<p>Honestly is a child getting a degree in Squash? Or is it English, Bio or any other degree?
My point, yes its great to play at your highest level but then what?</p>
<p>What can one do if they focus on athletics, its very difficult to carry the athletics foward and to make a career out of it.</p>
<p>I think its much harder for a female. Its not like there are many pro women’s teams in any sport out there.</p>
<p>So, I would rather my kids focus on education and enjoy playing the sports, esp. since its not going to get them anywhere. Just mho.</p>
<p>Then how would we have ever have professional teams and DI athletes? Everyone has a forte, for some this just happens to be athletics. And…many of these athletes are gifted students as well. If you excel in something, you might as well pursue it.</p>
<p>I think the tricky area is not for those kids who are academically talented and athletically talented who have many options in life. The really tricky area is those kids who are recruited into DI schools (not Ivy!) where they are basically semi-pro athletes who are paid nothing (except scholarship), make a huge amount of money for the school (basketball, football…) but aren’t good enough to go pro. Many of them drop out so they don’t even get their degree because they weren’t really academically prepared for college in the first place. (The National Collegiate Athletic Association reported this month the graduation rate for black male basketball players at the nation’s biggest colleges and universities plunged from 37 percent to 33 percent – the lowest rate since 198) Many of them get injuries that stay with them all their lives. So they have basically been exploited as semi pros.</p>
<p>There are only a few sports that fit that profile, though - namely the revenue sports (basketball, football, hockey). Many top athletes in all sports across the board often end up with injuries that follow them throughout their lives. This is not from exploitation, but is merely part of the sport. Anything done to the extent it needs to be done to play at the DI level is going to put you at high risk for injuries and overuse. </p>
<p>I don’t know where your data came from…I am very surprised it is so low. The NCAA does track graduation rates and schools stand to lose their programs if rates are low. My daughter competes DI (and she is not a bought and paid for semi-pro…she is very busy and does train 20 hours/week which is less than she trained for most of her years before college). At her school, all of the retention rates and gpa’s are very high in all of the sports, including mens ice hockey. This is a school which is tops in the nation in this sport.</p>
<p>the numbers are readily available from NCAA. eg [NCAA</a> Student-Athletes Graduating at Highest Rates Ever - NCAA.org](<a href=“http://www.ncaa.org/wps/ncaa?ContentID=39115]NCAA”>http://www.ncaa.org/wps/ncaa?ContentID=39115)
in fact they are better now after significant efforts were made. But even so they are not great.
"INDIANAPOLISDivision I student-athletes are graduating at the highest rates ever, according to the latest NCAA Graduation Success Rates.</p>
<p>The most recent GSR data show that 79 percent of freshmen student-athletes who entered college in 2001 earned their four-year degrees. The average Graduation Success Rate for the last four graduating classes is 78 percent. Both rates are up one percentage point from last year."</p>
<p>I didn’t mean that literally. Of course I know where to obtain the data. I have one DI athlete already and another on his way. As I said, these numbers are strictly monitored by the NCAA and schools do lose funding and face all sorts of penalties if they do not meet certain minimums. The lower numbers come from a relatively small percentage of the overall DI teams. If you look at my daughter’s school specifically, the graduation rate of athletes is higher than that of the overall student population.</p>
<p>Well, I’m not at all sure whose ‘top 50’ list principalviola is using. Is that the top 50 universities and the top 50 LACs? Focusing too much on matriculation data , in my view, is a huge mistake. First - what matters is the education, not the label. Second - matriculation data is highly flawed for the many reasons other posters have given. Third - the rankings are seriously flawed.
