I don’t think any division 1 athletes write any essays or fill in the regular application. Football for ISC is a job with a contact. Students are payed for 11 months. It’s not the same as being a student, to play division 1 sports. Students have a contact to play so it’s more like being a professional athlete with a tutor who rarely goes to class. Many of these athletes go pro. It’s not about studying so the essay is not relevant for them. All that matters is how they play. This is true for all the Stanford athletes as well but they need to have ok grades but not as high as you would think. Our high school has watched a discus thrower, a volley ball player and a runner go to Stanford. All girls. None really spent any time studying except the volleyball player. They all sign contacts to play their sport as front and center for 11 months with Stanford. They get coached in rerun but whatever they do in s classroom is secondary. Their Apollo actions do not go through Stanford Admissions process. Many Stanford athletes get to stay at Stanford for five years of coaching and a “masters” degree, given how going pro works.
See the process for recruitment for division 1 athletics. That process is way harder than writing an essay, in my opinion, and starts by 10th grade in high school. There are camps and visits and tryouts and evaluations. Its a payed 11 month a year job with a contract at USC. It’s not related to applying to get accepted as a student although division one athletes may have to “pass”. to keep their pay.
USC creates more Olympic athletes and professional athletes than any other American university. That’s their stated goal and has been for most of the history of that university.
It would be stupid to ask an athlete to write a college essay. They are not there to read and write. They may collect a degree but it’s completed on a bus or in a hotel room with a tutor. They don’t hang out in classrooms, they train in a sport and play and travel as they are payed to do.
Search USC’s Olympic Heritage. uSC became an Olympic training school in 1904. This is their stated purpose and it’s parallel to anything else they might teach like engineering or film direction. Athletes do not us the USC Admissions process for a long time. Coaches pick the players.
I don’t think it’s accurate that it’s a paid 11 month job. And NCAA states it’s academics and sports. No matter whether we think academics gets thrm in.
So I’d like backup on these statements.
@Coloradomama I believe your comments include as many falsities and half-truths, as they do valid points.
“I don’t think any division 1 athletes write any essays or fill in the regular application”
You really need to differentiate between schools and sports before making sweeping statements like that. I can assure you that in non-revenue sports Ivy Leagues recruits write all the required essays and follow the same application submission process (with possibly some minor deviations).
“That process is way harder than writing an essay, in my opinion…”
With that I can agree. For example, the process of elite college athletic recruitment may be like applying for a job in a highly sought-after company. Many rounds of “interviews” and references checks.
“Cutting men’s sports in half would convert an FBS football program to an FCS one with a catastrophic drop in revenue”
What then would be the point of the university? What are they wasting their time with over at MIT and Reed?
Imagine if the athletes had to visit local coffee shops to sell ads, like the newspaper editors, or elect a student coach like the dance team. They might see the inside of a bus instead of a plane, or even have to wash their own practice clothes like some kind of artist. Unthinkable.
Yeah, running a minor league sports franchise generates revenue. So would running a trucking company or paper mill or power plant staffed by unpaid students, but we’ve thus far avoided hearing excuses about why those enterprises are necessary.
The thing is, American public universities were building their brands around sports even back in the '50s and beyond, when states were still funding them adequately. We built this sports system because we like it this way. The money is just an excuse. Alabama lived and died for college football long before it made real money. We pay for the things that matter to us.
your statements about USC are full of hot air. And are -pardon the phrase- BS.
From the USC website:
https://about.usc.edu/
"The University of Southern California is one of the world’s leading private research universities. An anchor institution in Los Angeles, a global center for arts, technology and international business, USC’s diverse curricular offerings provide extensive opportunities for interdisciplinary study and collaboration with leading researchers in highly advanced learning environments.
In a comprehensive 2018 ranking, The Wall Street Journal and Times Higher Education ranked USC 17th among more than 1,000 public and private universities. Among all California institutions — public and private — only USC, Caltech and Stanford University ranked within the top 20. Of the 150 universities surveyed in the western U.S., USC ranks No. 3. Among the top 25 schools, USC ranked No. 2 in engagement and No. 4 in environment, a measure of diversity and inclusion.
This year, USC received a record number of applications for its fall freshman class — more than 64,000 applied — making 2018-2019 the institution’s most selective year on record, with a record-breaking acceptance rate of 13 percent. One in seven students (14 percent) of the class of 2022 are first-generation college students. With one of the most abundant financial aid pools in the country, USC provides more than $337 million in scholarships and aid.
USC’s distinguished faculty of 4,000 innovative scholars, researchers, teachers and mentors includes five Nobel laureates, and dozens of recipients of prestigious national honors including the MacArthur “Genius” Award, Guggenheim Award, the National Medal of the Arts, the National Humanities Medal, the National Medal of Science, the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, and Pulitzer Prize.
