At our school my kid is vying for valedictorian / salutatorian and several athletes going to Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, U Penn and my son has never had any classes with most of them and the few he has were like non-honors/AP. It’s highly unlikely these kids took many if any AP / honors because there just aren’t that many classes that my son wouldn’t know even one of them.
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I always wondered about things like this…If kids get into these schools because of athletics, what is the success rate with them at these schools? (I know we don’t have the answer for this..) but if they never challenged themselves in high school, how can they do well in classes at these Ivies…
my guess is they are concentrated among certain majors which may not have the same rigor. You don’t often hear about players failing out but that said I know most D1 programs have significant academic support programs in place.
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To me this is evidence supporting my perspective which is most schools are harder to get into than they are necessarily “harder” than other less rejective schools. I believe most qualified applicants would be just fine at even the hardest admit school, and the fact that most athletes (again, who are qualified to clear a threshold) do just fine. I personally have taken classes at a community college, I did undergrad at a flagship state school, did an MBA at a top 20, and am getting another masters at an Ivy League – and I can confirm that there are great professors and less great professors at all. And the difference in “difficulty” has less to do with the category of school and more to do with the subject, class, and professor.
Will a straight-C student who took no honors or advanced classes thrive at Harvard? Probably not. But the vast majority of applicants absolutely could – way beyond the popular narrative that “if you didn’t get accepted into a school it might be a blessing because you would have been over your head” would suggest.
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I’ve never seen that narrative here or irl. Guess I found something new to be thankful for as the year comes to a close.
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DC22 is a recruited athlete at a T15, math major. There are team mates majoring in all sorts of disciplines. Some switched, most not. I don’t think there is a concentration of majors, except maybe many business majors (finance especially). The support is there not because they can’t handle the academics, but because they travel for days at a time and miss multiple days a month. By all accounts, all are doing well, whether they took rigorous classes in HS or not. They were all good students but not necessarily highest rigor.
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I don’t know the water polo person but my kid was friends with the Harvard crew guy, and reckons he must have barely scraped whatever minimum they set. Good for him, but I can imagine how it must feel for those kids doing a zillion APs etc to get leapfrogged like that. Neither of my kids aimed/are aiming at that level so this is just my “objective” view, no skin in that game.
Empty nest pets: No plans to do that here. We don’t have any pets, and we sometimes joke that we’re too irresponsible to have pets, and so that’s why we had children😅. But in all seriousness, we are very much looking forward to being able to take off for a weekend without anyone or anything other than ourselves in tow, and a cat or whatever would make that harder.
A metacomment on recruited athletes: At a very real level, college athletics has long been a house of cards—it loses money at the vast majority of colleges, even the ones without athletic scholarships!—and the new NIL regime is threatening it in a big way. I’m curious what’s going to happen in future years to that (small, but loud) slice of the college applicant world that uses varsity sports as a way to significantly increase the odds of getting into rejective colleges.
Valedictorian-ism: My won’t be valedictorian or salutatorian, despite having a 4.0UW and more college credits with an A than any other student in the graduating class. This is because of a quirk in the way the local school district calculates weighted GPAs (and val and sal are by district policy based purely on weighted GPA)—AP and IB courses are weighted (adding a 1 to the calculation), but absolutely nothing else. C25 had taken a couple of those in 9th and 10th grades, but starting in 11th grade has been taking all DE, which means that every A in one of those courses has brought the kid’s weighted GPA down. There are apparently plans to change that starting with the Co2027, but for DE students it means that kids in the school who opted to take an AP course online instead of a DE course have a higher GPA in the eyes of the school district—and there are a few kids in any high school who are more than happy to game the GPA structure when there are catches like that (like the occasional kid who takes a study hall instead of, say, a fine arts class because taking a nonweighted class would dilute their other classes’ weighting).
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I’m talking, in general, about the large moneymaking sports (football, basketball) and not other sports. But the arguement is often made “well the time commitment for these sports is large so we don’t knock them for lack of rigor” and yet things like the theater program which is so much of a time commitment at my son’s school certain positions and roles often get Varsity letters. 3 hours a day 5-6 days a week is typical for major roles/stage manager. And yet shockingly I’ve never heard a counselor tell me that he shouldn’t take the max rigor…
At the end of the day it’s a fact it’s easier to get into a school as a recruited athlete. It just is. You can pretend it’s not true all you want but the scatterplots at my son’s HS would beg to differ… I’m not saying they aren’t as capable and I’m not saying fair or unfair but let’s not pretend that’s not a fact, especially with the moneymaking sports.
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Point of fact: Those “moneymaking” sports do not, in fact, make money.
They’re widely called “revenue sports”, but at most colleges they do not actually produce net positive cashflow under even generous allowances for what counts as revenue and expense.
