Another question. Some people here on CC have said it sometimes happens that a coach takes parental donations into consideration in deciding which applications to put forward to the admissions committee. I take it that ultimately the admissions director of a university is responsible for all the admissions decisions. Is there some kind of oversight by the admissions offices about the merit of these athletic development applicants? Or is it just left to the coach to decide?
What is the point of the admissions committee looking at the athletic profile of the student if there is no evaluation of the suitability or truthfulness of this profile? Isn’t that just handing carte blanche to the coach to admit anyone he or she wants who meets some minimum academic standard? As we know, the academic standard could be quite a bit lower than that of the university in general given that the AI of the team is usually averaged.
Just to clarify, UCSD (University of California, San Diego - the public university) is not involved in this scandal. USD (University of San Diego - a private Catholic school) is the school that Singer helped a child get into. http://www.sandiego.edu/
Just clarifying that, in California, if you are in the top 9% (not 7%) of your class, you are guaranteed a spot at a UC. If you are in the top 9% of your high school class and aren’t accepted to any other UC, you will be offered a spot at UC Merced. http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/freshman/california-residents/local-path/index.html Of course this applies to normal students, not students whose application got in the wrong pile at USC so decided to play soccer at the other LA school
@Plotinus Again it depends on each school. There is a larger variation as to how athletic recruits are handled in a non academic, sports powerhouse D1 school vs a highly academic D3 school. There is no broad brush to paint with here. That being said, coaches are held to high standards and take their compliance training and have numerous NCAA and college rules to follow. Admissions departments do not have the knowledge or expertise to evaluate athletes. Coaching staffs do. That doesn’t mean admissions does not look at athletic accolades that can spruce up an application but they aren’t versed in the sport and the respective coach’s needs. Do you tell your doctor how to operate?
Admissions looks at the academic side of an application. At the D3 level, most athletes go through a pre-read by admissions before a coach is ever going to start having conversations about whether or not they want you.
At some D1 schools in some sports, the coaches have tremendous influence.
There are however academic standards and coaches often balance these out between prospects. They have a perfect GPA/test score kid to bring in that would let them bring in a lower academic kid to balance out their thresholds.
For Ivies, the team AI needs to fall within 1 std deviation of the student body as a whole. That’s about it. The characteristics or traits the college wants, on the whole, can fall to the wayside.
Interesting reports, a few years ago, of the academic struggles of a number of athletic recruits (football, I believe,) at UCLA, at the time.
There are many legit recruits who do well, academically. This isn’t about them.
I sat in on a parent info session at Harvard that was part of a two day showcase for my son’s sport. One parent asked about SATs, and the head coach said that around 620 per section was as low as they could go for a recruited slot. I think football and hockey can go lower since they have larger rosters/more slots and can afford to have some kids on the higher academic end who don’t play - commonly called “academic recruits” who boost the team AI.
Like @ShanFerg3 wrote, the Ivies have a preread process. If the coach wants to recruit an athlete, they give admissions a basic rundown of their stats - mostly focused on test scores and GPA. If it comes back positive, the coach can recruit the athlete and they are put on a list and if it’s early enough in the process, the student will get a likely letter after the SCEA or ED application deadline. Sometimes admissions tells the coach that the student needs to get their test scores up and they’ll tell them exactly what number is required.
Most athletes come in ED/SCEA, but some are accepted RD and even plucked off the waitlist. The number of slots varies by sport from around 6-18, and some sports like fencing, sailing, skiing, equestrian, etc., do not have any recruiting slots and the sport is considered like any other strong EC.
I might not tell a doctor how to operate, but I certainly would get a second opinion before operating. I would not give a doctor carte blanche without oversight.
In any case, a difference between a university coach and a doctor is that the university coach is giving a student a spot in a university, not just on a team. The doctor is not, for example, solving your professional problems in addition to operating on your broken ankle. If the coach has nearly carte blanche about whom to admit to the university, he or she has authority that goes well beyond deciding which applicant best advances the needs of the team. According to what people have reported here on CC, in some cases this has meant bringing students into the university because their parents make donations to the athletic program – donations that are very modest in comparison to the usual donations that merit admission. And this, without a second opinion?
The admissions folks don’t ask for and vet a full app package before allowing a coach to consider the recruits he or she wants. The timing wouldn’t even work for that.
Also, no, adcoms are not sports specialists. There are times when they see someone whose app shows a number of impressive sports related activities and awards; sure, if the kid didn’t catch a coach’s attention before (or wasn;t aiming to be a recruit,) they can run that one by the coach. But they are not out to “spot” recruits for coaches.
For these kids, IF the coach then does say, yes, I’m interested, it can short cut the usual review.
As far as adcoms go, no one expects them to be able to evaluate talent or tell a coach that this All-American recruit out of Calvert Hall is a better lacrosse player than that that All-American recruit out of Torrey Pines. However, in the case of the Isackson girl, anyone could compare her Bio with those of her teammates and determine that she had no business taking up a roster spot on the UCLA soccer team (let alone getting admitted as a recruit).
On ABC national news last night (at least I think it was that network), they interviewed a coach at the club which this student referenced on her application. She claimed she was voted MVP on her team from that club in a certain named age group. The coach said there is no such age group to begin with, that team does not exist, so he can’t explain how she could claim she was MVP.
That’s pretty blatant. I wonder what kind of reaction she is getting from her peers after returning to school after the news broke.
Ya, that’s what I saying a few pages back. Woodside SC is just a small local club with no academy, ECNL, etc. teams. If Isackson was a part of the 2016 UCLA recruiting class, then it included the nations #1 recruit Mallory Pugh, several youth national team members and a JUCO all-american.
@Plotinus You are focusing on those schools that prioritize athletics. Coach’s do not hold sway in most schools but there are many that they can. You will find that in some D1s and a few D2s. And you are also ignoring the fact that the coaches still have standards to go by no matter where they are. A few bad coaches in this particular case does not mean all coaches are letting in undeserving athletes. Quite often it is the opposite where athletes are being recruited not only for the athletic prowess but also for their academic prowess as well. It raises the prestige of the teams. All teams and divisions give out academic accolades to student athletes.
So bash away on the coaches that have abused the system but don’t paint such a broad brush on all coaches. The vast majority of them are trying to put together teams that balance out athletics and academics. We see USC and UCLA and all these other powerhouse sports schools and think they are representative of college athletics. They are not. They are far from it.
The other test I’d give Isackson, if I could have, is just administer the “beep test” or what is affectionately called the “bleep test.” Just to “torture” her for a little longer. Could she even have passed Level 1 w/o passing out?
Until this scandal, there’s close to zero reason for the adcom to be checking an applicant’s athletic bio.
Pretty reasonable to assume that the coach is allocating his admissions tips and scholarship dollars (if applicable) to bring in the best team possible. They (reasonably) assume the kids can play since they are on a list coming from the coach. If the kids can’t play, why would they be on the list?
This happens ALL the time. Until 9/11, people weren’t worrying about monitoring unusual people taking flight lessons for 737s. Or people kicking in the door to the cockpit. Now they do.
All the adcoms were checking for (reasonably) is whether the kid fits whatever academic parameters the school/conference/NCAA may have set. Now they know to be looking at other things.
