<p>Well, in the case of recruited athletes, their admissions process is distinct and therefore you do know they were accepted in order to play a sport at that school. That fact does not tell you whether or not the same student would have been accepted without the athletic aspect nor exactly what their academic qualifications are, but they were indeed accepted because of their sport. </p>
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<p>Athletic ability and academic talent are not mutually exclusive traits. Being recruited to play a sport doesn’t mean those students aren’t academically qualified. </p>
<p>Exactly, which is why I said you can’t know whether or not the student would have been accepted without their sport nor what their academic status is. But given that they were indeed recruited, you can’t separate out the athletic aspect from their admission either. I’m the parent of a highly academically qualified Stanford athlete, so I’d be the first to agree with you that the two traits aren’t mutually exclusive. However, there is a different admissions process for athletes, and even I would admit that in some cases kids are admitted with lower stats than the average for that school. They probably aren’t the tennis and golf players, though.</p>
<p>Most athletes would have been issued likelies and admissions in the early round or long before this week. So only ones really finding out anything this week are regular admits, whatever their skin color may be.</p>
<p>I agree that it is kind of presumptuous to assume to understand the full picture of why or how a classmate was admitted or denied, yet - </p>
<p>At our suburban public high school there is lots of peer admiration for students who are good enough to be contacted by college coaches, no matter the academic level of students. Many who can use an athletic hook will go that route rather than take an extra AP or try to raise a 2300 to a 2400 SAT if they are considering top schools, or use it to counter a somewhat lopsided academic profile. They will be vocal about going this route.</p>
<p>Many students talk with each other as they plot admissions strategies. Guidance counselors encourage students to find their admissions hooks for particular schools. (It is actually the Chinese girls at our high school who seem to face the steepest odds, fwiw.)</p>
<p>Additionally -</p>
<p>Students often brag about being an athletic admit, even if they have stats that put them above the median for their school. Being an “athlete” carries lots of prestige in some circles. (These same students sometimes complain that once on campus, they are looked down upon by classmates who are not involved in sports as “dumb jocks.”)</p>
<p>Some of the parents brag about their child’s success as a recruited athlete and the shortsightedness of parents who encouraged focus on academic interests and talents. Some parents begin to groom their children for athletic recruitment from an early age and can become very arrogant and disdainful of classmates who show no athletic talent or interest. </p>
<p>Or parents pout when their child has gotten into a top university or LAC as a full pay athletic recruit, but couldn’t get into the less expensive state school honors college. (The nerve of those honors colleges!)</p>
<p>Or parents wonder out loud whether their child will be able to compete in academics, if they had a light academic load in high school and SAT scores a good bit lower than other admits, even after loads of prep.</p>
<p>And, fwiw, we do know students who have been in touch with coaches from the start of admissions cycles, who might be borderline for athletic recruitment, and who do not find out for sure whether or not they have been admitted to a hyper-selective school until final decisions go out in the RD round. Yet, they can be fairly certain that they would not have been admitted without a word from the coach. (Both students and parents feel free to discuss this with others.)</p>
<p>That is how students think they can make an educated guess wrt how or why a particular classmate got into a particular school.</p>
<p>In all honesty, though, we have also encountered tons of disappointed parents of would-be athletic recruits, whose children did not get the nod from the coaches, and we know some students who have needed to re-invent themselves after an athletic injury, or after not quite rising to top ranks in their sport. </p>
<p>Perhaps patterns are different elsewhere.</p>
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<p>You are correct, they are not mutually exclusive. But in fairness, there a lot of kids who do know specifically that kids are being recruited, they do know their grades and classes and rank etc as well as SAT scores. Parents of athletes often talk to other parents and fill them in on how the recruiting is going and how the fact that their student is too low academically, but the coach can and does plan to make an exception for their student etc. </p>
<p>So no, it is not fair to assume kid wouldn’t have gotten in, but to be fair, there are times when you have a pretty good indication that the athlete was getting special treatment. I don’t think it is fair to say there are not students who get special treatment, and I don’t think it is fair to slam kids who feel frustrated by the fact that it happens. It is a good lesson for them to learn, but please don’t say the circumstance doesn’t exist.</p>
<p>In our senior class there was an athlete admitted to Princeton who was also a val, great test scores, was a top player and was an interesting applicant for many reasons including some other special disabilities. Everyone believed she would have and should have gotten into Princeton regardless of her willingness to play sports there. </p>
<p>“Everyone believed she would have and should have gotten into Princeton regardless of her willingness to play sports there.”</p>
