<p>“If you came here for an education, you should have went to Harvard,” football player says he was told. </p>
<p>“He [a basketball player] didn’t even come to class at all. He only came to class to take the test. Yeah, he didn’t even take the test. It was this girl in front of him. She took his test, then she gave it to him…” I don’t even want to repeat the rest of that quote, the story is bad enough already and young women can consent to sex if they choose.</p>
I think this demonstrates a problem with this kind of data. SAT scores are only one part of what gets you into these colleges, and students with really high (even perfect) scores are frequently rejected. So while there are certainly both athletes and legacies who would get in without that hook, it’s not necessarily because of the SAT score specifically. To me, a more interesting question would be how many athletes and how many legacies get in with SAT scores that would essentially be disqualifying for an unhooked candidate. I think the results would be quite notable.</p>
<p>Seriously, do you think unhooked applicants get accepted at UNC with an SAT verbal under 400 or ACT English under 16? And yet between 2004 and 2012, ten percent of the football/basketball admits at UNC had those dismal stats. It must be embarrassing to sit in a college classroom when you can’t read the textbook for understanding.</p>
<p>Hunt, no one is saying the SAT is a do all know all test. It is just convenient to use since it is standardized so comparing one’s test against another’s is a good point of comparison. My point was that the actual SAT bump for athletes and legacies is greater than that is reported. </p>
<p>This greater difference in SAT scores might explain why there are so many student athletes who lack basic skills needed to even read at 5th grade level let alone try and pass real college courses rather than the fluff courses outlined in this thread at UNC. </p>
<p>GMTplus7 I don’t think it is too much to ask that student athletes read and write above grade school levels if the NCAA is really serious that student/athletes are a legitimate status versus an athlete/employee who generates millions$$. I do disagree with you about " I don’t have a problem w athletes getting a huge admissions bump" that bump should not be so great that there is little to no chance that student/athlete will be able to utilize the educational opportunity. </p>
<p>In the Ivy League, legacy status is usually just a tie-breaker. For athletes, it is a game changer.</p>
<p>“But, among these kids, it is known that Yale is not giving anybody any breaks compared to the other Ivies.”</p>
<p>Simply untrue. Impossible that Yale would win the 2013 NCAA D1 mens ice hockey national championship without putting their thumb on the admissions scale. A team of full on Einstein’s beat Minnesota, North Dakota, UMass Lowell and Quinipiac? Seriously?</p>
<p>Yale puts its thumb on the scale for athletes all the time. Perhaps not as heavily as Princeton does, but they do it.</p>
<p>Also, the impact of the AI system varies from school to school. Every Ivy’s athletes have to be within one standard deviation of the regular student AT THAT SCHOOL. The athletes at Dartmouth and Cornell and Brown have the lowest AIs because those schools have the lowest (but still way high) AIs in the Ivy League. HYP’s athletes have the highest AIs because those schools have the highest AIs.</p>
<p>So quite frequent and normal that, while Yale thumbs the scale plenty, athletes that can’t get into Yale can get into Brown.</p>
<p>“Kind of like everybody knows out of these top schools, Stanford wants their athletes most.”</p>
<p>True. Stanford athletes aren’t nearly as smart as Harvard athletes. And Harvard athletes aren’t nearly as athletic as Stanford athletes.</p>
<p>As I said above, Yale just doesn’t recruit as many athletes as it could. For those it does recruit, it uses the same method as the other Ivies, which permits a substantial thumb on the scale, but establishes limits.</p>
<p>As far as athletic scholarships, the Ivies really don’t offer them. It may be that they make especially sure that desirable athletes get the very best need-based aid they can, but if you are a truly full-pay family, you are getting nothing. What you get is admission to an Ivy League college.</p>
<p>The reason Stanford athletes aren’t as smart as Harvard athletes is that Stanford isn’t bound by the Academic Index. (Duke isn’t either.)</p>
<p>So one solution to the overall problem would be to require colleges and universities to abide by an Academic Index, i.e. test scores and gpa within one standard deviation of the average of the student body as a whole, in order to compete in NCAA athletic competitions, and to share in the profits of televised competitions.</p>
<p>While it would be likely that recruited athletes would be on the low end of their respective student bodies, they would be able to complete college level work. Each university, of course, would be free to choose the average academic performance of entering students. </p>
<p>The NBA and the NFL might have to set up their own amateur leagues, which would be no loss. Aren’t they both tax exempt? </p>
<p>With all the TV money that is now involved in all of this, to the point where divisions consult with ESPN before making changes to their member lists, I think we are more likely to see a professional athlete/sort of student model than to see a more truly student athlete emerge out of this. </p>
<p>I like Periwinkle’s idea. Though it doesn’t affect the goodness of Periwinkle’s proposal, the Academic Index is a bit more complicated than Periwinkle says. Athletes have to fall in a certain range: about a quarter of football recruits must be with one standard deviation of the school average, about half have to be within two standard deviations, all but two recruits must be within 2.5 standard deviations, and the two lowest have to meet a certain academic floor.</p>
<p>The trouble, for Ivy football coaches, is that even the third standard deviation below the middle at an Ivy League school is very high. The third standard deviation below the middle of SATs at Ivies is still going to be in the mid-600s. But at a less selective school, the third standard deviation could be low. </p>
<p>It would eliminate the current hypocrisy, in which any instance such as the current UNC fiasco is passed off as an aberration. Given the constraints of competition, it would surprise me if similar things were not going on all across the country. Poetgrl, right now, I believe the system follows a professional athlete (but not paid)/sort of student (but not educated) model. That’s the status quo.</p>
<p>The NCAA, from my perspective, operates very much like a cartel. It’s just not good at the whole “monitoring of academic standards” part of its duty. Nor the “protecting students” part. </p>
<p>I agree @periwinkle They absolutely are a cartel. And they operate well doing what it is they originally came together to do, limit the ability of student athletes to be paid to play. That is what they do well. </p>
<p>As for the academic part, I’ll only say one more time that I think it is preposterous to believe that 100% of the best football players in this country can also do college level work AND travel, etc…, regardless of the college they attend. </p>
<p>The academic index system would not work for most D1 schools because:</p>
<ol>
<li>The national letter of intent system which works fairly well now would be unworkable.</li>
<li> The AI index is based on an average for all varsity sports; therefore at most d1 schools other sports would be expected to have higher AIs to offset football.<br></li>
</ol>
<p>It would be better to reexamine the NCAA national clearinghouse minimums and adjust these.</p>
<p>@Hunt,
“As I said above, Yale just doesn’t recruit as many athletes as it could. For those it does recruit, it uses the same method as the other Ivies, which permits a substantial thumb on the scale, but establishes limits.”
From my experience Yale is more academically unforgiving than H & P. It seems some successful Yale athletic programs can offer an occasional big break to a highly desirable athlete but this is rare. Because they have less recruits overall they have less opportunities to accept a bench warmer to compensate for impact player with lower stats. Their finaid is inferior to H&P and even to other Ivies that preferentially package their athletes. Yale’s location is a deterrent to some recruits as well.</p>
<p>Note that in the Ivies some athletes are legacies, some minorities, some internationals so these students play multiple “diversity” roles and may get additional academic breaks for that.</p>