This is hilarious.
That article states what I said - the applications are NOT handled by the regular admissions officers on the regular time table. A special committee reviews the applications much earlier than a regular applicant, makes sure they meet the minimum UC qualifications, and approves them earlier than a regular applicant. It decides if the athlete meets the regular standards or has to be a special admit. If the athlete meets the qualifications, he can be admitted and isn’t competing for a spot with Janie from San Diego or Bob from LA, whose applications are in the regular pool submitted in the fall and hoping for an admissions letter.
Yes, they are trying to beef up the academic requirements of the recruited athletes, so they will take the athlete with the 3.6 over the athlete with the 3.0. The coach will have to recruit that way, knowing that his first choice would have to be a special admit and he doesn’t have any more special admit spots left, so if he wants a pitcher, he’d better concentrate on Sam and not Pete, because Pete’s stats just aren’t good enough. It doesn’t mean they won’t have just as many athletes as they always have, and it doesn’t mean all athletes are thrown into the general pool and their applications are processed by the admissions office with the hope that the admissions office will just happen to admit a pitcher the coach needs or the ~200 recruited athletes out of the general admissions pool of 65,000 applicants. The UC admissions office isn’t looking at two applications, one from Missy Franklin and one from Joe Schmoe and deciding that Joe beats out Missy because his SAT is 50 points higher and he was president of his robotics team, has 20 other really good EC’s and his essay was pretty good while Missy’s only EC is swimming and she seems so one dimensional compared to Joe The admissions office is looking at the file of an athlete the coach wants, who has been rated as ‘regular’ (meets the standards UC set for all students, had the required gpa and high school courses) or ‘special’ by the athletic admissions board, and processing the admission as requested, without regard to Joe’s application at all. Joe and Missy aren’t in the same admissions pool.
On page 5, the steps are shown.
Step 1 is the determination at the recruiting stage where the athlete is estimated for admissibility, but the footnote 3 states that this does not guarantee admission.
Step 2 has the athletic applicant go through the normal admission process.
Step 3 through 6 involve the special athlete admission process if the athletic applicant is not admitted through the normal admission process.
The described process has Joe and Missy in the normal admission pool (step 2 above). The difference is that, if Joe is rejected, he is rejected. If Missy the recruited athlete is rejected, she may be admitted into the athletic admissions pool (steps 3 through 6 above). If Missy is admitted in the normal admission pool, she does not count against the limited number of spots in the athletic admissions pool.
Granted, this is probably different from how many other schools handle recruited athlete admissions. But UCs often do things differently.
uh, recruited athletes at UCLA and UCB are signing NLOIs a year and often times more before the application cycle. They are not going through the regular process in any regard. Not sure where these written rules are being found or who actually follows them; but what is described above is nothing like the way things are done. I know plenty of athletes that are offered admission as juniors and even as sophomores. Verbal commitment between both till they sign the LOI. But in college sports, if a coach makes a verbal it is as good as gold, or that coach wouldn’t last long.
LOL…coaches (especially D1 football) rescind verbal offers all of the time. Players can also change their minds, and do. However, it really scr$#2 over the player, as they now have to find another offer and it may be too late in the game to get one at a school they had targeted (unless another coach rescinds a verbal, to free up a scholarship for them…).
Well yes they do, if there is cause to do so, that goes without saying I thought. Player doesn’t keep performance up etc. Rescinding isn’t done just for fun.
Presumably, step 1 of the process described above ensures that only those athletes which are academically admissible (by either the regular or special athlete process) according to the policy are recruited to sign such letters of intent.
The rules come from the Berkeley Academic Senate. See http://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/committees/aepe .
According to http://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/about-senate (emphasis added),
Note that there is another thread going on right now about recruited athlete admissions at Ivy League schools. In that discussion, there is mention of an averaging criterion based on academic stats to ensure that the recruited athletes are at least mostly within the normal academic range of admits at those schools. Presumably, this is similar to step 1 in the process described above where academic considerations that are higher than the NCAA D1 minimums are used to determine which athletes are recruitable to sign letters of intent.
Years ago I attended UCB for professional school. At that time, applicants needed 3-4 years of undergrad classes but didn’t need to finalize and complete a bachelor’s degree. I had my bachelors as did the majority of my class (some had masters or PhDs) but a couple of classmates didn’t. Because of that, when applying to the professional school, we also had to submit an application for the undergraduate program. I received acceptance from the professional school (in January) with a note saying that it was contingent on being accepted into the undergraduate program. Our applications were in the same pile as everyone else. Would the professional school have stepped in and helped those that didn’t get accepted as undergrads? Maybe but chances are they knew we were viable candidates when they accepted us in the first place.
Missy Franklin (Cal) is not an academic slouch. Coaches and AD know if a highly recruited athlete has the academic background to be accepted. My question is how UCLA knows that Lonzo Ball’s youngest brother ('19) will have the grades to get in. I’m sure there is small print saying that he has to achieve some minimum level of academic competence to keep his offer. His recruitment was a package deal with his older siblings.
“Regular Admit” doesn’t mean they went through the general "regular’ process. It means, for athletic admissions, that they were otherwise qualified for admission to the university like Missy Franklin, who was a top student at a top school. Missy is a ‘regular admit’, but on the athletic department.
Cal has received about 65k applications for this year. Let’s say that 40k of those are students who have the qualifications set by the Board; they have the GPA, they have the high school courses to get in, their essays are acceptable. If Cal had 40k seats for freshmen, they’d all be in because they are all qualified. The other 25k are going to be rejected unless they somehow get a special admit through athletics or another program.
Let’s say there are 200 recruited athletes the coaches have made offers to and told to apply. And let’s say that 160 of those 200 will be part of those 40k qualified for application (Missy and 80% of all recruits by 2017) and 40 are in the group of 25k who would normally be rejected from admission as not meeting the qualifications set by the Selection Board.
What are the chances of those 140 being picked out of the 40k for say 10k acceptances if they are just in the ‘regular’ pile on the AO’s desk? Statistically, only ~40-50 would be admitted if they were part of the regular admissions pool. They aren’t. All 160 are going to be accepted. Those other 40 will also be admitted as ‘special admits.’ Yes, all 200 will be admitted.
There can only be a percentage of special admits (will be capped at 20% this year or next). They are not trying to move Missy and other qualified applicants to the ‘special admit’ process because there isn’t enough room at Cal to accept all 40k qualified students.
There are also athletes being admitted as freshman for the January semester who graduated HS early. I think Jared Goff was one who did that so that they can take part in spring practices and be ahead by the fall. Their admissions timeline is certainly different than a regular student’s.