<p>Huh? It doesn’t matter what everyone believe. Princeton and Duke and Stanford and every other private college and university have a right to value whatever qualities they want in a student. If you don’t like the idea of special value attached to basketball why would you even want to go to Duke in the first place? Wasn’t that the Harvard and Stanford basketball teams that were just busting March Madness brackets across the nation? Do you suppose Harvard wants to get its collective butt kicked all over the Charles River by the likes of Washington and Cal? Having had a kid who rowed, though, I would say that the time and energy and grit involved in sticking with that sport at the highest level say more about character and drive to succeed than being secretary of NHS or regional quiz bowl champion. If your values don’t mesh with their institutional values, maybe you should be looking at other schools. </p>
<p>In the world of competitive admissions, there is no reason for a college to admit any applicant who doesn’t bring some value-added attribute to the table. That attribute may or may not be apparent to outsiders – but in my mind, it essentially a waste of slot to give it away without being able to answer the question, “what will this student do for us?” I mean – an Ivy has the ability to attract top talent to fill just about every academic, social, artistic, or athletic niche – so why not look for students with strong attributes in readily identifiable areas?</p>
<p>So then, to an outsider, it looks like the student got admitted because of their “hook”. </p>
<p>But if the kid going off to USC had gotten accepted over the tennis or golf player… then the parents of the rejected kids would have seen the theater interest as being the “hook” that was valued more… </p>
<p>Colleges need creative artists and they need athletes - but they need to have enough, and not too many. So when the theater kid applies to Brown or Yale, she is essentially competing against other theater-kid applicants. It’s not formalized with a specific quota – but I think it’s there nonetheless. </p>
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<p>The comment about the young woman who got into Princeton was to point out that just because someone has an “in” as an athlete doesn’t mean that they weren’t academically qualified. When that is the situation, people tend to feel, hey that person had something more or different than I did and they don’t feel as frustrated by it. </p>
<p>Of course schools have a right to admit any student that they feel will add something to their campus, and I actually think athletics add a lot to a campus environment, and for that you need athletes. I am just saying I can understand why someone applying to a very academically competitive school would be frustrated by someone getting in when there academic resume is much lower even below the schools normal academic cutoffs. I get that schools use different students to meet different needs, I am just saying, I understand how someone would feel frustrated by that situation and don’t see any reason to jump down their throat for their feelings. </p>
<p>ETA: copy and pasted to wrong paragraph.</p>
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<p>I have two kids—one was a fairly heavily recruited athlete, with average (at best) academics. The other is more academically inclined. The athlete had the opportunity to attend academically elite schools that the scholar is probably not going to be able to get into. It is frustrating, but it’s also a fact of life and not something to waste time getting bent out of shape about. </p>
<p>What I take issue with are the ideas of fairness and special treatment. We aren’t talking about elections or representation before the courts. In the world of multi-faceted institutions with holistic admissions there is no promise that every student is given an equal hearing based one uniform set of standards. Some institutions have taken to saying that they are looking for ‘angular’ students rather than ‘well rounded’ ones. I would add that every student who presents some talent or attribute is hoping for ‘special’ treatment. They are hoping that whatever they bring to the table will be the thing that catches someone’s eye and says “pick me!” It’s one thing if you are talking about public universities that recruit athletes who are hard pressed to read and pass basic classes. However, Ivy League schools and all these highly selective DIII schools aren’t giving athletic scholarships (yes, they might get preferential packaging). By and large, the kids are actually going for the education and the athletics helps them to get in. How is this different that submitting an arts supplement or anything else that you think might give you an edge? </p>
<p>Then there are D1 school like Davidson. They offer large scholarships for ‘scholar athletes’ and make no bones about it. On another thread a parent made a point of voicing what sounded like sour grapes about her D who had very high stats and ‘did everything right’ except be an athlete. She was waitlisted at Davidson. Who knows why but the OP brought the non athlete thing up twice. I guess my point is that if a school like Davidson gives athletic scholarships and publicly states that they recruit athletes and that bothers you, should you hold that against the school or the recruited student or should you just look for a school that’s a better fit?</p>
<p><a href=“Lowell L. Bryan Scholarship | Davidson”>http://www.davidson.edu/admission-and-financial-aid/financial-aid/scholarships/nomination-scholarships/lowell-bryan-scholarship</a></p>
<p>Rereading my previous post I see how my use of ‘you’ at the end could be taken personally. I meant it in the global sense of ‘one’ should look at other school. I did not intend to chastise the poster, but rather question the attention to ‘fit’ of a random student who feels that obvious, upfront institutional priorities are unfair.</p>
