<p>EMM1,</p>
<p>What exactly am I supposed to get from post #20, is it your implied belief that being a recruited athlete always requires more time and dedication than any other EC?</p>
<p>EMM1, vango has offered that the school with the full scholarship was D1. No name was ever mentioned although I requested both the name of the elite schools offering the scholarships and the names of the scholarships offered so that I could look into the requirements.</p>
<p>Edit: Like others, I find the assertion that such an offer (full scholarship to an elite solely for womens lacrosse) ever took place, “subject to scrutiny”.</p>
<p>curious14</p>
<p>No, I did not mean to imply that at all. My only point only point is that we are comparing different types of achievement–apples to oranges-- and that in that context the only coherent definition of “fairness” is that the rules be clear to everyone ex ante. In other words, if getting to an elite college is the goal of a student, and he has any athletic ability, then he should be well aware that the right strategy is to pick one of the less-popular sports and focus intensely on that sport. If he decides not to do that, then he has no complaint if the college chooses an athlete rather than him.</p>
<p>Since Vango won’t give us the info, there must be somebody on this thread who knows specifically about the deal in girls lacrosse. Is it possible for a nonURM girls lacrosse player to be admitted to an elite school with those stats?</p>
<p>Some schools reward their students for attending the less popular sports matches by giving them a better shot at getting tickets for the popular sports. In most cases, I doubt if the contributions for some of the more obscure sports are enough to offset the resources being devoted to them by the school.</p>
<p>Is it possible for a nonURM girls lacrosse player to be admitted to an elite school with those stats?</p>
<p>With a full scholarship ? ;)</p>
<p>Curiously, most athletic scholarships are provided by parents. The full rides provided by schools do not seem to be where the controversy about sports in college lie. Where the animosity seems to center is when athletes get preferential treatment in admissions from highly selective schools. Never mind that these athletes tend to be perfectly capable of doing the work and not reducing graduation rates. In fact, for the sports that are not important to a school, the athletic card has to be in addition to having the academic credentials necessary to get into a school, and the card is only good to the extent that skill is needed at that time. Since there is a shortage of kids who may make the midrange of admissions stats AND have certain skills, size, strength, training in certain sports which do tend to be the high profile ones, that is where the application is reviewed in terms of a recruited athlete, and a student is admitted that would be highly unlikely to get in without the sports hook. Because such a shortage in other fields such as the arts does not exist, you don’t find that situation for kids with other strong ECs, as a rule. The colleges have plenty of picks from kids with both that talent and the academic stats. </p>
<p>To me, the great shame in college athletics is not those kids who get into selective schools due to an athletic hook, nor is the scholarships. The problem occurs in those high profile sports where kid are recruited and accepted to colleges where they truly do not have a chance to make it academically. The graduation stats of the top basketball programs are a true disgrace. A college of the calibre of Duke should not have a basketball team that is so far off from the rest of the student body. Even worse than this is the schedules some of these athletic teams have and the time they expect from their athletes. I happened to be at a hotel where a women’s basketball team from a college most of us have not heard about, was staying. I had a conversation with one of the adults accompaying the team and was horrified to find out that this group of students had been on the road for weeks. They could not even set foot in a classroom during this part of the season. They had a tutor accompanying them, but the whole idea of college is going to the classes and learning in a group. It was outrageous to me that this sport encompassed so much time that these kids have no semblance of college academics at all. And if this occurs at this relatively low level of the sport, can you imagine how it is with the most competitive levels? The ivies and most other selective schools graduate their athletes and they are part of the university community.</p>
<p>
Well, maybe not but it tweaks this dude something awful. 