Finally, Groton, at least, certainly sends kids to a ton of schools outside the ‘top ranked schools’ - take a look here : [Groton</a> School private New England boarding school in Massachusetts - Academics / College Matriculation 2004 - 2008](<a href=“http://www.groton.org/home/content.asp?id=580]Groton”>http://www.groton.org/home/content.asp?id=580)</p>
<p>keylyme
I don’t know what you mean then. Some schools may do better, others worse but averages are still averages. And fabulous tho your daughter’s school may be there are fabulous schools that have amazingly poor graduation rates for athletes. Do they scrape by the NCAA minimum without penalty? - probably. But is the average anything to be proud of? I don’t think so.</p>
<p>If you look up overall graduation averages of a large selection of well-known schools, you get numbers ranging from the mid 40’s all the way up to the 90’s (mostly for very select schools…Ivies, etc). Most schools seem to fall in the 70-80 range anyway whether or not there are DI athletic programs. I don’t think you can single out athletics as being a factor in low graduation rates. As I said earlier, I believe that for a small percentage high revenue sports and hard-hitting DI’s there indeed might be a low grad. rate of some of those athletes. However, these kids were there to do what they specialized in. Not everyone can excel, or even necessarily succeed, academically.</p>
<p>Be aware the some college counselors will manipulate your child’s college choice acording to their or the school’s agenda. </p>
<p>ditto: Princessdad: "The “school sends” by 1) only recommending certain schools, 2) “you don’t want to go there”, etc "</p>
<p>ditto Hmom5 “for counselors whose success is based on where their case load got in. They can manipulate things to come out best for the school. For this reason we hired a private college counselor.”</p>
<p>College counselor are rated by their bosses by how many of their caseload got into their first and second choices. Of course they manipulate these impressionable students to designate lower tier schools as their top choices. </p>
<p>Parent who entirely delegate college choice to the schools do so at their and their child’s risk. I’ve seen too many top student discouraged from applying to top schools.</p>
<p>What is the typical definition of “first choice.” Is it the colleges to which a student applies early admission, rolling admission, and/or early decision? It seems to me that ED probably represents a first choice, while EA and RA might represent safties or back-ups.</p>
<p>Colleges decide whether to offer an early admissions program. So, a college could offer any one of the following:</p>
<p>1) ED and Regular admission cycles
2) EA and Regular admission cycles
3) Rolling Admission
4) Only Regular admission.</p>
<p>However, it won’t offer both Early Action and Early Decision. Yale offers Early Action, Brown offers Early Decision, and Princeton and Harvard decided to drop early admission plans. </p>
<p>I’m not sure where I stand on prep schools “managing” applications. On the public side, there are no controls, so you could end up with 40 students applying to Tufts, for example. If the guidance office were managing applications, they could probably make an educated guess as to who might get in, and who had no chance. At least 30 of the students would be better off putting the time and energy into other applications, no matter how strong the school is.</p>
<p>At least with the prep school model, the students who are #1 and #2 in the class don’t end up being admitted to 12 top colleges, and freezing out the rest of the class. Colleges do take class rank into account. Harvard, Stanford, MIT, and Duke are different enough that students should know which one they most desire, for example. </p>
<p>It is wise to keep an eye on the admissions process, though.</p>
<p>What does early action mean? Is the student making a commitment to attend the college? Also, do the counselor’s at the boarding schools advise student’s not to apply to certain school’s so that the number of applicants is not excessive?</p>
<p>Early action means that the school recieves your app. early at a specific date. They read it earlier than those going regular. One gets notified early but does not have to commit.
And schools do offer EA and ED together.</p>
<p>To EMdee question “Also, do the counselor’s at the boarding schools advise student’s not to apply to certain school’s so that the number of applicants is not excessive?”</p>
<p>College counselor are not thrilled with the explosion of EA, ED and rolling applications. They were all quite happy with a few folks appling in the fall, and then all other application support materials (transcripts, rec) hitting the mail together on January I. Tracking multiple deadlines is driving everybody nuts. </p>
<p>They will just need to get over it and redesign thier admissions systems. At one school, Two years ago, 47% of students sent out a fall application. This past fall at that same school 82% sent out early fall admissions. Which means that 82% went on college visits and created college lists during Junior year. This mean that college counseling offices have to deal with juniors and their parents at the same time that they are pushing the Senior’s applications out the door. This double load is a large part of why parents need to step up and do research that in the past they assumed that their pricey prep school would do.</p>