Looking on from the outside, the recruited athlete thing seems to be a bit of a devil’s bargain. First, it sure seems like for every kid who gets into their dream school, there are a bunch of others who have also been putting in the hours and not getting picked, right? Huge amount of time and expense up front for the whole family (thinking of all my friends who are basically hostage to soccer schedules from the time their kids are 9 or 10). And then when you get to college…you’re basically stuck hanging out with your teammates and committed to an incredibly intense practice and competition schedule that precludes a lot of the interesting exploration etc. that college is supposed to foster.
My friend Amber did a podcast about her experience swimming for Stanford. I knew her in the aftermath of this experience and had heard a lot but still – listening to her story kind of blows my mind. This is not the college experience I’d wish for my kid. What’s the point of going to an amazing school if you’re basically an indentured servant? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhJsp2NDe7k
Obviously if your kid is completely and wholeheartedly committed to their sport, to the point where not doing it at a high level would be heartbreaking, attempting to find a school where they can do that makes sense…I guess. But you’re basically picking a team instead of an educational experience, right? I’m sure there are D3 schools with a more healthy balance. (an aside: is D2 a thing? was it ever? I’ll google it…) But I don’t think it’s an easy path, either leading up to college or once you’re there. There are so many places where things can go badly wrong.
I did a club sport in grad school with a lot of undergrads and that was amazing – anyone could partake (within reason); people chose how intense they wanted to be about it; nobody’s college scholarship was dependent on their successful participation. I wish we could right-size collegiate sports to look more like that.
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I hear you on weird quirks… I know there is grade inflation at my kids’ school, as it seems that 30-50 kids out of 400ish per class graduate with unweighted 4.0’s. The school calculates both weighted and unweighted GPA, but there is a special “4.0 honor cord” along with other recognition for all the unweighted 4.0 kids, but nothing for kids with top weighted GPAs. S25 has #2 in his class when weighted GPA is considered (as of the beginning of the year…1st semester hasn’t ended yet).
But S25 doesn’t have a 4.0 only because of a test-out exam he took before starting 9th grade. 
He was homeschooled through 8th and Algebra II (which he completed at home) is a required credit for graduation by state regulations. In order to prove that he had competency, he had to take an exam before his 9th grade year started, and he got a B on that exam. So, now he has 1 full credit of “B” on his transcript as the “proof” that he had Alg 2 competency before starting high school. He doesn’t have any regrets because having completed Geometry and Algebra II in middle school and pre-calc in 9th, he could test into a program where he took rigorous college level math (full calculus sequence, linear equations, proof writing) in 10-12.
He doesn’t care much about the honor cord, but I am annoyed, since he has a 4.0 in all the classes he actually took while enrolled.
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“Right sizing” is such a good way to put it. It was not my choice or suggestion, and it was (as it usually is) my child’s choice to forego a traditional, explorative college experience. It is not a net loss- so much has been gained, there has been so much personal growth, but less frilly of an experience. No way to tell if the exploratory college path would have yielded a different human being; one path is not the only way to go. I think college sports will look very different very soon- and I’m all for it.
My student is in a “revenue generating” sport- lots of good students on the team. The problem is not these kids taking others’ spots- the problem is making a selective school experience so coveted that the student athlete is, even if unintentionally, denigrated. As a family, we value the work ethic, character and strengths all our kids have and develop - but we don’t give a hoot whether they end up at selective schools, and never question the intellectual worth of a person where ever they ended up going to school.
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I’ve been given the “dog 3 or me, but not both” lecture!
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I have the same. And everytime I kindof find something…I’m like nah…too expensive, or nah…I’ll get bored.
I would go to bat with administration over the honor cord. Probably is costing a few students honor cords. You don’t have to be angry about it, just bring it to their attention.
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Re: sports and college - my older son was sort of a recruited athlete. He rows crew and, at 5’11" he was too short for D1 programs, but so strong that a bunch of D3 schools - which don’t give athletic scholarships - talked with him. He had to submit grades and test scores - even at schools that were test optional at the time - for pre-reads before the coaches would talk with him in much detail. He ended up at a smaller program that he chose because the coach was committed to making it feasible for him to row and be an engineer. Part of what can drive athletes into certain majors are the time commitments - it’s very hard to be in a science that requires labs, because those labs are very hard to make up if you have to travel. At his school, regattas are close enough that you aren’t missing much if any school, and the coach is committed to making STEM work, because it’s a STEM school.
Nevertheless, to comment on something someone else noted, after a year, he left the crew team to play a different sport at a club level. He loved the team, loved rowing, but felt like he was missing college. He spent so much time with the team - practicing, travelling or competing - that he felt like he missed out on the normal aspects of college. And while he loved the sport, that’s not what he was there for.
And FWIW, while those super high reach schools undoubtedly recruit some athletes who are not as strong as their typical academic recruits, given the tremendous number of high school athletes who want to compete in college, and the limited number of spots, I’d bet that the imbalance isn’t that great, the Harvard’s and Stanford’s of the world can afford to be super picky among their athletic recruits too, and look for both academics and athletic ability. (The best rower on our HS crew team also had a perfect GPA in all honors and AP courses and an over 1550 SAT - he was recruited to row at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Penn along with an array of top SLACs. He ended up at the Naval Academy. He could have been successful at any of the schools)
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My friend who swam at Stanford talked about the how the on-campus stereotype for recruited athletes was that they were not serious students, and how this messed with her head. She was her high school valedictorian. She’s super bright. But she was also expected to spend 30-40 hours/week being a swimmer and fit school into the margins. Not a recipe for social, academic, or psychological health.
