What are your experiences @ GPA v. Rigor of Classes? Is it better to have a high GPA and time to study for SAT/ACT - or more Honors/AP and tougher courses. Do NESCACs want higher GPA or tougher courses - sorry we can’t swing a 3.8 AND take multiple AP/Honors classes each year.
That’s the million dollar question. AOs will usually say get the highest grades you can in the hardest classes at your school.
What passes the academic pre-read at Trinity or Conn College may not pass the pre-read at one of the tougher academic NESCACs. The recruit’s level of athletic talent, and number of slots and bands that a given coach has matters too.
And that million-dollar question probably has different answers for different kids.
GK1 went all honors (with one exception, when she moved down to the regular class after a few gruesome weeks), but then she is at her best when everything is cranked up to the max. Same with athletics. GK2, on the other hand, doesn’t quite thrive on challenge, so a different strategy there.
Keep in mind also that choosing a regular class over an honors/accelerated/AP doesn’t automatically translate into a (meaningfully) higher grade.
Our BS grad/current Div1 athlete’s experience is similar to that described by Goatmama in post #54 above. Early on you have to impress the coach enough with your on-field/on-track/on-piste talents to get to the pre-read phase, not the opposite.
In our experience, there really was no need for early CC assistance other than letting them know that our daughter was planning to pursue an athletic recruitment track. Which meant that she’d be taking SAT earlier than most of her classmates.
We got GPA/SAT targets from the coaches themselves as well as “received wisdom” from families who had gone through the process before us. The BS CC people didn’t give us that info…because the target thresholds are (at least AFAIK) different/more flexible for athletic recruits than NARPs.
FWIW, in our experience the more selective schools were really no different for athletes in terms of academic expectations: Take the hardest schedule you can and get the highest GPA you can. Related anecdote: for our non-athlete daughter I asked an AO at a selective school “What’s better, getting an A in Calc AB or a B in BC?” Her response was " An A in Calc BC." Sigh.
Once we were far enough along that a coach requested info for pre-read, our BS CC person (as gardenstategal mentions above, school has dedicated CC for athletes) helped us get that info pulled together and submitted. The timing was right around now in her junior year.
Best of luck. I am very pro- the athlete recruitment track if you have a kid who is interested and eligible. Makes senior year much less stressful.
@Golfgr8 Do you know what the GPA profile of your senior class looks like?
I have to say I hope the collective CC wisdom is true but it is not what I have heard IRL from parents I know with older kids. I have read a lot of past threads and @SevenDad and @GoatMama seem to have kids that were pretty much academic rockstars. I wonder if they would share did your kids have a 3.8 or above? I think it is fairly easy to say “don’t worry, colleges know that our kids’ schools are tough” when your kid still has an amazing GPA.
In my DD’s school the highest graduating class GPA is a 3.84. So a 3.6 is crazy good for a varsity athlete involved in club sports outside of school. However, the gut reaction to a 3.6 from a college AO, even one who knows the academic profile, is poor. There is a HUGE perception difference between a 3.6 from a school with the highest being a 3.8 and a 3.8 from a school with the highest being a 4.0.
I thought we would be safe because of all the CC threads I read before my DD went to high school but I am now questioning my reasoning based on what’s happening with college placements at our school.
^^This has been my experience as well. There are not a lot of kids with the schedules my kids have. The struggle to keep a GPA in line with a kid who has twice as much time to study is brutal.
What I have found is that sure, JV kids practice almost as much but they don’t get the crazy game schedules of varsity kids. It’s the playoff games during exams or the wonky week when you have 4 games instead of 2 that break you. Many of our kids had a ton of tests the same week as the 4 games and they all did poorly - across the board. That just doesn’t happen on a JV team.
I too really hope that the CC wisdom is more accurate than the IRL info I have gotten but I also suspect that the CC wisdom is coming from people whose kids still had “standardly” excellent (but not perfect) GPA’s vs kids who go to schools where no one graduates with a 4.0.
@hoopsorsoccer: Yes, her BS GPA was in that range.
But I will add that she didn’t take the hardest STEM track or even the full IB track offered by her high school. She was not planning on pursuing a STEM major in college, so I think the “notch-down from the hardest track” rigor of her coursework was not a factor.
IMO, if the kid has coach support (at D1 or Ivy meaning coach is willing to use Likely Letter/equivalent) the difference between a 3.6 and 3.8 should be negligible. As with all things in selective admissions, the higher the better, but I wouldn’t stress about it. Also, note that in our experience, there is usually an AO dedicated to athletic recruits and their POV is going to be different than other AOs.
Keep in mind that coaches don’t want to admit kids who are going to struggle in the classroom…because that’s probably going to impact their performance on the field.
Thanks for your honest opinions and sharing your experiences!! If your kiddo is at a school where a 92 is in the highest quartile, that is a tough bar to reach. Also, if your kiddo plays on Varsity and also has club/travel games - it’s very difficult to keep up the pace of work - especially for Honors and AP classes. There are some sports where coaches look at club/travel experience as much as your Varsity “game”.
There have been a couple of parents on here who have warned us against pushing our kids into a tough Honors/AP course load (with no GPA bump). I have no idea @hoopsorsoccer what the Senior class GPA profile looks like. That is something I will look for and report back. As for now, I am relying on actually experience-sharing from Seniors @ courses/teachers and how the college admissions process is going.
