<p>The VB shoes - aren't those the newest style??? lol - would certainly make the game interesting wouldn't it LOL - that poor floor!!!</p>
<p>mowc, Just have an ED2 picked out!!</p>
<p>This was very interesting. Thanks for posting it. I have often had doubts about whether the many hours my son devotes to football are worth the commitment. Now, I know the (potential) answer.</p>
<p>Interesting article. However, I think the article omits an important point that is being increasingly raised at elite colleges: that today's emphasis on recruiting is rapidly killing Division III athletics and the "STUDENT-athlete" model Division III was intended to serve.</p>
<p>The real reason that Swarthmore dropped its football program is that they were no longer able to compete well enough in the recruiting wars to field a team. And, the steps they would have to take to be competitive in recruiting would run totally counter to the academic mission of the school.</p>
<p>There is real concern that Division III has gone past the point of no return and that elite academic schools need yet another division that focuses on academics first and prohibits the recruiting -- a return to more of a "walk-on" mentality that Division III was originally supposed to embody.</p>
<p>If you really think about it, it's absurd for Haverford to be scouring baseball recruiting camps for students. Baseball at a school like Haverford should be played for fun.</p>
<p>Agree, interesting article. I have mixed feelings about Division III sports recruiting. For me personally, football could drop off the face of the earth and Id never miss it; however, I do appreciate that athletics are an important part of many peoples lives, both players and spectators and that competitive sports always have been and will continue to be an important part of the college experience. For my son who is not a team athlete the pervasive sports culture at his LAC has been for the most part positive. Hes enjoyed the resultant school spirit and benefited from the focus on health and physical activity. </p>
<p>The question is, I think, how important is it to win? The prevailing wisdom is that top students are attracted to colleges with winning teams and that alumni/ae give more when their alma maters do well on the field. Im not totally convinced that either is true. I do think however, that if youre going to do something you should do it as well as you can and if playing to win means that the college needs to send scouts to sports camps to recruit the best and the brightest then why not? I feel the same about actors, musicians and artists. If you can get top students who also excel their extracurricular areas of interest then the system is working and everyone benefits. I guess theres a point at which recruiting becomes counterproductive too much money being diverted from other activities, too many compromises in admissions standards. I dont feel that most LACs have reached that point yet.</p>
<p>InterestedDad- you really hate DIII athletics, don't you?<br>
I disagree. My son is a strong student and might want to attend a LAC where he will have smaller classes and more personal relationships with professors. He is also a strong athlete and wants to train with and compete against equally talented athletes. I don't see a problem with the academic LACs recruiting strong student athletes. These kids aren't exactly morons. I won't rehash all the old threads on what incredilbe discipline it takes to be a student-athlete. There are plenty of choices for kids who truly don't want much of an athletic culture, although one of the biggest partying soccer players I know was recruited by Swat and is now a soph there. There is a huge difference between most DI athletic programs and most DIIIs, largely resulting from the ability to award $$$$. In DIII you are not being paid to play-you are doing it because you love it. That doesn't mean you want to be less competitive or have your collegiate athletic experience turn into intermurals.</p>
<p>What I took away from the article as the father of a nonathlete nonlegacy nonoboe player was that the ED admit rate is most likely lower for my D than the RD rate. If 15% of Haverford students are athletes and most are requested to apply ED add in other categories and for a regular kid ED does not appear to give the benefit most think.
I actual did a few calculations at several schools using 20% of the Ed kids being hooked and the rate usually equals or is lower than the RD acceptance rate.</p>
<p>tom1944, I can understand why you would think that. In reality though I think that at many schools, ED could be a key option for a nonathete nonlegacy nonoboe applicant - it might be the hook that distinguishes your child from other nonathlete, nonlegacy... applicants.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.collegenews.org/x2046.xml%5B/url%5D">http://www.collegenews.org/x2046.xml</a></p>
<p>I can't see why it is a bad thing to have choices. My d. rejected my alma mater for, among other reasons, what she saw as the rather extraordinary emphasis on athletics - intramural as well as team - but I can just as well imagine students attracted to it for the very same reason.</p>
<p>I've got one very athletic kid, and one tree-climbing couch potato (she was deeply offended when she visited Vassar and found an anti-tree climbing sign), and I want there to be schools for both of them. As long as there is truth in advertising, what's the problem?</p>
<p>
[quote]
I want there to be schools for both of them. As long as there is truth in advertising, what's the problem?
