recruited athletes

sybbie719
Sat, 26 Jan 2008 07:49:09 +0000

Hi,

I think you should move your question to the parents forum as there are many parents of recuited athletes who participate and they can give you a better sense based on the sport.

If you do a search recruited, athletes - parents forum, you will find a number of threads.

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/283274-sick-ivies-saying-they-don-t-recruit-4.html?highlight=furstenberg#post3415219

Keep in mind that there are different levels for different sports.

IMHO, unless friend is an olympic caliber athlete, the 3.0 is very low for Dartmouth even as a recruited athlete. I remember during my D and her friends where at the house and the friends were talking about how they took the “rocks for jocks” course over sophomore summer. The friend said it was one of the hardest courses she took, because there were no rocks, and the jocks were really smart!

Based on what I have seen over the past few years, amongst the recuited athletes, it seems like the student being an athlete was more a tip rather than a hook because the students presented grades, SAT scores, APs that already made them competitive candidates and their sport(s) put them over the top. While Furstenberg has retired, I do not see Lakiris, doing anything differently when it comes to recruited athletes.

A couple of years ago the Dartmouth ran a series of articles titled In admissions, many get ‘special’ attention. they specifically wrote about recruited athletes.

the artilcle states:



Athletes and students with 800 SAT scores also gain admission at a disproportionately high rate, Dean of Admissions Karl Furstenberg said. Rates are also higher for students with exceptional essays and above-4.0 GPAs. With so many people applying for admission at one of the top 10 schools in the country, it takes a combination of many factors to get that thick envelope come April.

On the other hand, roughly 40 percent of applicants are given some sort of extra attention — minorities, legacies or athletes. This year, 24 percent of applicants were students of color, 3 percent legacies, and roughly 13 to 17 percent were athletes, based on estimates. This 40 percent of the applicants has a combined admit rate nearly double the overall level.

Athletic admissions statistics are not released by the admissions office. Some speculate that athletes — particularly those for big sports — are given the highest preference of all. This does not appear to be the case at Dartmouth, although athletes do benefit from having a lobbyist in their coach. Coaches submit ranked lists of their recruited athletes to the admissions office. The admissions office then reviews the applications, taking into account the applicant’s athletic talent and coach’s recommendation.

“Athletic talent works in the same way other kinds of talent do. The only difference is it’s a much more organized and structured recruiting process and that’s a function of the NCAA and the Ivy League rules,” Furstenberg said. “They tell us who they want, but there are no guaranteed number of slots.”
But even with the ability to submit a list, some coaches expressed frustration with how little say they really have.

“How much clout do I have? Minimal,” men’s swimming coach Jim Wilson said. “If you look at my SAT scores and compare to the average SAT scores, my kids may be getting in with a 1450 instead of a 1460.”

Wilson did, however, speculate that some of the “higher-profile sports like football may be getting a little more help.”

Coaches are given little feedback from the admissions office before submitting their lists, according to Wilson. “I’m shooting blind,” he said, adding that other schools, even in the Ivy League, are actually more lenient with athletic admissions.

“Some schools will say ‘if he has this GPA and this SAT score were going to let him in.’ Our admissions doesn’t do that,” Wilson said.

Michele Hernandez '89, who worked in the Dartmouth College admissions office in the mid-1990s and is currently a private college counselor, concurred.

**“Dartmouth actually has higher standards for athletes than most schools,” she said. “Many athletes that are walking straight into Harvard couldn’t get into Dartmouth.”

While athletic talent can bolster an application, it does not replace other criteria for admission, according to Furstenberg. If coaches do not find well qualified applicants to put on their list, they risk not getting enough players that year. **

“If the coaches say we need nine soccer players this year, but we only think six of them are qualified, that’s what they get,” he said. “All of the decisions are made here; the only person at the institution who can admit someone is me.”