Applications Drop at Top LACs as Economy Sours (Bloomberg)

[bird rock]

Just wanted to mention that one of the smartest people I've ever met was a recruited athlete at Amherst. He's now a very successful scientist. Don't want to say more to protect his confidentiality.

[rodney]

to add and defend Modadunn......quarterback here ranked #8/300, all AP's, ED Upenn...not even playing football......Athletes, like all other EC's, have a huge range of academic achievement......The stereotypes arise from the recruitment process at colleges, but not always appropriate.....

[interesteddad]

Take up the smart football player crusade with the Presidents of the Ivy League who developed the AR and standard deviation regulations because they all believed they were recruiting football players who were academically unqualified for their institutions. I don't know how you provide a little background on the Academic Rating system without discussing the original motivation - to curb football and ice hockey recruiting abuses.

It is a very well known fact that elite colleges and universities must significantly compromise their academic standards to field a football team and a men's ice hockey team.

[Modadunn]

^ Fair enough.. but we (and by we, I mean CC in general) don't toss hockey players under the short bus nearly as much as we do football. That's all I was saying.

And I agree that there are much larger numbers needed to field a football and/or hockey team. But, quite a few of the elite schools also pin quite a few laurels on their ability to graduate their athletes vs others (the big 10 etc) who certainly do not (and who lose quite a few b-ball players to the pros pretty quickly after a year or two).

But I do not believe that it is "well known fact" that they "significantly compromise" academic standards because if admissions didn't believe they could do the work, they'd be on academic probation in a heartbeat, unable to contribute to the team (i.e., serve their purpose) and would be booted to the curb before they passed go.

[Modadunn]

But I will also say this: Girls hockey aint that much different.

[interesteddad]

^ Fair enough.. but we (and by we, I mean CC in general) don't toss hockey players under the short bus nearly as much as we do football. That's all I was saying.

Ice hockey is the worst. As you say, there are some academically qualified football players. Just not 80 of them at each school. Allowing for the exception that proves the rule, college ice hockey recruits are massively below average academically.

Fortunately, college hockey is not a widespread phenomenom. It's pretty much limited to New England, upstate New York, and parts of the midwest.

[Cardinal Fang]

Maybe we talk about hockey players less because, even though they're generally unqualified academically, a hockey team is much smaller than a football team. So even at a school which has a hockey team (most don't), the number of academically inferior hockey players walking around campus is much smaller than the number of inferior football players.

So some exceptional hockey player or football player *is* qualified. So what? Some students are Intel Science winners and Math Olympiad champions. Doesn't mean most are. The qualified athletes should still get in to the top schools, and the rest of the athletes shouldn't.

[interesteddad]

The qualified athletes should still get in to the top schools, and the rest of the athletes shouldn't.

You would have that situation overnight at almost any top liberal arts college that dropped its football and ice hockey teams. The recruited athletes for the rest of men's sports and for women's sports already mirror the academic qualifications at the very top schools and there is little or no difference in academic performance at the schools.

You would get some disparity as low-band tips are shifted to other teams, but you eliminate the weird anti-academic culture that infects football and hockey programs.

It's not a big issue at universities. Even at a small university, you are burying 100 football and hockey players in a male student body of 2000 - 3000 students. Big deal. But, it's an enormous impact when you are talking about 1 out of every 10 or 1 out of every 8 male students in the classroom.

I expect the recession to be the impetus for some significant cost-cutting in athletic budgets at LACs. The faculties are going to revolt if athletics are immune from cuts. Once you start looking at significant 10% or 20% cuts in athletic budgets, it is going to be very obvious that cutting teams is a cleaner approach than starving every team.

[Modadunn]

Some students are Intel Science winners and Math Olympiad champions. Doesn't mean most are. The qualified athletes should still get in to the top schools, and the rest of the athletes shouldn't.

By that logic, I could suggest that the socially awkward geek, intel science and math olympiads among them, shouldn't be accepted (and some arent accepted) because beyond what they take for themselves as a pure academic, they contribute very little to the constructs of certain colleges. So if, for example, they don't get into MIT or similar (although the former are some of the biggest party people I know) and they add no substantial value beyond test numbers to the admission standards, deny? It's a ridiculous premise.

