Colgate's NCAA D1 Cert. Self Study-- prospective student athletes should read this

Papa_Chicken
Fri, 18 Jan 2008 11:26:52 +0000

mhc48……hmmm

1st, I tend to gravitate to any information a college doesn’t apparently want to make public….in Colgate’s case, this info was posted on their web, then withdrawn (except for the draft I posted above, which will be withdrawn I am sure soon enough); in other cases of the more selective schools, some portions of the web-available Study were held as confidential, like the SAT breakdowns. I admittedly have a negative bias toward any institution that appears to be secretive, as I can only surmise that they either lack confidence in making public how they do things or are afraid of reaction to descriptive data on their students, or want to maintain enough of a black box to give themselves wiggle room without the general public knowing what they are doing….or both. That said, I applaud any efforts such as the NCAA Studies here to get the process out in the open for potential students and families to better understand how it all works……and I have absolutely no problem with the fact that special policies and programs do exist for athletic recruitment….it is simply a part of the landscape.

To your question on what I might infer from the data….well, perhaps nothing terribly new, like the fact that certain sports recruit aided athletes with differing academic backgrounds, and that might be handy to know for prospective recruits. I think we all know that athletic “tips” exist and special evaluation policies exist….the NCAA Studies merely put more flesh on the bone.

The main audiences standing to benefit from reading the NCAA Studies, particularly the AI section, are the prospective athletes and their advisors. Recruiting is certainly a complex process for the students, and knowing how it all works…or is intended to work… from the school’s side can only be helpful in my opinion. Take the brief discussion of athletic scholarships and improving academic credentials mentioned in Colgate’s AI section 2.1 about the increase in academic metrics of aided recruits positively associated with new athletic scholarship awards….that kind of info might be very helpful to a prospective recruit.

I also find the SAT breakdowns to be interesting….not that SAT scores are the end-all of course.…male-female, athlete-non-athlete, etc. Any prospective applicant might stand to benefit from having this kind of info, which is more finely broken down than general SAT totals that are posted on Colgate’s admissions page for accepted, rather than enrolled students (two overlapping but different populations.) Take the example of male SAT scores for the class of 2009: 1364 avg total, 1154 for aided athletes. Using the data for number of students in each category, one can calculate the SAT avg for every male but the aided athletes…answer: 1384…a number that some prospective male applicants might want to keep in mind, albeit, this is old info at this point, but the pattern might be enlightening to some.

If you really want to have a heyday with similar Institutional Research data, peruse this Colby directory: [Index of /administration_cs/ir/upload](http://www.colby.edu/administration_cs/ir/upload/)

In general, it gives me faith that schools are doing this kind of research and study, I just wish they made more of it available to us.