Is The College Admissions Process Broken?

I saw that all the time in my daughter’s equivalency sport. The coach of one of my DD’s former teams was able to recruit very well for the team by touting the fact that all of his seniors each year got full rides. Well I dug into his placement history and many of the placements were not schools I would send an academically inclined student to. When I discussed this with the other parents, most did not care. We ultimately left that team for other reasons, but sure enough, many of my DD’s former teammates ended up at weak schools just so they could continue playing and many ended up transferring. I don’t get many sports parents.

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You are describing the dark underbelly of college athletics.

It’s something many parents/athletes don’t know about or don’t consider until they get to college. Once you drink the Kool-Aid, it’s very hard to stop.

People never talk about happens to the recruited athletes after they get to college. The conversation is focused on trying to get in.

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I have a relative who works in college athletics, and he said that there was a place to play for anybody who wanted to play. But, there isn’t always a place to play that is a good fit academically. Some of kid’s high school teammates have gone on to play at colleges, ranging from CCs to D1 schools. I don’t see parents wanting their kids to keep playing with the dream of a scholarship - it’s mostly kids who want to keep playing and who will go wherever they have that option. My own kid is struggling a bit with watching so many summer teammates sign with local small colleges, knowing that kid’s plan to study engineering eliminates those options. My younger kid, who wants to be a teacher, has many more choices and a much higher likelihood of being able to play college ball because small schools are perfectly fine for a education major. Meanwhile, my older is seriously considering a couple of D1 powerhouse schools, where kid will be a fan and is considering being a student worker in the athletic department since they pay you to go to games (to work, but still). Many, many of the athletes who are still playing in high school love their sports and dread the day when they walk off the field for the last time as a player. I was a band kid, but still remember the last home college football game that I marched in, and the tears that were shed afterward. I’m guessing it’s the same for a lot of kids and their sport.

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I was reading an article in my daughter’s alumni mag today about two players on the men’s lax team who are deaf. It went into how they had to develop a new way to communicate as a team since these two players can’t hear the captain’s signals. They developed some hand signals but also some simple things like a tug on a jersey or a poke with a stick. Both players are studying engineering and one commented that he knows he’ll have to figure out a communication system with future employers and co-workers and thinks this helps and has given him confidence that he can succeed (in anything).

Would they have had to develop such a communication system if they had a job at Starbucks or with a landscape company? Probably, but not moving so fast.

When my daughter interviewed for her job, she said all they asked her about was playing lax in college,being a captain, how she could be organized for school and games and outside life. They knew the other stuff about her class work and even about the work she did for a professor, but were curious about her sports life. Still has the same job 6 years later (although working for a different group in a different city).

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Lot’s of under-informed families, yes. The travel sports machine doesn’t do too much to improve education; they know that if they can create a dependency, they will have a continued source of revenue. Considering it’s a decent chunk of admits every year, it would be nice to fix this part of admissions with more education.

Coaches relocating have really affected recruiting for a few families we know. The demands of D1 (and even some D3) sports is a shock to some. In the end, every student athlete has to understand the tradeoffs: sport, academics, social (outside of athlete friends)… it’s very hard to do more than two here from what I heard. Baseball, sadly, is one of the worst in terms of demands on the student athlete. Basically, year round.

There are many advantages too. When the tradeoffs are clearly understood, it can work out well. If not… it’s definitely a sacrifice.

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:grinning:

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I’ll tie this onto another thread.

If the only way a student or parent feels a student will be competitive for college admissions is to take online courses, summer school courses, 0 period courses, then yes, the college admissions process is very broken.

Many students are already accepted to just about every college without doing the things I’ve mentioned above here. But there is a sentiment amongst some that these are must do things to increase rigor, increase the number of AP courses, etc that some feel necessary for college applicants.

That’s a broken system, but I am not sure it’s a college level broken process issue. I think it’s a perception issue on the part of some.

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This post nailed it! Sums up everything my son and I have witnessed this year.

I get that. Both of my kids were recruited athletes but their number 1 goal was to attend a college that gave them the best opportunity to succeed. Unless the kid is so athletically talented in a sport where pro’s can make a decent living, college is the end of the line other than rec leagues and they and their families need to see that clearly. We know too many families that had their priorities reversed, often with the kid going to a school that was not an academic fit, not finishing school, and in several cases off the team within a couple of years.

Going the recruited athlete path can work out as @RWatterson points out, but IMO you need a plan with priorities other than just finding school that will take you as an athlete. My kids loved their sports, but they only sought to be recruited by schools that were an academic fit. In fact my S ended up declining half a dozen D3 “offers” because after the visits he decided he wanted to go to a larger university, so he took a chance at an SCEA school. Worked out for him, and he still was able to play club in the 2 sports he lettered in in HS.

