Agree totally with Ski. Making an 18 yr-old go to a college for a year, where basketball will essentially be a full-time job, is a joke and a waste. But the colleges are complicit as well. They could refuse to admit these NBA-bound recruits, and let them go to developmental leagues for a season or 2, but nobody would see them play.
As a graduate of a university with a sterling reputation for pristine clean big sports programs, I further want to add, my absolutely impassioned argument, that the notion of students athletes… wait, hold on, I now remembered D17 has just been accepted to Reed. I recuse myself.
Other than debate, how about student government elections, getting into a highly competitive academic honors organization such as Phi Beta Kappa, gaining and maintaining full-ride 3 & 4 year ROTC scholarships, or getting into competitive…sometimes cutthroatly so fraternity/sororities.
And since when is it the college/university’s job to provide venues for such competition beyond those in the academic realm. That is…unless you’re for the reinstitution of the once popular medieval student pasttime of competing who can fight/beat up rival bands of students, local townspeople, and sometimes even local authorities/military forces* with swords and other deadly weapons.
- To some extent, this tradition continued a bit into the 19th and early 20th centuries in Central European universities with a long-standing "academic fencing" tradition.
One interesting outcome from this was when professional Austro-Hungarian military officers after feeling insulted/inappropriately ignored despite their nominal superior status as military officers and sometimes higher-ranking aristocrats tried demanding satisfaction by sword duels, it was often the university students who came out victorious while the military officers ended up seriously injured and deeply humiliated.
This became such a problem the Austro-Hungarian military forces instituted special fencing classes for their military officers to give them a bit more of a fighting chance against their younger but often much more skilled university counterparts.
In terms of university policy toward athlete recruiting among Ivy schools, Brown University have been making an adjustment recently, and the timing of this adjustment was pretty much coincided with the timing of the publication of the article by Cole at Columbia University: http://www.browndailyherald.com/2012/03/01/athletics-program-enters-new-era/
“Current plans call for the number of recruited athletes to fall from 225 to 205 over three years, beginning with the class of 2017, though both numbers are general benchmarks and not specific quotas, Schlissel said.”
"Schlissel framed the move as an unfortunate but necessary change, given the shifting dynamics of the application process and the University’s commitment to academic prowess. “As the quality and breadth of the applicant pool for Brown keeps growing and getting more competitive, President Simmons felt that this number represented too large a fraction” of admitted students”
At the same time, the monetary investment in Brown’s athlete department increased.
“Goldberger expressed excitement over the University’s efforts to double down on fundraising for athletics. “The fact that the University has established this as a priority is a dramatic statement,” he said. Roughly $42 million is slated for long-term athletics enhancement.”
I am curious about whether some other Ivy schools have done similar adjustments.
@twoinanddone Stanford athletes are a breed apart from the majority of programs discussed on this thread. . Stanford is the leader in national team and individual NCAA championships, winner of the Lear Cup given to the most dominant college athletic program in the country for 21 straight years as well as winner of 27 medals,. including 14 gold, at the Rio Olympics more than any other university.
Stanford’s academic peers may be Caltech, MIT, HYP but Stanford’s peers in sports are top D1 FBS schools… UCLA, U of Texas, Berkeley, Ohio State, USC, Notre Dame, LSU, Alabama, North Carolina etc. Many Stanford Athletes go on to professional careers in sports (and some leave early) as do many athletes in top D1 FBS schools.
@sbballer True. How they recruit athletes is still the same as all schools in the country, however. The academic requirements can be (not always are but CAN be) lower than non-recruited students. A 1800 SAT score will get you in for sure, or at least it did 4 years ago. Their floor is higher than other D1 FBS schools is all (have an F on your transcripts and you are toast, no matter who you are and how high the GPA).
“I am curious about whether some other Ivy schools have done similar adjustments.”
Under its prior president from 1993 to 2013, Yale reduced its number of recruited athletes from 18 to 13 percent of the student body. They intentionally used up less of their recruited athlete quota allowed by the Ivy League as compared to H and P.
Do not know if that policy is still being continued.
I was kidding about Stanford’s athletes leaving before graduation. Most do not, even the elite ones. Ed McCaffrey didn’t, John Elway didn’t, Cory Booker didn’t. Most of the elite athletes who leave their teams early will still get their degrees, but it may take some time. I’m sure Christian McCaffrey will, but it may take him a few spring semesters or summers to do it while he’s in the NFL. His brother finished at Duke, but Christian is in a position that draws injuries, so he’s doing what’s best for his career. Stanford also had a terrible year this year, so he probably figures his stats won’t look better next year.
@crimsonmom2019
A 1800 on SAT would not get you in now. I knew many athletes who had stellar GPAs, took mostly APs and were at top of class but if they didn’t hit a certain benchmark on SAT or ACT they were out. Some schools tend to put more emphasis on test scores over GPA FWIW.
BTW- shared the highlights of this thread with my student athlete now that he is home. He found the assertion that profs pad grades or SA have their work done for them particularly amusing and said he knows plenty of non-athlete students who struggle to do well in school. Additionally he pointed out there is no motivation for a coach to push through a recruit that isn’t academically viable ( Ivys specifically)as it wastes their time later if the student struggles, and becomes inelligable in their sport or drops out.