Student body
Student enrollment statistics from the 2018-2019 academic year (rounded):
Undergraduates 20,000
Graduate and professional students 27,500
Total 47,500
12.9% of 64,352 freshman applicants were admitted
265 National Merit Scholars, 2018 freshman class
pie chart
Female 51%
Male 49%
17% of freshmen were first-generation college students
3.79 average unweighted GPA for entering freshman class
Find more statistics in USC Facts and Figures.
USC has a large economic impact
USC first opened its doors to 53 students and 10 teachers in 1880, when the newly founded “city” still lacked paved streets, electric lights, telephones and a reliable fire alarm system. Today, USC is home to 44,000 students and 4,000 full-time faculty, and is located in the heart of one of the most vibrant and diverse cities in the world."
NOWHERE does it state that it IS" an Olympic training school" nor that IS "their stated goal "
NOWHERE.
try checking your facts before you post here.
your rants against one university, which are filled with falsehoods, is NOT what this thread is all about.
can we get back to the ORIGINAL discussion of FRAUDENT athletic applications to ALL of the colleges involved?
The VAST majority of Div 1 athletes do NOT go pro.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: This thread is drifting badly. Please get back to the original topic.
And the majority of athletes, even football players, go to classes. Coaches receive notice when a player misses a class. The service academies (army, navy, air force) are D1 schools and I’m pretty sure those athletes are going to classes.
Athletes aren’t a bunch of dummies who cheat to get into college. In fact, this thread is about non-athletes who cheated to get into college using athletics as a hook. They wanted to blend in with the athletes in admissions, and it seems like many of those who paid Singer to get them into colleges through the side door were qualified to attend the schools they did get into, it’s just that the line at the front door was soooo loooong and they wanted to get in by the side door before the venue was closed because it had reach capacity. Athletes get to walk through the front door, but in the express line.
Exactly.
“this thread is about non-athletes who cheated to get into college using athletics as a hook.”
Right, because that’s a uniquely effective way to cheat. If we care to avoid repeats of this scenario, we ought to be examining the weaknesses in our higher education system and how they were exploited.
I’m not sure if this has already been uncovered, however, I think one of the more shocking aspects of this saga, is the fact some parents and/or students, faked their race on the apps i.e. Marjorie Klapper, whose son is expected to plead GUILTY!
The cheating on the SAT and or ACT piggybacks on the enormous abuse of accommodations that a great many students receive these days for ambiguous disabilities like anxiety and eye fatigue and so on–many students are coached on what to say to get diagnosed because most DSM diagnoses are an aggregate of self reported symptoms The percentages have risen dramatically every since it could no longer be noted on transcripts/applications. This was a huge mistake as it created a cottage industry of psychologists and accommodations --if you get double time or even multiple days it enables rampant cheating.
“Right, because that’s a uniquely effective way to cheat. If we care to avoid repeats of this scenario, we ought to be examining the weaknesses in our higher education system and how they were exploited.”
Agree - this side door Singer talked about guaranteed admissions because of athletics, he could bribe the coaches and get them in. He could not bribe the professor of government or quantum physics to do this. That was what he exploited, pretty ingeniously, imo, he wouldn’t have been caught if he wasn’t ratted out. He had this thing humming. He had applicants who couldn’t meet the test minimums and he found a way around that.
@goddess00 Since kids today do, if fact, put a lot more time and effort into academics and ECs, expectations are higher, so the pressure is much higher. Eye fatigue is an issue when kids have 8 hour school days, ECs, and then another 3 hours of homework and studying for exams.
Many kids are coached, but those are a minority, and usually the kids kids of the very wealthy, whose therapists are there to makes sure that their lives are as easy as possible. Most kids who are even a bit competitive or ambitious, are actually living at the edge of freak-outs over most of their high school years.
I have had a front row seat to crippling anxiety, and it ain’t pretty. A kid would need to be a very good actor to do that repeatedly.
Truth is, that most highly competitive and ambitious kids are also highly skilled academically. They not only do not request accommodations, but will avoid asking for them. In schools in which kids are trying to one up each other in academic achievements, taking accommodations reduces your social status by a lot.
The faked symptoms pop up in kids who are ambitious but not academically talented, and want to take a short cut, or with parents who want the social cachet of a kid in an “elite” college, without having their kid actually need to do the work. It’s just another thing that they give the kid, like a car on their 16th birthday. Sometimes it’s because the parents are pressuring the kid to succeed in ways in which the kid is not talented, so this is a way to make the parents happy.
How would requiring students to release their medical diagnosis to colleges – which would be a violation of their HIPAA rights – have prevented what these people did? They might have had to be more clever about how they cheated, but it wouldn’t have prevented it.
People are vain, weak, selfish and lack ethics. Is there another problem uncovered by this scandal?