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Other factors to consider

  1. Team culture. Some teams are inclusive while others aren’t
  2. Coach. Many coaches portray themselves as parent-like figures to recruits and parents, but they aren’t. The reality is that they were hired to win.
  3. Playing time. Many athletes expect or hope that they will get ample playing time on the team. Unfortunately, many will never see the field. A player can easily be displaced by a teammate or a new recruit to the team.
  4. Time commitment. The time commitment (including commuting time) for participation for D1 even D3 teams, depending on the sport, is much greater than what many athletes are used to. In addition, the college academic load is often greater than what many athletes are used to in high school.
  5. Serious injuries seem to be much more common at the college level than in high school.
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Yes but what are the outcomes of the students attending colleges that are basically open-enrollment for admission? Would you feel like your student got a valuable education at all of those schools? Out of the thousands of post-secondary institutions in the US, how many provide a positive ROI and are worth attending? Can you get into a decent college that will provide a positive ROI without jumping through hoops?

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One of my kids graduated from Boston university and the other from Santa Clara University. Both are pursuing their chosen careers and are happy and self supporting.

Neither ever took a summer school or online class (disclaimer that those were just beginning when the younger one was in HS). Each took two AP courses and got 5 grades. They both were accepted to their top choice colleges.

And so were all their friends.

Everyone here wasn’t looking for T20 colleges. Is that the only place where you can get a good ROI?

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That’s why I was asking because mostly what I read about on these forums are either the tippy tops or the alternative being CC or open-access. For those schools that fall in-between, do they also practice holistic admissions?

I doubt that my music performance kid was accepted using holistic anything. It was all about their audition. But he did need to meet the academic bar for admission as well (it wasn’t very high at the conservatories he applied to).

My second kid…yes, I do think they looked at her whole application. I say this because her SAT wasn’t the strongest, but her GPA and class rank were high (top 10 student in a class of over 200 students). If they had only looked at her SAT score and GPA, I doubt she would have been accepted at SCU even when she was (a while ago).

There are plenty of very good colleges that do not use holistic admissions.

SUNY- any of them. They aren’t open enrollment by any means, but nobody has to start their own charitable organization to provide prosthetics to land mine victims to get in to them. U Mass- any of them. Again, not open enrollment, but if there’s a kid out there hiring an admissions counselor to get them the “right” EC’s to get into U Mass Boston I’d be flabbergasted. Missouri S&T-- a hidden gem, highly valued by recruiters who hire chemists, engineers, etc. but very low profile outside of the midwest. You don’t need to have taken calculus as a sophomore to get in and you certainly don’t need a recommendation from a Nobel prize winner to get in.

I’ll stop now. You get my point.

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Even for most open holistic review schools, just doing what the kid is truly interested in is going to be enough. The extra hoops are not necessary.

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Actual open enrollment colleges would be community colleges (which offer mostly associates degrees, certificates, and transfer preparation) and bottom-feeding for-profit colleges.

But perhaps you really mean public or non-profit colleges that are relatively low selectivity. For example, Mississippi State University is not very selective (see Freshman Students | Office of Admissions and Scholarships ). Overall graduation rate is 62% (slightly higher than the overall 4-year school median of 58%), and its median recent graduate earnings is $48,296 (slightly lower than the overall 4-year school median of $50,482), according to College Scorecard | College Scorecard (where you can also see earnings by major for some majors, e.g. $82,975 for computer science).

When most people look at ROI they assume the college is the driver in earnings, rather than the individual student. Had a particular student attended a “basically open-enrollment for admission” 4-year college, then their future earnings become the average for kids attending that college, where the majority may not graduate. Had the student instead attended a highly selective, private college, then their earnings become the average for the highly selective college, where nearly all students are high achievers who graduate, and primarily target majors/careers associated with high earnings.

The reality is the individual student is the primary driver for that particular student’s future income, not the name of the college. Students who are high achievers and pursue fields associated with higher earnings tend to have higher earnings than students who are not.

This leads to a wide variety of earning ranges for different students at the same college. A particular student who had low enough income to have no expected financial contribution and majors in engineering might have a great ROI. A different student at the same college who pays sticker price, majors in biology, does not have sufficient grades/scores to get in to med school, and chooses to get no further degrees beyond BS in biology might have a poor ROI.

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The CSUs in California are not open admission, but generally not super-selective (although some majors at some campuses may be highly competitive like CS at CPSLO and SJSU and nursing or pre-nursing at many campuses). None use holistic admission – they all use point systems based on recalculated high school GPA, with added points determined by the campus (e.g. for local area residency or course work beyond the minimum) and sometimes by major (e.g. math GPA added for engineering applicants at SJSU). Note that many majors at many campuses admit frosh at the systemwide baseline of 2.5 recalculated high school GPA.

There are a lot of schools in between the T20 and schools with very high acceptance rates. There are many very solid schools where crazy ECs are not necessary at all - even if those school practice holistic admissions. For example, S22 applied to 7 schools - all in the top 100 - and was accepted to 5 of the 7. He was a very good student, but not a top one, and had solid, but not top, rigor. His ECs were pretty marginal (at best). It is a pretty small group of schools that people are focusing on when they talk about summer research, on-line courses, high level ECs etc. Most schools just want to see that kids are doing something outside of school - they aren’t expecting the next Nobel laureate.

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