I didn’t mean at all to suggest that many coaches are unscrupulous or that there are no standards. Mostly what I know about coaches is that they like to win, so it is at least conceivable to me that even a “scrupulous” coach might trade a spot for money for the team if he or she thought that would help the team win. I have no idea how often that happens. It may well be as you say that there are only these dozen bad apples that have come out in the press, but that is hard to know if no one is doing oversight on the non-academic parts of the athlete applications.
Since in the end the admissions director signs off on all the admissions offers, he or she should be responsible for making sure that all the ducks are in order, not just the academic ones.
This is an online, confidential forum. I have a great deal of respect for skieurope based on his posting history, but the site is what it is…online and confidential. This is simple source analysis. Is the source a legitimate site? Yes. Is a confidential blogger whose background you know know little about, none of which you can verify, an authoritative source? Not really. The advice here can be helpful and a good starting point for research, but if you build your app around the advice and your reasoning is “well, skieurope said…” then you only did part of your homework.
…aaah…the old “UC” thread…summarized quite nicely by ucbalumnus in his one post above…a few public UC’s involved in scandal, but most free of it.
"You are focusing on those schools that prioritize athletics. "
Well, since the thread is about a particular scandal, involving, so far, a short list of colleges which DO prioritize athletics…
Also, interesting speculation is that the hiring of high priced attorneys is to avoid serious jail time. Not to necessarily get them off as innocent. Further, that there could be a plea deal, admit wrongdoing, pay a fine, get comm service, probation.
But that’s a coach’s decision. No one in admissions is going to question whether adding the student with a 2.7 is worth it to the soccer team. Is that 2.7 player good? Really good? Sally should be admitted with a 2.7 because she’s good but Betty can’t be admitted with a 2.7 because she’s not that good. Admissions is not making that call.
Usually if an athlete cannot be admitted for academic reasons, someone in the athletic department knows before admissions. The coaches, even at the Ivies, know what is acceptable and what is a no-go from the start. Coach K at Duke has a different scale than the women’s soccer coach, and while a 2.5/ACT of 20 might be okay for basketball, it’s not okay for softball. Coaches really don’t want the struggling student. It is too much work to have to worry about the failing student.
Don’t think that coaches don’t follow up on grades. My daughter was called out by her coach for missing a class when she had not missed but just gone to a different section of a lecture and the professor marked her absent (yes, even in college some take attendance). Coach knew daughter’s grades before daughter did.
And Mallory Pugh didn’t even make it a whole season, so was giving her a spot a good idea for UCLA or was admitting Isackson, who is still a student?
There isn’t a perfect formula for admissions.
Exactly. Just like it not the AdCom’s job to evaluate an art portfolio, or a theater/music portfolio, and the like. Such things are farmed out to the other experts at the Uni.
It happened not long ago at UPenn, it led to this investigation (but was public much earlier - in October of last year). I’d bet a lot of dollars that it’s happened before then.
College athletics can be pay to play in ways that we don’t talk about as much, the cost of club/travel sports and trainers and consultants and highlight videos and all that packaging, plus the actual sports and gear and pool/ice/boat time. Straight up pay to play showcases can often be the only way to be seen in even sports that don’t have those economic barriers (like baseball).
Make it the whole season? She never played a game and turned pro, but that’s irrelevant. What is relevant is the type and quality player UCLA recruits year in and year out, which is the best of the best. How does Isackson even pass the smell test without a long bio and no one at UCLA even noticing this person on the roster?
Brown just did a case by case review of every varsity athlete to ensure that none are poseurs.
Lol, DS19 has applied to engineering at Queen’s with the intention of pursuing engineering physics. It’s his second choice. While it’s not quite as tough to get into as commerce since they take more students, the entrance average for those accepted to both programs is comparable. The students who get admitted to commerce are no slouches. His first choice program at another school is even more selective as they only have approximately 60 spots but admissions is somewhat holistic. They are looking for a specific type of high achieving student.
…and yes, Canadian high school students can be very snobby about both the school you attend AND your major. They’re assessment however isn’t just about your academic chops but your chances of making big bucks (which is why unless you actually make it into med school, they have no use for science students regardless of what school you attend. Engineering, computer science, and commerce are the holy grail and then are ranked on the perceived prestige of the school in question).