@hoopsorsoccer I wouldn’t describe my D as an academic rockstar, and I’m sorry if I’ve given that impression. She is just your typical average excellent.
On a 4.0 scale, her GPA was 3.4 in 9th grade, 3.5 in 10th grade, 3.7 in 11th grade. It is 3.9 in 12th grade, but cumulative GPA at the time of college applications was 3.5. No weighting. Most all of her classes were honors (SPS doesn’t have AP).
Her 3.7 GPA in 11th grade was top 25% or so of the class, and 12 kids had 4.0. They are the geniuses at SPS.
You should be able to email the college counseling office and get it. I would be very interested!
Thanks @SevenDad and @GoatMama for sharing the GPA’s.
I do know from experience that kids at our school find college to be almost easy. In fact that has been said to me many times over “college is so much easier than this place.” I am not at all concerned with that, I absolutely believe that my DD will find any college a breeze compared to the grueling schedule she has now.
For our sports here’s what I have been told:
for the sports part coaches mostly care about club
for the attitude part, of player AND parents, they will talk to the high school coach
It makes me wonder as there are several parents who frequently “talk” to our high school coach. I think he is too nice to ever honestly tell a college coach that they are a pain in the a** though.
And by “talk” I mean have meetings where I am pretty sure they are complaining about stuff because their kids get more playing time after those meetings.
To join GoatMama in clarifying, my athletic recruit was also “just your typical average excellent” BS student.
Oh, and another interesting factoid: Some of the SPS 4.0 UW geniuses are also nationally/internationally ranked athletes (among half a dozen other ECs where there are nationally/internationally ranked…) A student with the above profile and a low GPA/low SAT student with the same national/international ranking in the same sport were both being recruited for said sport by HYP. The low GPA/low SAT student was asked to raise their SAT score to x or there is no further conversation. The student did, eventually. Guess who of the two got recruited? Yep. The academically inferior one. Per hearsay, the coaches were concerned that the academic rockstar may find D1 athletics incompatible with HYP academics and quit after the first season, as they believed academic stardom was more important to said student that athletic stardom. Anyhow, star student is going to another Ivy. No one is dying. Still interesting though. File under anecdotes.
True, and we’ve heard at the schools where we’ve met with coaches about the oversight of athletes and that coaches will hear from the administration if an athlete’s grades or class attendance are suffering. And coaches have also told DS how valuable BS kids are because they are independent and can hit the ground running in college. So, regardless of whether the coach is familiar with the school and it’s grading, I do think that BS kids get some recognition for that alone.
DS is not an academic OR athletic rockstar and (barring something unexpected/miraculous over the next few months) is not looking at the most selective LACs. But a number of kids in his club team and in the program are BS kids and go to NESCACs and similar schools, and his coach has first-hand experience at that level.
Agree with above Kiddo has a former teammate who is now at an Ivy and she says college is easy compared to their BS. This kid took up another Varsity sport in college.
Does anyone on here have a strong academic kid who didn’t get committed but is a “walk on” for a team in college?
Man, all these stories are so interesting.
I will not have to worry that my son will be that academic rockstar lol, he is having a rough winter term after a really good fall term and I think it is kind of a shock. He thought he had adjusted and had it all under control and then winter schedule has just been awful.
I find this thread fascinating because what I read is the opposite of what I see around, both at our BS and at our club. The kids recruited to play at top schools - Ivies, Duke Northwestern, UVA, Michigan, BC etc. were all superstar athletes, but decidedly average students, maybe slightly above average for some. At least a couple had to have a ton of tutoring to hit the SAT/ACT number needed, I talked to one mom who described in details how torturous it was (and of course, getting extra time was part of the deal too). But the coaches worked with them and made it happen. On the other hand, excellent students but just above average club players like my older kid never had a chance, as the coaches just were not interested. So it is the athletic ability that’s driving the recruiting, not academics. If you are a star on the field the top programs will be interested.
Now I suspect it may be flipped a bit in D3 where the academics definitely matter more. I also have to assume that for the money sports school actually cares about the academic standards are lower than for some of the other less visible sports. I also read a couple places that the academic requirements for athletes are higher for girls than for boys, in fact they call athletic recruiting ‘the affirmative action for rich/UMC white boys’. I think it was one of the articles around the Harvard lawsuit.
Depends on the sport, school, division and whether the team even holds ‘tryouts’. In DI (non-Ivy) and DII there are also different types of walk-ons.
I know of women’s crew walk-ons at Ivies and NESCACs for example. XC and TNF typically have many walk-ons.
Sports where there are relatively smaller teams, like golf, can be more difficult to walk-on (and ultimately play in matches)…not only because there are fewer spots, but coach could be faced with potentially cutting one of their recruits.
@417WHB: I think a lot can depend on the sport/athlete.
For example, the number one MBB prospect in the country will certainly have more flexibility for admission at Duke than say, a good-enough-to-be recruited-but-not-the-Zion-Williamson-of-her-sport women’s softball player.
I agree that “it is the athletic ability that’s driving the recruiting, not academics”…especially for the most competitive programs (from a sports POV). That said, there will still be minimum thresholds that a recruit has to meet — hence the pre-read step of the process.