<p>I thought this column by Fareed Zakaria in Time magazine was interesting Does</a> the U.S. University Admission System Need Change? - TIME</p>
<p>The point about "athletic gladiators" strikes a particular nerve. We ought to be providing minor leagues for those who want to pursue athletic careers, and leave the colleges to focus on people who want to be there for academics.</p>
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<p>I disagree. Many who play sports in college do not want to pursue athletic careers beyond college, but do want to participate in sports while in college (there are exceptions of course). Many athletes are indeed in college for the academics but are actively involved in an EC which happens to be a sport. This is particularly true at many highly selective colleges, not the big name sport schools. </p>
<p>While my kid was not a recruited athlete and got into college the regular way, she did play a varsity sport in college at an Ivy League school. She was there for the academics but sports was a passion and part of her college experience. Her goals for a career which she now has are based on academics but she is a well rounded person and her sport is a part of her life too. She went to college to learn but the college experience was all inclusive beyond the classroom.</p>
<p>She may be an athlete but she cared about excellence in academics and went onto top grad schools and her fellow teammates became doctors, lawyers, etc.</p>
<p>In my opinion, club and intramural sports qualify as reasonable methods for continuing to pursue your sport in college as an extra curricular. Why? Because your academics can come first. Playing at the varsity level, whether you were a recruit or a walk-on, changes that dynamic. The sport is no longer an extracurricular, it is a paert time job, which has to come first. Major test? Paper due? Too bad, if you are on a varsity team.</p>
<p>As usual with generalizations this is not true. My DS’s GF was a recruited D1 athlete in a major sport at a major program. 4 year starter and co-captain the last year. Graduated with highest honors in Biology with 2 minors and a GPA of 3.95. I assure you school was her focus. And she was not the only one.</p>
<p>Zakaria forgot about the disparity between men and women. The most highly selective schools keep a 50/50 balance between the sexes, despite the fact that they have more highly qualified female applicants than male ones.</p>
<p>I hope the fact checkers did a good job on this. He has been suspended for plagiarism recently.</p>
<p>Maybe he has kids getting close to college age who are not athletes.</p>
<p>@anouilh - you are right, I hadn’t noticed that schools like Princeton and Harvard have essentially a 50/50 gender balance, according to my copy of USNWR. Overall, it’s approaching 60% female [The</a> Male-Female Ratio in College - Forbes](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/sites/ccap/2012/02/16/the-male-female-ratio-in-college/]The”>The Male-Female Ratio in College)</p>
<p>@soozievt, @iron maiden - your kids apparently were accepted and succeeded on their own academic merits. That’s great. But the question raised is whether athletes as a class should have preferential admission or financial aid.</p>
<p>You have to remember that at some schools where sports-mostly football- are big, those sports can bring in millions of dollars to the school. In those cases, it becomes advantageous for the school to bring in athletes that otherwise would not have been accepted and to provide the scholarships for them to attend. I don’t know if it is right or wrong but it becomes all about money at that point. However at most schools my son was interested in, he would have had to be admitted to the school on his own, even if a coach loved him. He is an avid athlete but also a stellar student who will easily pull his own wait. </p>
<p>We do know of a highly recruited athlete from 2 years ago who received almost full tuition for his sport, even though he was struggling w/ CP classes in high school. Tutors were set up for him in college and his parents were assured he would be fine. I remember thinking that it didn’t seem fair to him- that they were setting him up for failure. He did have to leave the program after 1 year. He and his parents were devastated- they had put all of their focus on the sport but little on academics. I do wish schools would be more realistic about which schools are a fit for various athletes but as long as there is money to be made that probably won’t change.</p>
<p>I think there needs to be a divide between big-money professional sports and amateur athletics. </p>
<p>Colleges (and many businesses) like competitive athletes because they usually have the kind of drive that can be a big factor in success, and there are plenty of examples to back this up. Even if you are not the brightest kid, athletic success often (not always) comes with a certain amount of discipline and willingness for delayed gratification. And in most college sports, they know that graduation is the most important part.</p>
<p>The real danger lies in those sports where there is a lot of money being tossed at the coaches for performance and where many-to-most athletes have aspirations (however unrealistic) to a multi-million dollar contract after graduation! For many of these athletes, the academics are an afterthought, something to maintain eligiblity. For many of the coaches, it is the same - graduating is something benchwarmers worry about, starters kick ass and go pro. Rick Patino is making $5M a year for Louisville, and it sure as heck isn’t for his graduation rate!</p>
<p>Personally, I would hold ALL college athletics to a requirement that graduation rate (including early departures for the pros) and the average GPA must come within a certain amount of the university and/or national averages or they suffer penalties, including post-season and even regular-season bans. Supplement that with the development of real minor league teams in basketball and football and we might have a system that allows the good aspects of athletics without compromising academics.</p>
<p>Another reason to like the military academy teams - no compromises there!</p>
<p>Whydoicare, I was simply responding to the generalization that recruited D1 athletes don’t put school work first. Simply not true. </p>
<p>Cosmicfish, you might be interested to know that service academies absolutely do sometimes relax admissions standards for recruited athletes.</p>
<p>There are plenty of colleges that do not particularly value athletics at the expense of all other realms of human achievement. The overvaluation of athletics is not a systemic problem, although I concede that it is a major source of corruption at some universities, especially large publics. </p>
<p>People who used to expect that their kids would get into an elite school are realizing that the odds are lower than 25 years ago. There is no birthright of elite college acceptance. That, I suspect, is the reason for the floods of recent articles bemoaning the unfairness of US college admissions. There are just a lot of very smart kids out there, and they all have big dreams now. </p>
<p>At many colleges, athletes have superior academic records to non-athletes. Their lives are more focused and structured than the average undergrad’s. Their experience as athletes develops their social and leadership skills.</p>
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Do you have a cite for this?</p>
<p>I would think that at the very top of the application pool (say, top 3%), there is little difference in the qualifications of males vs. females.</p>
<p>It’s at lower levels where boys’ interest in attending college is not keeping up with the girls, which leads to the skew in gender balance. Although even that doesn’t mean boys are less qualified, just that less of them want to go.</p>
<p>When are people going to realize that all admissions “hooks” are unjustified–except the ones my kids have…</p>
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<p>I agree. It’s pretty well known that males are disproportionately represented on both the upper and lower tail of the IQ spectrum – they are not smarter overall, but tend to cover a wider range. Also, it should be noted that high school tends to reward feminine traits like active participation, diligent and timely homework prep and a cherry positive attitude; to the extent that grades are based on non-academic-test elements, this approach disproportionately favors girls.</p>