<p>^ I have a friend who has similar criteria to those I gave (even higher, frankly - 90% Grade Avg, 29 ACT) who was recruited by an HYP. He however opted instead to go to an ACC school (one of the lower-ranked ones academically) and was only considering Big East and ACC schools, never even giving this HYP a serious thought. When I asked him why he didn’t pursue that option, he said that he simply knew that he wouldn’t fit in academically and that he couldn’t conscientiously pursue the school, knowing that every year pretty much all the top-ranked kids from his HS with 2300+ SAT scores get rejected from HYP. It was an interesting take to hear, especially from the recruited athlete himself, and while I didn’t agree with the majority of what he said, it still revealed what often might be going through the heads of the athletes themselves, let alone the jealous kids and parents who don’t even understand the work it takes to be a D1 athlete. </p>
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Because we don’t know what to believe from the adcoms anymore. What does academically qualified mean exactly anyways? Capable of doing the work and graduating, sure - but can’t a lot of people cruise through an Ivy League school, so long as they only go through the minimum prereqs (and believe me, I’m not suggesting athletes do this in particular at all, just simply challenging the vague standard of academic qualification)? When exactly is the point where the student-athlete turns into the athlete-student or, as we’ve seen in some pretty strange cases (like that Gtown basketball player with a 1.something and 300s per SAT section), just the pure athlete? If we don’t use numbers to determine that then what do we use?</p>