</p>
<p>cptofthehouse:</p>
<p>I don’t think that we should judge Duke so harshly. They have determined that they wish to have an elite women’s basketball program, and they almost certainly have to go deeper into the pool to get enough players to compete at that level (although I understand that Brian Zoubek, a men’s basketball recruit, scored 1360 on the old SAT). The girls, on the other hand, no doubt knew what the deal was going in; each of them wanted a high level, intense college basketball experience. So who is the loser?</p>
<p>EMM1, the girls’ basketball team I saw was not from Duke, but from a school that is not well known at all and hardly at that level. And I think that Duke’s basketball team does not average in the 1360 level at all, particularly the men’s. As for the lacrosse, there are a number of D-1 schools that will give heavy consideration for strong athletic abilities. Hopkins, Syracuse, Duke, all come to mind, and they all recruit and give money to female lacrosse players, most likely full rides as they are counterpart to the male teams. </p>
<p>The whole thing about merit scholarships is that they do not necessarily go to the economically disadvantaged, whether they are in academics, athletics or performing arts. There is some data that supports that those kids who go to a school that is a stretch actually benefit from that rigorous academic environment more than those who are the truly motivated scholars. Those elite scholars have been proven in many studies to do just as well whereever they go. The excellence is within them.</p>
<p>Emm1,</p>
<p>I’m sorry the ex ante argument doesn’t apply. The mission of Universities and Colleges is academic. It is not to be farm clubs for professional sports. If we were to establish a rule that students with demonstrated speed at knitting were to be given preferential treatment in college aid and admissions it would be both unfair and unwise despite being ex ante.</p>
<p>curious 14:</p>
<p>Who gave you the authority to define the “mission” of colleges and universities? They are entitled to choose their student bodies in whichever way they please, and to implicitly define their own missions through their choices. And in any event, even if a college’s admissions process is inconsistent with its expressed mission statement, a student who is not admitted has not been treated unfairly in any cognizable sense so long as that student knew the rules going in.</p>
<p>
Another point of disagreement. Some colleges also believe their mission to include , among other things : a social, moral , religious, enviromental, athletic (swimming tests and P.E. requirements anybody?), artistic, multi-cultural, non-violence, Transcendental Meditation, political, …missions. (I could think of more but I’m short on time.)</p>
<p>cptofthehouse:</p>
<p>First, sorry for misreading your earlier post. I didn’t mean to suggest that the basketball team had an average SAT score of 1360, but rather that the Zoubek’s of the world are pretty rare.</p>
<p>I don’t know how deep in the pool that the schools you mention go for lacrosse, but I do know that a pretty weak student (admittedly, a URM) from a local school went to UVA to play lacrosse. But in any event, the situations in basketball and lacrosse are different. For all of its increasing popularity, lacrosse remains largely a sport of the affluent eastern suburbs, and the academic credentials of the pool of potential lacrosse recruits probably reflects that reality. By contrast, to compete at an elite level in basketball, a coach has to go deeper into the pool just because the percentage of elite players who are also wealthy suburbanites is small, and not all of those students will choose schools that are highly selective academically.</p>
<p>EMM1,
I’m totally nonplused. You don’t think that the mission of universities and colleges is academic, OK what more can I say. I guess using your ex ante logic it would be fair if they refused to admit red headed people and announced in advance that they intended to do so. You have an awfully restrictive notion of “fair”.</p>
<p>I don’t have a dog in this fight</p>
<p>I didn’t have a child turned away from a ivy school whose place I felt unfairly was taken by someone whose acheivements in my eyes were not as accomplished.
I don’t have a child who is going to be recruited by a school for her athletic acheivements- whether she recieves money for them or not.
However- I think athletics are valuable parts of a college education & if a private school wants to devote a percentage of their attention toward finding students that fill that slot it is their call.</p>
<p>If a public school wants to give preference to athletes who aren’t prepared academically to succeed and if that school in fact keeps them from graduating by keeping them on the road for months at a time, that is very wrong- the purpose of athletics is not just to attract alumni dollars.</p>
<p>H0wever, if they do want to take athletic achievement as well as academic into consideration when considering students, particulary when the student comes from a background less represented in higher education then I am all for it- if support is there in the university, to insure their graduation.</p>
<p>Athletics and academics can go hand in hand
The football coach at Ds high school for example requires all athletes to take the SAT and college prep classes.
She participated in track and the average GPA was 3.30- not bad at a school that doesn’t weight for AP or honors.