Again I think it’s a continuum where at one end you have the Ivys who have instituted the AI for their generally “non-revenue” generating sports and the other end are big revenue generating sport schools that can offer athletic scholarships. Do student athletes contribute to their schools in tangible ways? Absolutely, but it varies from school to school.
@tonymom-My former student athlete also found it laughable that there would be profs who pad grades or do work for students. That doesn’t happen in D3 at all. Ever. In fact some of the faculty is resentful that there even is a football team.
We just finished the recruiting process for our youngest who was targeting selective LACs (D3 lacrosse) and all of the coaches wanted to see grades and test scores before they would talk to the kids. They have zero interest in having all of their recruits drop off the team because they are struggling academically.
I find it interesting that many feel that Ivy Athletes are given a significant advantage both in admissions and once they are students. As a former Ivy athlete and the father of a current athlete there are many times where the student is actually penalized for missing classes by professors due to travel or needs to take exams that are proctored on the road. In many of my daughters group projects, it has been the non-athlete that has not carried their weight. These students are taking the same academic load with more demands on their time and I can say that quite a few of my daughters team (as well as she) have made deans list numerous times. I am proud of the fact that the Ivy League offers more College Athletics than most Conferences and still values the true student athlete.
I completely agree with @JMDP82. In most sports, the vast majority of Ivy athletes are equally qualified as other students. It’s been mentioned before in this thread, but bears repeating that Ivy League athletes are given no special tutoring beyond what is offered to all students.
But misconceptions, biases, and jealousies die hard. To some, the magna cum laude Ivy STEM graduate, if an athlete, is a meathead (wrong), who had below par stats (wrong), received special tutoring (wrong), and received an athletic scholarship (wrong again).
“I completely agree with @JMDP82. In most sports, the vast majority of Ivy athletes are equally qualified as other students.”
Not true.
The Ivy AI system, in fact, is QED mathematical proof that the majority of Ivy recruited athletes are (stat-wise) less qualified than the non-athlete enrollment. It is in fact the sole reason for the existence of that system.
Ivy athletes graduate from their schools just fine. They are clearly (as a group) more academically qualified than say 90% or so of all HS graduates. But they are clearly (as a group) less academically qualified (stat-wise) than their non-athlete classmates.
Since Ivy schools value economic and racial diversity, they take first gen and URM kids that (as a group) are less qualified. Because they like having teams that can compete with their Ivy peers, they also take athletes that (as a group) are less qualified. The schools admit this openly.
So the only question is why and how much these schools value the athletic skill that the athletes bring. Which is a judgment the schools are free to make. If Harvard values those skills a little more than Yale does, that’s fine.
@northwesty , I don’t know how else to say this, but it has been shown to you that the exact opposite of that statement is true, and you just have not responded to it.
No, the sole reason for its existence is the exact opposite - to ensure it does not happen.
Again I have to ask: how are 100% of their classmates above the average?
@northwesty True of all schools. Recruited athletes have lower GPA and SAT scores than the general student body for that given school (and sorry to break it to you but that includes all the ivies) FULL STOP.
sure there are N of 1 anecdotes of very well qualified olympic gold medalists who have the admission stats to get into any school but on the average this holds true.
I would be willing to guess there is not a football team in the country at a Div 1 School whose admission GPA and SAT schools meet the median for the general student body of that school.
@Postmodern not true.
Football teams do not have to meet a mean A.I. Instead, the Ivy League regulates football recruits with a system of “bands,” Campbell-McGovern said. Over a four-year period, a certain number of a team’s recruits can be one standard deviation below their school’s mean A.I., a certain number can be two standard deviations below, and a certain number can be 2.5 standard deviations below. The specific numbers in each group are not disclosed by universities.
^^^^ @sbballer ,
Please read northwesty’s posts again and tell me what I wrote in context was “not true”? Also, they were explicitly about the AI formula, specifies “the majority of the athletes”, and made no mention of football uniquely.
And 49.9% of the student body can be below the mean as well. It’s a nonsensical point. And even the point you make illustrates it is for a small number of the athletes only, and others have to be above it.
Read Michelle Hernandez’ book which spends a great deal of time talking about how AI is used , and I also recommend “Playing The Game: Inside Athletic Recruiting In The Ivy league” by Chris Lincoln. The indisputable fact is that the AI system was designed to prevent what northwesty is claiming its existence proves. It’s the “banana proves god” argument.
@Postmodern do you have published stats of athletic admissions from any school that proves otherwise?
it’s clear that separate AI admission processes for the football team is because of lower overall standards… to suggest otherwise is delusional
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
College Confidential is not a debate society, so there is no purpose arguing whether Ivy League recruits are as academically qualified as their non-recruited counterparts; opinions will not change. Move on please.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Closing thread. Despite my request above, every successive post (since removed) discussed some variation of test scores of athletes/non-athletes. So I’m taking that to mean that the conversation in terms of the original post has been exhausted.