PLUS.. I am so hopeful that when colleges look at students, especially those schools that say they look at a breadth and depth of a prospective student, that they don't just look at grades, scores and academic achievement as a litmus of future success or contribution to campus life. After all, it takes a village to create a village.

[interesteddad]

But I do not believe that it is "well known fact" that they "significantly compromise" academic standards because if admissions didn't believe they could do the work, they'd be on academic probation in a heartbeat, unable to contribute to the team (i.e., serve their purpose) and would be booted to the curb before they passed go.

Don't kid yourself. The average SAT scores for Div I BCS football teams is in the 900 range (on a 1600 scale). Stanford is only a bit higher (maybe 1100). The Ivies will go down to about a 1200 SAT. Division I recruiting at the ultra-elite schools like Stanford and Duke is a joke from an academic perspective. Go down a notch to the big state school programs and you can find football and basketball players who can even read and write.

The big time programs graduate athletes because they take classes from professors that "appreciate sports" (ahem) and are assigned invidicual tutors who "help them with their study skills" (ahem) while everyone winks.

[Cardinal Fang]

InterestedDad, men's basketball would also have to be on the block, for the top schools in the South, wouldn't it, in order for athletes to mirror the academic qualifications of the rest of the campus?

[Rachacha]

I am an alumni interviewer for my alma mater (top 50 LAC) - got this e-mail from the head of Admissions today, asking me to be awful nice while congratulating interviewees that have been admitted...

"The recent economic downturn will make it more difficult than ever to enroll a strong and interesting class, which means that your contributions to that effort are that much more important."

Not desperation just yet, but getting awful close...

[Modadunn]

Wow.. we're really on top of this thread today!

However, we started talking about elite LAC's, which typically aren't DI - and even the IVIES aren't the same as Duke and Stanford. I believe it was last year when stanford played Cornell in basketball ball that the stanford coach fully admitted that the Cornell team was probably smarter than his team. And despite how good Cornell was, Stanford kicked their Ivy butt on the court.

DIII athletics is, from my understanding, more about the ideal definition of Student-Athletes. Now, I could be deluding myself, and my kid - despite wanting to play either lax or football in college - is not being recruited despite some efforts on that front. His goal was (and is) to be admitted to the best academic institution that accepts him. But here's the thing:

Had he not played three sports and given immense amounts of time and energy to the field and court over the years, his GPA would have been much higher. In fact, this is the first year he didn't play basketball, decided to be in a school play as a change of pace and get to know a bunch of different kids and really learned to appreciate their talents and they learned he wasn't just a jock. He had more time on his hands than he knew what to do with! In fact, he also took up the guitar in that time and has actually become pretty good! The point is, he got straight A's in the toughest curriculum and seemed to work LESS than he ever has. So yes, had he not played sports year round, he might have had the perfect GPA, but he wouldn't have nearly contributed to the school community as he did, nor would he be the positive leader that he is. Just something to think about I suppose when we consider it takes all kinds.

[barrons]

" Ice hockey is the worst. As you say, there are some academically qualified football players. Just not 80 of them at each school. Allowing for the exception that proves the rule, college ice hockey recruits are massively below average academically."


Not always. From the Madison Wisconsin paper. Also the W's hockey team won the NC the same year and men were in the semi-finals after winning it the prior year in D-1.

"One pattern shown by the athletes’ GPAs was that many women’s teams had higher averages than their male counterparts, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.

The women’s soccer team had an average of 3.355, women’s rowing had a 3.211 and women’s hockey had a 3.056. All are higher than the men’s basketball team’s cumulative average of 3.039, which was the highest of the male athletes’ GPAs for fall 2006. The men’s hockey team followed with 2.868 and then football with 2.688.

[Modadunn]

When they do those GPA averages, it is my understanding that this is why some schools love the 4.0 athlete, even if their stats aren't as impressive as others. It brings up the average of the entire team. So if you take a 4.0 student and a 2.5, you have your 3.25 team average. 4.0 plus a 1.9 is pretty much the average of boy's hockey example above.