<p>For all the 2014 parents, after a tough admission year, remember to tell your kid you are proud of of him/her. Don’t let the college admission result define who they are and high school experience. I remember D1 asking me if I was still proud of her after her rejections. It never occurred to me that she would even question that. I was very proud of her for how hard she tried and how she handled herself after the results came out. She continued to keep up her grades, submitted additional essays to her WL schools, and started to get excited about the school she was admitted to. But as a parent, it was gut wrenching to watch. </p>
<p>For future students/parents, EA and rolling admissions are your friends. D2 applied to 2 EAs along with her ED. Our plan was if she didn’t get into any of those schools during the early round, we were going to re-evaluate her application (essays) to see if they needed to be reworked, and then possibly tweak her college list. Luckily, she was admitted at her ED school.</p>
<p>For high stats students, it is unlikely to be shut out of all top tier schools. When it happens then it is time to come up with a new strategy, that’s why EAs are great to test the water. Now looking back, I think D1’s weakness were her essays. She didn’t spend as much time on them as she should have. She also wasn’t as good of an writer as D2. With our second one, we made sure she started her essays in the summer. She wrote all of her essays, but she did strategize with the private counselor as to the theme of all essays and how they tied in with her overall application. She put down Reading as an EC (who would do that, but for D2 it was her true love), and she wrote an essay about reading (what would you do if you had 3 hours of free time). She used the same essay for other schools.</p>
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<p>This applies to legacies and URMs as well. Often, they are just as academically qualified as their future classmates. </p>
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<p>Exactly. And for what it is worth, even if they weren’t, if that is what the schools want for whatever reason they want them, it is fine.</p>
<p>I am just saying I don’t think kids are being spoiled brats for being frustrated by the fact that this is how things work. After all, for most of their lives parents, teachers and others have threatened them that if they don’t do their homework, or aren’t willing to sacrifice and work hard they won’t get into a good school. So when they do focus on their academics as they were told to do and it doesn’t work out, they get frustrated. Not spoiled, just frustrated. </p>
<p>No one said to them, while trying to motivate them to do their work as early as grade school if you don’t work hard you won’t be part of a pool that has less that 15% or 20% chance of getting into a good school. Just give these kids a little slack, give them time to switch gears, teach them how to move on, let them learn to deal with disappointment, but stop calling them names.</p>
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<p>Good point. But at some point they will have to make the transition from hard work always means success to the reality of job/career/family life after college which is often just as, if not more, subjective than college admissions.</p>
<p>These kids are going to enter a world where they lose jobs or internships to “less qualified” applicants or jump over others because they fit the team or the interviewer likes them or whatever it may be.</p>
<p>This is only step one in this process…</p>
<p>or most of their lives parents, teachers and others have threatened them that if they don’t do their homework, or aren’t willing to sacrifice and work hard they won’t get into a good school. So when they do focus on their academics as they were told to do and it doesn’t work out, they get frustrated.</p>
<p>I think the problem lies with some people’s very narrow definition of a “good school.” I’m getting a little sick of posts that say things like, “Waah! I got shut out of all the good schools because they only take legacies and URMs and athletes! All I got into was U Chicago (or Middlebury, or Berkeley, or Vassar…)”</p>
<p>Yes Sue22, I’ll give you that one :-)</p>
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<p>Amen to that! DD applied to three non-binding EA schools, 2 reach and 1 safety. By mid-Dec, she was accepted by one reach, deferred at the other, and accepted at the safety. With two good options in her back pocket, she was able to delete 5 applications from her to-do list, making for a much more enjoyable winter break. It also made for a stress-free three months waiting for the rest of the decisions to roll in. When she got the expected rejections from her other 2 reach schools this week, the final decision where to enroll was a no-brainer.</p>
<p>My D applied to 7 schools (7 with EA/SCEA/rolling and one RD as we cannot commit ED to it). She has 2 low matches, 3 matches, and 2 reaches on the list. She has one safety school planned for RD but did not apply at the end as it is not necessary. She got accepted by the rolling in Oct/Nov. 4 EA acceptance and one SCEA reach rejection came in December. The RD reach acceptance arrived a couple weeks ago. They are all good options and half of them offered decent to good scholarships or financial aids. She finished all the EA application by early October and the only RD in late November. She was very relaxed in the whole senior year and can focus on her school work and scholarship applications. So the whole game plan on the timing of application and the selection of schools are very critical to make the life of a high school senior easier.</p>
<p>billscho, how did your daughter manage to apply to both EA and SCEA schools? I thought SCEA stood for “single choice early action” and prohibited you from applying to any other EA schools? </p>