Parents of the HS Class of 2026

[AustenNut]

@beefeater

The only things I note are that 1) probably not all athletes are recruited

This is not my area of expertise, but my understanding is at the highly selective/rejective colleges, that coaches may get a certain number of full support (i.e. get this kid in, please), and maybe a couple soft support (i.e., if you’re debating between this kid and another kid, please send this kid through), and that the rest are walk-ons. It also depends, however, on the college, because at some schools (I’ve heard MIT is one), a coach’s support doesn’t pull that much weight with admissions, whereas at others (perhaps where intercollegiate sports have greater importance), a coach is likelier to have more pull. But I’m going to page @Mwfan1921 who can probably provide better information.

ETA: @ECCA and anyone else interested, this post shares some data about athlete percentages at some schools and the source to get the info:

Rest in Peace: College Closings

Okay, I found the discussion of percentage of student athletes at a school and the pay-to-play phenomenon really intriguing. I went to this governmental website and downloaded the data for 4-year public and nonprofit private schools with a population under 5k. https://ope.ed.gov/athletics/ I then did a little simple math (added the total # of unduplicated males and unduplicated females for the total # of athletes and then divided that by the # of undergrads) to get the percentage of undergrads who were athletes. And I’m excluding U. of Fort Lauderdale because it somehow has more athletes than undergrads and I’m not going deep enough into the rabbit hole to figure out why. But suffice it to say… [image] First, some frames of reference for this 2022 data (the most recent year available). A few schools more familiar to CCers that are considered athlete-heavy are Williams (35% athletes), Amherst (32% athletes), and Middlebury (26%). Here’s a summary of how the schools broke down…