Head Scratcher

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Welcome aboard the HSBBW dswann!

Maybe this will help answer your question...

Thank you... Yes your probably right. It must be frustating for the kids who have made the sacrafices to excell in the classroom and on the field.

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Yule get some answers dswann...hang in there with care!

Welcome to the HSBBW.
Good question. yes, have seen many blue chip players on the field not be blue chip in the classroom and still get really nice scholarships.

Lot has changed in the recruiting philosophy due to new rules, but I belive on the D1 level a coach will go with a winner on the field because of the academic support, but do know that the player still has to be eligible and accepted by admissions. Most schools want student athletes, not athlete students.

He may still get an offer, a real blue chipper high on the radar might never set foot on the college field, with hopes he will get drafted high but a good marketing tool for the program. That's the difference between football,basketball and baseball, you do not have to go to college to go pro.

There is no such thing as watered down course work, just easier degrees to pursue.

I'm certain your right regarding the pursuit of an easier degree to stay elegible. What I'm not certain about is why a coach would risk the limited amout of scholarships avaiable to a program on a player with a suspect academic history .

With respect to admissions, how does a player with say a 3.0 and weak SAT or ACT scores get a pass to programs like USC and Stanford. Especially with the amount of time a coach will require of the player for conditioning and practice.

I just don't see how the strong academic players make it, let alone the weak.

My son and I went to a junior day for a top 30 school that had much lower admissions standards for its baseball players than for other freshmen -- i.e., 200 to 300 points less than the average SAT score. (This probably was the case for other sports there, too.) The school had a state-of-the art study facility with many, many required study hall hours each week. Every athlete had to turn in his cell phone before entering study hall and didn't get it back until he left. The perimeter of the large study space was filled with about a dozen offices staffed by tutors who were at the athletes' beck and call every hour of study hall and who traveled with the team. Travel buses were equipped with study tables and desks and online notes were provided for classes that the athletes missed. Grade checks were done by the coaches each week and there were numerous other programs in place to help with academic accountability. Honestly, given all that academic support, I don't know how a mediocre student could help but make decent grades.

Excellent... It's starting to make a little more sense.

Does anyone here have such as son get on one of these teams with weak grades, I haven't heard of any? Don't be ashamed to admit Junior wasn't tops in his class, you all know about Pop up's son. From what I see on the large programs rosters, they don't need to recruit these guys, there are plenty of good student baseball players to chose from.

My son was never a stellar stuident in HS, but has done much better in college beacuse of all the academic help the schools have in place for athletes. If the player applies himself and takes advantage of the different programs, he has no excuse for not succeeding in the classroom.

Pfb that is true. The coaches at all colleges make students attend study halls especially if their marks are not good. One of the complaints about collegs players is that they get extra help not available to regular students. One college I heard about had 18 players get an F in 1 or more papers. Those guys bought forced mandatory study hall for 4 hours in the BB facility overseen by the coaching staff. I understand the good students were exempt. I am going to see if I can find out what happened after the 1st semester.
I know at my son's college study hall is not mandatory and I know he never attended. They usually only had a couple players that were at risk.

PF wasn't your son at Buffalo ?

My son was a good student however let’s just say he wasn’t someone that was going to be offered academic money.  We were told that if a player had a 3.0 GPA and an 1100 or better on his SAT’s they would be able to get a player admitted. I do know that some of the schools he looked at had an average of 1400 SAT as the minimum requirement for the general student body. Being an athlete certainly can/does help in the admittance process.

Most of the places we visited all had mandatory study groups for freshmen year. The following years a player can opt out of mandatory study hall if they are maintaining a certain GPA. Can't remember what the minimum GPA cut off was.

One high academic school told my son that the hardest part was getting admitted to a school. With all the academic support they offer the student athlete once they got on campus, they said you had to almost have to try to fail. (their words not mine)

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quote:

Originally posted by dswann: I guess my questions would be 1. How does the University justify the signing.

Welcome!

Most 4 year schools are not either diploma factories, trade schools, or ruthlessly academically competitive.

For example, Many of the higher end CA UC's have claimed in print that they could fill their enrollments with nothing but 4.4 GPA's of a single ethnic group should they so choose...if they were going strictly off test scores and GPA. They choose not to. Why?

While admissions departments value academics they also understand the desire and need for the "college experience". While this may mean many things to many people, it may include music, art, sports, theater, alumni...things that may not be ruthlessly academic. The admissions departments actually look to fill a wide of perceived "univeristy needs", that may look like compromising standards to some, but they have a "Mix" they want to create.

