketball was a far worse time sink. And my concern lies not with the kids that get recruited. Good for them. It is with the other kids. I know lots of kids whose tiger parents force them into running or tennis or golf to check the application box. Most of them don’t really try to be competitive because they know they won’t ever be recruited. But they do at least the required training, which is actually good for them. The problem is that these kids ruin it for the non-recruited, but still serious, athletes. The ones who work really hard just to make a team or get on the starting lineup and be competitive at the varsity level. At one time, playing a sport mattered to admissions, even if you weren’t recruited. But that was ruined when tiger parents started gaming the system. Now the admissions folks don’t care. The same goes for various ECs and community service things. The tiger parents find out what is working, all push their kids into it, the admissions folks get overwhelmed and start to discount that thing. They look for a new thing and the tiger parents catch onto that and all push their kids into it. And on and on it goes. Game theory.
At this point, I would tell a kid who aspires to attend an elite school to not even play sports. They should spend that time playing the admissions game and do the socially accepted and desired activities that the admissions people are looking for. Those are all contrived too, mind you, but if you are good enough or lucky enough to know what they want TODAY, you can get in, even with lower stats. Sports only help if you are either a recruited athlete or you are a state or national champion at some obscure sport like archery or the biathalon. If a kid wants to play a sport or do an activity, they had better damn well end up at least a state champion. Want to dance? Better be a champion. Downhill skiing your thing? Better be a champion. Ice skating? Same. Try being a recruited athlete for a common major sport like basketball or football. Yeah, good luck. You have to be better than a LOT of very good athletes. But even if you pick a sport or activity not loaded with super athletes, you still have to be the best of the best and so you had better pick well. Again, good luck with that. Chances are low that your kid will pick THE thing that they can be a champion at. The ones that do, end up at HYPS and whatnot. They were lucky to pick the RIGHT sport/activity for them.
Huh? Where do you get this idea sports doesn’t matter to adcoms?
And that it’s all the fault of “tiger parents” (which is a pretty big summary diss, to me.)
And where the idea that a non-recruit has to be uber competitive, strive for starting line up? Etc.
Sports, in itself is good. The kid who makes varsity, goes to practice, does what he or she does, is showing the commitmrnt and a host of attrubutes- whether or not he/she is a starter.
And if their attitude keeps them on JV, well, that’s JV. If kid X is varsity, why would he fuss over what some JV kid does or not? (Wouldn’t be good sportsmanship. )
Maybe a little better dig into what matters and how would help.
@lookingforward Where is your data to say that it does matter?
For me, I base it on observation. While sports may matter, they are dwarfed by picking the RIGHT community service activity or EC. I have seen it over and over again with local kids and I have seen the results of kids who post their highlights on here. Go look at the BS/MD thread. How many non-recruited athletes do you see there? But the successful ones have one or more of the RIGHT community service activities or ECs.
@Huskymaniac unfortunately our kids are not allowed to study during other track events. They are expected to watch and cheer. It’s a giant time suck. S19 ran for exactly four min and 44 seconds yesterday. The rest of the four hours was spent watching!
One thing about sports that is limiting at our school is that athletes have no time for any academic clubs or competitions. Coaches and teachers do not make this work for kids so that means no math team, no Science Olympiad, no robotics team, etc , since they all meet after school and coaches do not let you out of practices. I would say, for the athlete who doesn’t get much play time and has other ECs they would like to pursue, it’s best to drop the sport if they cannot do both.
When athletes are given preferential treatment in admissions, it is nearly always via ED, even at the D3 level.
When applying ED, there is very little wiggle room on the financial aid package and obviously no ability to negotiate better terms based on other offers from “like” schools.
So the concern about athletes getting BOTH an admissions boost AND extra ability to negotiate financial aid package is not a valid concern.
@homerdog My goodness, it is just awful that the student/athlete cannot study during the track meet! Sure, watching teammates is good but that is SUCH a time loss. My daughter did lots of sports in high school and lots of homework in the stands. If she couldn’t have done that, she probably would not have been able to participate in sports.
It may be worth a whisper to an athletic director or even to a school board member at some point! Even if it is after your own children graduate.
As a coach I have to agree with the no homework during the meet. You are on a team and your teammates deserve your support, if you can not support your teammates then maybe being on a team is not for you.
I understand sports like track and swimming there is a lot of down time between events but think of it another way. Would you ever see a football player, sitting on the bench doing homework? A basketball player? A soccer player? Even if they are the third string player that has never gotten in a game? Obviously the answer is no so why should it be any different based on the sport?
In terms of the tiger parent comments, in my parent meeting at the beginning of each season there are always a couple that come up after the meeting and tell me their son or daughter will only be on the team their freshman year and the explanation is always the same, “we need to check off the athlete box when it comes time to apply to college”. I still give these students my full effort and they participate fully even though as a coach I know there is no longer term benefit for the team. Every once in a while I get a kid that loves the sport and continues but these are rare. Next week one of these students will be graduating and I couldn’t be more proud. He did not have natural ability but worked for 4 years to earn his varsity letter, fought battles at home over the time he was “wasting”, and had a positive academic impact on his teammates. He is my success story of the year even though others had much more “successful” seasons and careers and his experience will pay off later in life.