(Again, small sample size and more about stereotypes than reality but…sheesh!)
A different friend’s daughter just left her D1 program at an Ivy (to which she had been recruited) because she just didn’t want to make her entire college experience about that sport and those people. Like your son’s friend, she was a top student with a bunch of interests who also happened to be really good at her sport. She was certainly as qualified as any classmate to be at that school – but of course the recruiting made it more of a sure thing. I wonder how common this sort of attrition is. At least at the Ivies and D3 programs, you’re not dependent on continuing in your sport in order to pay for school.
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On a separate note, status update from these parts:
Kiddo has decided to submit a few remaining applications, including:
- Brandeis
- Lafayette
- University of Rochester
- Purdue (this one is annoying to me. I think if he had been serious about it, he should’ve submitted back on 11/1 when he would have had a chance.)
- also filling out continued interest form for Case, which is effectively doing another supplemental.
This means he decided not to apply to Carleton, Kenyon, Lehigh, Oberlin, and Occidental. Whew.
I’m trying to sort out how we’re going to get good decisional data on the schools he’s likely to get into/has already gotten into. Here’s the lay of the land:
Schools he’s gotten into and actually visited:
- Macalester
- St. Olaf
- Minnesota (but we didn’t actually do a proper tour or interact with any students or go into any buildings – we just walked through the huge campus and it was cold and desolate so didn’t make much of an impression.)
Schools he’s gotten into and never laid eyes on:
- Oregon State
- Pitt
- CO School of Mines
Schools he’s got a decent chance of getting into get into based on current results:
- RPI (never visited)
- CU Boulder (never visited)
- Union (never visited)
- WPI (spent 2 weeks on campus in the summer but hasn’t visited during school time)
- Brandeis (walked around an empty campus in the summer)
- Lafayette (never visited)
Longer-shot schools that he’s also never visited:
- Rochester
- Case
- Any of the UCs aside from Santa Barbara
- UW
- CPSLO
We clearly can’t go to all these places by the time he needs to make an informed decision. I’m currently thinking:
- MLK weekend: try to get out to Boulder/Golden
- February “Ski Week” (yeah, it’s a California thing.): do an Ohio/PA/NY schools tour
- March/April: pick no more than five “fly-in” schools to visit for admitted students days based on his preferences as they emerge. I’m fairly confident that the SoCal UCs are not going to be on the table and we can get to Davis or UC Santa Cruz in a day trip.
I was tossing and turning for hours the other night trying to figure out what we could eliminate or what variables are going to be dispositive. S25 seems to be unable to differentiate categorically across schools with two big exceptions: he likes the idea of going to either the best ranked school (insert eyeroll) that he can get into (mostly for pride reasons)…or going to school with a friend. This means that his favorites at the moment are Macalester and Oregon State, but that he’s really holding out hope for the long-shot UCs. I think this is basically why it’s been so hard to get him to do research into these other schools. My guess is that he will not get into the UCs, and that his only option to go to school with a friend will be OSU. At that point he will need to do a more complex decision-making process.
My own biases: I like schools where there are either abundant outdoor recreation options or a vibrant club sports scene (because I think lack of exercise is bad for body and brain). I worry about his ability to navigate housing and course registration bureaucracies and therefore favor smaller schools with more on-campus housing (e.g. Case, Rochester, Lafayette, St. Olaf, even Macalester, where kids tend to move off campus but – check this! – he could probably rent nearby housing from an old friend.) But I am also genuinely worried about what it would mean to send this California kid to live somewhere where the sun don’t shine. Rochester weather sounds genuinely miserable for most of the year. RPI/Case/Minnesota might not be much better. I’m also worrying about the intensity of the academic experience at some of these places. He’s a smart kid with really under-evolved study skills. A place like Caltech or Harvey Mudd would crush him. Is Mines or RPI likely to be much better? I guess we can’t know until he tries.
Anyway, if you’ve read this far, thanks for listening. I’m vaguely aware of how insufferable this wheel-spinning is. My kid will have so many great options and the penalty for failure in our case is relatively light. It is a luxury to be able to weigh these considerations instead of, say, wondering how we could possibly pay for college, or fearing that our kid is never going to be able to live independently. “Should I order the caviar, which might taste kinda fishy, or the foie gras, despite my humanitarian concerns?”
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Our HS has the major listed first, but under that it will say a sport if they are playing one. I was an athlete and my C25 could have probably played in college if they wanted to but are burnt out from competitive sports and is looking to pick up a new sport on the club level for fun. Can sports be over emphasized? Sure. But they are an important piece of developing (for some) and IMO serve a valuable function on college campuses.