Sports programs, and good ones are also "justified" as they increase university profile, create and foster school spirit/pride, and foster giving by wealthy alumni who want to be connected with a winner and have time, energy, $ to spend. A single suptstar at a high school can produce many millions for the school in ticket/product sales and "giving".

While it is controversial, athletes may fit into a school need other than 4.3 students. When you consider that many athletes get academic support (so should be likely to succeeed) and fill a niche...it is arguably understandable that scome schools bend for athletes. (Some don't as well)

44
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One poster in another thread gave a breakdown on the students SATs at Harvard. The SATs were a wide range of scores and some were well below the perceived levels.
I know when my son was being recruited that an 800 SAT on the old scale was minimum and a 2.o on the 4.0 was accepted. It was up to the college and O44 is right. They try to create a wide diversity of students and it is not always about SATs and GPA. Maybe they know what many don't.

In my neck of the woods the local paper honors academic excellence by publishing the athletes GPA. To have your name published as well as your GPA, the minimum GPA is 3.0. The paper honors athletes once in the fall and once in the spring.

During the course of the year the local media will make note of exceptional athletes and the schools pursuing them. A number of athletes could be admitted on their academic merits, many would not. And without exception, quite a few are admitted because of their atheletic ability. My son would probably fall into that group. Infield08 response was awesome and knwoing that a program will actively be involed in his education will certainly help in future decisions. Frankly I was unaware that this level of support was available to athletes.

In college I had a room mate who was a math genius, but was a disaster in virtually every other subject. He graduated when he was ninteen, A masters at twenty and a Phd at twenty two. He recieved tremendous support from the University. Probably not a strectch for a large program to offer the same support to the prolific scorer, gifted running back or the kid who's throwing in the mid 90's. The admission concessions academically are probably a business decision. Will this kid get us a conference title, bowl game bid or maybe a national title. If the player with a litle support from a top school can earn degree in exchange for his efforts on the field. I'm good.

Bobblehead, does that mean my son has a chance to get into Harvard? I wonder how much their admission application fee is? I was under the impression they only took geniuses, and it helped if they were loaded.

quote:

For example, Many of the higher end CA UC's have claimed in print that they could fill their enrollments with nothing but 4.4 GPA's of a single ethnic group should they so choose...if they were going strictly off test scores and GPA. They choose not to. Why?

While admissions departments value academics they also understand the desire and need for the "college experience". While this may mean many things to many people, it may include music, art, sports, theater, alumni...things that may not be ruthlessly academic. The admissions departments actually look to fill a wide of perceived "univeristy needs", that may look like compromising standards to some, but they have a "Mix" they want to create.

These are all very good reasons why students are admitted as they are but I am pretty sure someone could come up with just as many counter-veiling (sp) reasons why it is not a good idea to lower academic requirements for athletes.

One interesting stat ESPN keeps hyping is the number of black D1 football coaches. We hear all the time how diversity is important for the University and how many of these institutions attempt to enforce this constraint on their admissions department. When the rubber meets the road however (e.g., hiring practices for football coaches) it would seem they have different standards. Given that there seems to be so many double-standards, I don't see why anyone would have a problem with athletes catching a break with their test scores.

As far as athletes getting special attention that the general student body does not receive, I don't have a problem with that either. During the season, many classes are missed and in general the time spent outside of class preparing for the sport is enormous. It only seems approriate imho that they make some accomodations for the student-athlete (e.g., tudors, study halls, etc).

No offense, but I detect a note of sour grapes in the original post.

There are many forms of special admissions. Some are affirmative action or "diversity" oriented, some are sports oriented, some may be arts oriented, some may be the children of rich donors/alumni.

If someone's special talents help them overcome shortcomings in other areas, I don't see the problem. It's no different from the kid who excels academically but has no outside interests; he too wants you to look only at his strengths and not his weaknesses. Or maybe you have a kid who is not the strongest baseball player who is bitter because someone with more ability, but lesser academics, is getting the leg up on him.

In the final analysis, it's their university and they'll run it as they see fit, not necessarily how any of us might want them to for our own selfish reasons.

Believe you me, they had better cut the mustard academically when they get there, though.

The Ivies and Stanford will not take a poor student no matter how good of a player they are. A great baseball player with a GPA of 3.0-3.5 on a 4.0 scale, and an SAT of around 1000-1200 on a 1600 scale is about as low as they would go. And that student had better have been challenging himself in HS with a tough coarse-load and/or many worthwhile extra-curriculars. These schools are still academics first, sports second.