@homerdog Exactly! And that is what I find so discouraging. What if a kid just loves playing a sport but isn’t going to be recruited? If that kid has a shot at an elite school we are forced to tell them to choose between the elite school and the sport they love. Because just playing a sport isn’t worth much. However, there are some ECs and especially some community service activities that are worth a ton. So if the kid wants to get into an elite school they need to do that community service thing that they may enjoy but isn’t their passion and not do the sport that they enjoy and IS their passion. Check this out: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-04/how-to-get-into-an-ivy-league-college-guaranteed
@waitingmomla I do not understand why you keep asserting that I and others are implying that the way athletic admissions occurs at ND, Vandy, Northwestern, Duke, etc is handled somehow means that admissions has no control over who is admitted as an athlete, or that the way ND does it is wrong and the way the Ivy does it is right. No one has said that, and I can’t for the life of me figure out how you are reading that into these posts.
This is primarily a timing issue, not a quality issue. A five star basketball recruit trying to decide between signing with North Carolina and Duke needs to know that if he signs with Duke he will be allowed to enroll and consequently play. It is very likely that once that kid publicly picks Duke, his opportunity to attend North Carolina will evaporate, because the scholly NC is holding for that kid will go to someone else. So no sane basketball player with those type of options will pick Duke unless he knows to a moral certainty that he either already has been or will be admitted. The same is true with a football player picking Notre Dame over Ohio State. Because the signing date for each sport occurs before normal admissions decisions are released, that certitude needs to come from another process. In the Ivy, that is the likely letter review. In the non Ivy high academic world (again, excepting Stanford, the academies and the Patriot) this comes from the application of objective standards to the admissions decision. It is just how it works.
I have told this story before, but to illustrate the problem, during the cycle in which my son was recruited I had a long, beer soaked afternoon with the dad of a teammate of my son’s. That kid was a far more desirable recruit than my son, and had just returned from a visit to Stanford, which he loved. The problem was that Stanford told him that once he committed they would need to run him past an ad hoc admissions committee (similar to the likely letter process) to make sure he was admittable. The dad was very concerned about this, because he feared that if word of his son’s commitment to Stanford leaked then other schools recruiting him would back away and move on. Then if the kid did not get past the admissions committee his choices would be narrowed. At least in part because of that, the kid is now playing elsewhere.
This kind of system has killed Stanford time and again over the years, but it is the way Stanford has chosen to deal with the challenge of trying to compete successfully at a very high level while maintaining what it believes to be adequate academic standards. Notre Dame, which is really the only other school in a similar position to Stanford, has also lost more than its fair share of recruits over the years. But Notre Dame doesn’t have a process like Stanford’s, instead they have bright line academic bench marks. Meet them, and your good. Don’t and you are out. No wiggle room, no “we can let this kid in because he has a great GPA even if his test scores are crappy”. It is just a different way of managing the issue. One is not necessarily better than the other.
FWIW, I think @lookingforward probably has it right here:
And again I will reference Stanford for this point. Stanford admissions has been notoriously fickle with their football coaches in the past. Coaches prior to Jim Harbaugh complained loudly and publicly that they were being hamstrung by admissions. Since the Harbaugh era, things seem to have smoothed out with admissions, and both he and Shaw have been able to compete at a fairly high level.
Gosh I’m glad I never felt forced to tell my kid she had to choose between a top school and the sports she loves. She never wanted to be recruited, but she still plays intramural for fun.
@profdad2021 yep. Meet nights mean the kids are up very late doing homework. S19 is in all honors and AP classes so it’s a rough go but this is what he wants. My husband and I went to the last meet and three kids in one of the 1600 races got PRs and the whole team flew out on to the track to celebrate. To S19 it’s worth it for this type of comraderie and it has helped him develop some pretty tight friendships. Somehow, I hope he can get across to AOs exactly how much work it has been to pull off everything’s he’s accomplished on top of being a three season athlete.
Happened upon an interesting piece from ESPN’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel about abuse, both physical and mental of college athletes. For those who think student athletes have it easy at college and it’s a walk in the park…think again.
Like many before it, this thread is going off the rails
“…BS/MD thread. How many non-recruited athletes do you see there…”
Lots. But getting into a top BSMD program is very competitive and sports would be an aspect of engagement and other attributes, rounding. These programs require a good level of health care experience. If you understand holistic, no one EC trumps or is a hook, except recruited athletes. (And that H handful. )
Don’t look to “local kids” for your learning or count the comments on CC as gospel. In the case of top colleges, go to the source. Don’t assume it’s do or die, get recruited or youve wasted 3 years. Don’t assume tiger parents are responsible for the challenges our kids face.
Athletics is wonderful. It teaches so much, beyond the physical. Teamwork, mutual goals, respect, rules, commitment and more. Of course adcoms can value it for what it is. But try to understand how holistic works.