@gwnorth, when my daughter, a dual US/Canadian citizen who grew up in the US but applied to school in Canada, I was surprised by the almost vocational nature of the thinking of some of the kids applying to Canadian universities. I remember some 17 year waif of a girl telling me that she wanted to study kinesiology. When I asked why, it had to do with jobs. Not necessarily all bad; I think people need to be guided both to learn and to learn some things the world will want, but I think vocational training is risky because what will be needed in five to fifteen years may differ quite a bit from what is needed today. Have there been any scandals in Canadian university admissions? Would seem harder because they are generally not holistic.
Wow the amount of absolute ridiculous speculation here about recruiting process is absurd. It’s as if some think by speculating it makes it fact.
Many who have first hand knowledge have attempted to shed light on this process but it seems pulling scenarios out of thin air is more exciting.
If folks really want to educate themselves about the process a student athlete goes through head on over to the appropriate thread over at athletics…
I can’t wait for all of this to go down and for those wealthy individuals to suffer virtually no consequences.
In the US, most college students study overtly pre-professional subjects, and many liberal arts majors do so for pre-professional reasons (e.g. math/statistics/economics for finance/actuarial, biology for pre-med, political science for pre-law, English/math/history/etc. for high school teaching, etc.), so a pre-professional emphasis is hardly unique to Canada.
Now, in the most elite universities, there may be somewhat less of that, because some targeted jobs are more school-prestige-conscious rather than major-conscious, and the students who start out well-connected may not need any specific major to be validated (with a recognized college diploma) as being worthy of a connection-based job offer.
@Gourmetmom “Brown just did a case by case review of every varsity athlete to ensure that none are poseurs.”
Did you mean that Brown did a case by case review of every varsity athlete RECRUIT? Presumably they would look at every athlete who received a coach’s tip of any sort and see if their athletic credentials seem worthy of that tip. At University of Pennsylvania, it would certainly be easy for such a case by case review to miss the corruption there, since one could say that the high school player was not a “poseur”. He just would never had been designated a “recruit” and given that boost in admissions if his very rich dad had not bribed the U Penn basketball coach who also arranged to continue the bribe with a second U Penn asst. basketball coach. That’s illegal, but simply making a large donation to some athletic fund or purchasing very expensive equipment that the crew team or sailing team needs is not illegal and I have no idea if universities are concerned about that or perhaps they believe it is the coach’s discretion since the money does go to the university (or at least some athletic fund) and isn’t an under the table bribe that goes into the coach’s pockets.
Same with the Yale tennis player, who did play tennis – just not nearly good enough to get the boost that being designated an athletic recruit gives.
This scandal wasn’t just at athletic powerhouses (unless Yale and U Penn are considered powerhouses).
There is no obligation for a recruited athlete to play for his or her team in the Ivy League. I am sure there have been one or two superb athletes legitimately recruited to an elite school by a coach who simply decided the summer before freshman year that they wanted to enjoy the intellectual experience of college and not have to spend the hours that being on an athletic team – even at Ivies – often require. And that is absolutely allowed, since financial aid is entirely independent of athletics and only need-based. Who would notice if a high school team’s “co-captain” who got one of the coach’s tips decided not to play in college? Or who would notice if the U Penn basketball player joined the team but wasn’t nearly of the calibre of other recruited athletes? He was on the team, but got into the university because he had a rich parent who bribed the coach to make him a recruit. And it only came out because the parent who made the bribe got investigated for crimes involving his own company.
@tonymom Couldn’t agree with you more.
When I first read the title of this ESPN article I was thinking the coach leaving UCLA was the women’s soccer coach:
http://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/26326583/ucla-soccer-coach-admissions-scandal-resigns
@sushiritto “I was thinking the coach leaving UCLA was the women’s soccer coach”
It seems to be the men’s coach at UCLA but obviously there was a lot more corruption in UCLA athletics because the coach of the women’s team had to put the “recruit” on the roster. How do they explain that?
All the news stories focus on the UCLA men’s coach which makes no sense. He might have been the only one who took money, but clearly other people at UCLA knew. The women’s coach would have to have known - how can that coach claim ignorance of who was on the women’s roster? It seems reasonable that the women’s coach either checked with someone else in the athletics department at UCLA and was told to do it or this kind of thing is so common in sports as a way to raise funds for the athletic departments that the women’s soccer coach didn’t even blink an eye.
But it is virtually impossible that the woman’s soccer coach at UCLA did not know what was going on and condone it.