[/quote]
exactly ... and hopefully these schools do a good job of displaying their culture and picking kids who will fit their cultures ... the more choices the better!</p>
<p>Every few months a thread starts up about how unfair the current admissions process is and how it should be more test based ... I HATE this suggestion ... this would kill the unique cultures the make schools unique and make it possible for a bunch of schools to be a great fit for each kid. I know my three kids are very-very different and I'd guess the first two will have absolutely no overlap in their appliacations (other than UMass as a safety) ... and thankfully their are widely different schools for them to apply to (with one pointed directly at schools who emphasize sports and one not caring about sports at all)</p>
<p>Mini:</p>
<p>The "problem" arises when the NCAA athletic division that was created to address the needs of academically-oriented schools with STUDENT-athletes morphs into a division that focuses on recruiting and student-ATHLETES.</p>
<p>I frankly could care less why it was created. Some of the schools, including our alma mater, are trying to put a damper on athletic recruiting, but, other than the fact that I am of the couch potato set, I can't see why I should care. The reality is that the difference among those top 50 LACs and Unis is narrowing all the time. They are drawing their faculties from the same pools, and the non-athletic, 1500 SAT-scoring rejects are going elsewhere. What's the big deal? (My older d. would probably like to see the student-athlete schools lean more heavily toward athletics, and hence keep students so attracted far away from her.)</p>
<p>And my Div. I athlete thinks all those schools are dinky and high-schoolish.</p>
<p>(P.S. As I remember, doesn't Columbia have a Div. I football team? They always lose - or at least used to - and yet are quite proud of their traditions. Winning and pride do not necessarily go hand-in-hand.)</p>
<p>
[quote]
I frankly could care less why it was created.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Division III was created so that school that choose to not emphasize recruited student-ATHLETES could compete on a level playing field with other like minded colleges and universities. The goal was to remove recruiting an athletic scholarships (real and de facto) from the admissions process.</p>
<p>With the increase in athletic specialization and recruiting, Div III no longer serves its intended purpose. That is why there is a movement to either reign in Division III recruiting and/or create a new organization that serves academically-oriented schools with more of a "walk-on" view of athletic extracurriculars.</p>
<p>The big losers in the current system are not Williams (where winning athletics are an institutional priority) or Swarthmore (where the institution priorities allow dropping major athletic programs). The big loosers are the schools in the middle, that would prefer to offer the traditional athletics extracurriculars, but are unwilling to live with the recruiting/admissions compromises necessary to field competitive teams. A perfect example is Amherst, that is caught between a rock and a hard place with their athletic programs.</p>
<p>I don't think there are any losers. Swarthmore isn't a loser because it decides to have smaller studio arts and music departments. They just make instititional choices about their priorities (just as Columbia did in my example.) Frankly, I think the schools in the middle -- the Pomonas, Bates, Bowdoins, Hamiltons, Haverfords - are the big WINNERS, wrestling as they are, in most cases successfully, with the reality that, not only within in the school, but within the student himself or herself, there are competing priorities, and part of learning is figuring out how to sort through them.</p>
<p>Actually, I think they are all winners, provided they are clear about their institutional priorities, and if the schools are clear in the promotion/advertising, the students are winners as well.</p>
<p>Thank you, interesteddad, for the links. The morphing of d3 is into a kind-of-d1 has yet another sad spinoff -- the recruited kids crowd out the student-athlete. We didn't realize the extent of this until my d and I went on college visits this summer. D doesn't need any coach's tip -- she just wants to make the swim team. The attitude among some of the top d3 swim programs, however, is that kids should work out as much as a swimmer on a d1 teams and have performances similar to a d1 athlete. The coach at WASHU, for example, told us that he expects no less of a time commitment from his d3 swimmers than Stanford swimmers devote to their team (about 5 hours daily). We came home from that visit wanting to create a Division IV! In our Division, athletes are not given "afirmative action" in the admissions process any more than students who are artists, community activists, or musicians. . .</p>
<p>Californian- Why is a recruit not a student-athlete? Any athlete serious enough about academics to want to attend one of the DIIIs we generally discuss on these forums (i.e. not Western State or Adams State etc.) and still compete in his sport seems to me to still be a student-athlete. And, actually, how can you say your D does not need a coach's tip? S is in the academic range for all the schools which are recruiting him, but with admissions such a crap-shoot, he sure needs a coach's tip!<br>
I think it is a matter of finding a school where the balance between the time commitment of the sport and the academics is right for the individual student. It may require some compromising, but there are schools out there.</p>
<p>
[quote]
And, actually, how can you say your D does not need a coach's tip? S is in the academic range for all the schools which are recruiting him, but with admissions such a crap-shoot, he sure needs a coach's tip!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>If he is truly "in the range" for admission based on academic qualifications alone, then you shouldn't count on a coach's tip.</p>
<p>At the NEASC liberal arts colleges, for example, the 66 permitted coach's slots are used exclusively for recruits with below-average academic qualifications. </p>
<p>The are 30 more slots which do not count towards the official limit of 66. These are used by coaches for athletes with average academic qualifications. Student-athletes with above average academic stats do not receive any boost from the coaches.</p>
<p>Interesteddad</p>
<p>What is the NEASC? Or do you mean NESCAC?</p>
<p>Oh gee. Of course, admissions is a crap-shoot. What I meant was that D is very qualified academically and isn't looking for her athletic ability to play any role in the application decision making process. D loves to play sports and is reasonably good at swimming and soccer. She would like to be part of a team when attending a college. Knowing that she doesn't perform at a national level, she struck off all the d1 and d2 teams from her list. We naively thought that schools like Williams, Amhurst, Middlebury would be good fits for her. We are finding, however, that these school focus their athletic programs around recruited athletes. This has led to our dream for a d4 program where athletic performance plays a more modest role in the admissions process--and where no student would face pressure to go to "captain's practices" (and other such euthemisms) to work out 5 hours a day.</p>