The volleyball team has won national honors for average GPA, some years as high as 3.70</p>
<p>Perhaps there would be more emphasis in college on academics, if we had that emphasis in high school.</p>
<p>Curmudgeon,</p>
<p>Strip all the things you listed away and leave academic and you still have a college or university. Strip academic away and leave all the rest and you don’t.</p>
<p>Emm1, I was just responding to your question about what schools would give large scholarship money and academic leeway to a nonURM female in lacrosse. The answer is many of them, and I listed just a few well known ones off the top of my head that I know do just that. You are right that lacrosse tends to be an upscale sport with few URMs in it at this time. Many of the unremarkable ( in the academic sense) recruits in lacrosse come from schools with rigorous enough curriculums that they are not going to be in that much trouble in most colleges, even the selective ones. My guess about the young lady with the not so great academic profile who got into a lacrosse school is probably going to be just fine, particularly compared to other athletes in sports where the academic averages are even lower. </p>
<p>I brought up basketball, because that is where the academic bye for students is detrimental in that too many of those recruits are not getting through school. The schedule I saw was so grueling that those kids were not even setting foot on campus for WEEKS at a time. They are not going to classes or lectures. How the heck they could even be considered students is beyond me. And this was at a school that was not big time in the sport. I would hate to see the schedule for a top basketball school. This where I would focus my attentions, and I have seen that various agencies including the NCAA have done so, but the result does not seem to have changed much, as I talked to this team in October of last year, and that was their 2006-7 schedule. I have no problem with teams where the kids take their classes and graduate along with everyone else. In fact, I would be willing to give some slack, knowing that the sports is a fixed obligation. But when a large percentage of a team is not making it to classes, and of course not to graduation, there is an abuse element here.</p>
<p>curmudgeon-</p>
<p>I did not disclose the school the lacrosse player got the scholarship to (actually there was more than one school), because someone earlier pointed out that there were probably only a few women lacrosse players who would qualify for such a deal and I do feel an obligation to protect this girl’s identity. But, I believe cptofthehouse’s recent posts are accurate and you could easily investigate the school’s he mentions. I suppose the possibility exists that the girl lied to me, but honestly I do not believe that was the case as she seemed genuinely surprised by her windfall offers.</p>
<p>You are correct in that her case tweaks me, because of the mismatch between her academic skills and the typical profile of a student at that school. The fact that she has little interest in pursuing the academic side of the school in question says to me that her spot and the scholarship money could have been better used for someone at an economic disadvantage who truly would appreciate the academic offerings.</p>
<p>Just because her attending this school would give them a better girls’ lacrosse team does not mean it’s morally justifiable.</p>
<p>There are so many misconceptions and flat-out errors in this discussion that it would be futile to try to correct any of them. I’ve seen this issue from both ends, both as a parent and as someone who worked in college athletics. </p>
<p>At most Division I colleges, only football and men’s basketball could be described as paying for themselves. (There are exceptions, granted). The many other sports, especially women’s lacrosse, tend to exist only because of Title IX and are a tremendous drain on an athletic department’s budget. What most athletic directors try to do is break even. Most don’t, but they meet operating expenses by passing the increased “activity fee” along to the students. The idea of paying college football players, therefore, is ridiculous. Only about a dozen schools in the country could afford to do so, and even then, it probably wouldn’t eliminate NCAA rules abuses. </p>
<p>Contrary to a previous post, college athletes do not travel for weeks on end during the school term. If the poster saw a women’s team that was on a two-week road trip, it probably was a team from a northern school that was sending its entire spring break playing games in the south or California. Even college baseball teams, who seem to have the most demanding of schedules, plan their road trips so as to only miss classes on an occasional Friday. </p>
<p>Time demanding? No question. But I wonder if, at the end of the day, a football player spends any more time at his sport than a theatre major, a music student or a chemistry major in a lab. </p>
<p>Are “lesser” students being admitted to schools just because they’re athletes? All the time. But if the school is admitting these kids and not shepherding them through to graduation, the school is risking getting into trouble with the recent NCAA legislation. Ultimately, each school must decide how much it wants to bend its academic standards to accept athletes.
Here’s a good example: the University of Nebraska used to have a very liberal admittance policy. When the Big Eight Conference became the Big 12, the league voted not to accept partial qualifiers (under the NCAA scholarship guidelines). Under the new admittance standards, Nebraska football hasn’t been as dominant as it was in the past. Probably not just a coincidence. </p>
<p>If an athlete is “on scholarship,” usually only the football and basketball players are on full scholarship. A soccer team divides its scholarships among several players. At some of the top NCAA baseball programs, a really terrific player may only be getting room, board and books. His parents might be paying the full tuition. </p>
<p>There are no bad guys in all this. I prefer to believe that a university is made up of many parts. Athletics are important. The band is important. The law school is important. Fraternities are important as well. But studies have shown that nothing makes an alumnus reach for his checkbook more often than when his alma mater has a successful, high-profile athletic team. And that money often benefits the whole school, not just the football team. </p>
<p>Sorry for this lengthy post.</p>