5 ms·

I went to a good uni in the same city as my high school. The admissions officers told me they knew my (mediocre) grades (all tough classes) were fine cause they

I went to a good uni in the same city as my high school. The admissions officers told me they knew my (mediocre) grades (all tough classes) were fine cause they were familiar with my high school and this helped me get in with lower than average grades. My test scores were generally good as well. This was repeated by the other two schools. Why did I get to talk to the admissions officers? I played sports. Even D3 schools had a former admissions officer or dedicated one who gave the coaches reads on everyone pre-admission. I got these reads from them. Even Carnegie was familiar with my highschool (5 states away from MO), I just didn't get in there as I didn't have time to re-take the basic SAT Math as I had forgotten more geometry from freshman year than I needed to get to their high bar. I did nail the SAT2 math though. Many schools took that or the ACT which I did better on. I think it depends on the size of your college/uni and how many other kids from your school go there. I do remember being pissed watching one of my friends go up and get national honor society honors for their senior year because they finally passed their third try at freshman Algebra and had really high marks overall their senior year, where I was pulling a class high 89% in Stats but my gpa was not high enough. Seems to have worked out going to engineering though which definitely did not grade inflate when I was there.

TeMPOraL 4y ago
> Why did I get to talk to the admissions officers? I played sports. Even D3 schools had a former admissions officer or dedicated one who gave the coaches reads on everyone pre-admission. I got these reads from them. How come sports have such important role in the US school system? Between this and all the scholarships I hear or read about, I feel that sports are effectively a "cheat code" for academic success - why learn anything when you can play all day and still get into the best universities because of athletic accomplishments?
- Retric 4y ago
  A big part of this is collages have plenty of candidates with good grades and test scores it’s hard to differentiate at the high end. Writing a successful novel is a bigger boost than sports, but sports are easier.
- Mountain_Skies 4y ago
  Sports are name recognition advertising for the schools. They also generate an affinity in potential students while they are still children as they follow the teams games. It also creates an affinity for the schools with the general population, which is politically advantageous, especially when the school wants their state to appropriate more funding. There are also some of the smaller schools who use slots on the sports teams as a way of boosting enrollment. Some Division III schools have nearly half the students on a team. Division III schools do not provide athletics scholarships so that expense doesn't exist but they do get tuition money from the student-athletes. Many of these schools don't care if you have talent or not, they're using the lure of being a "college athlete" and the ego boost it provides the student and their family, as an enrollment tool.
  - grogenaut 4y ago
    To elaborate, there are 130 "D1" scholarship teams in football in the US. There are 893 (https://www.ncsasports.org/football/colleges https://www.ncsasports.org/football/colleges) teams overall. This is similar for other sports. This means 12% of college sports are what people are thinking of when they say college sports (eg what they might see on tv). So a very vocal minority.
- isthisthingon99 4y ago
  Sound body and sound mind go together. The popular idea of jocks being dumb meatheads is not true. I have worked in the uppermost echelons of the financial markets and a lot of the big players are/were athletes.
  - grogenaut 4y ago
    one of the things I continue to find hilarious is how much we got recruited at my uni for work in financial industry. My school is in St. Louis, and D3 sports. Every year someone from one of the trading firms up in chicago would roll down (and started to be alumni) and talk to all of the business athletes. They'd go after the ones with good but not stellar grades. They didn't talk to engineers as they figured they had jobs already. I eventually asked... WHY do you show up every year. Turns out they needed smart kids who could deal with pressure and who were PHYSICALLY LARGE. Why not the smartest? they already had good offers elsewhere. Why large? because they trained them up and tossed them in the pit. They loved the 6'5" kids from football and basketball. They took our football center who was 6'9" 375 and had a 7' wingspan and could box out like no body's business. He told me later it was easy once he got the math. He'd just stand in the middle of the floor, he could see everyone on the walls, and when surrounded, could make space but also just reach 3-4 levels of surround deep to other people and hear them more easily as well. "This is their entree into a career, use what you got kid". I don't know why but I just get a chuckle out of seeing my giant buddies in suits, but also of a place that physical attributes actually help in a mostly mental activity.
    - isthisthingon99 4y ago
      My first job at a hedge fund, a lawyer friend asked me: "how'd you get the job" "I think it's because I'm tall" I literally had no explanation. As you said, not particularly smart...
      - grogenaut 4y ago
        Did you immediately get signed up for the basketball team?
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Corruption. Allows an additional non objective criteria to let the powers at be manipulate the “rules” to their favor with plausible deniability. It also inherently benefits richer people because poorer people will not have as much resources to invest in sports (for example, the kids need to help parents’ operate business). On the high end (division 1), it is also a taxpayer subsidized training/filtering mechanism for the for profit professional sports leagues. The taxpayers, from high school to college, fund the development and resources for figuring out who the best players will be to hire for the professional sports businesses.
- saghm 4y ago
  Unfortunately, most US colleges are more interested in making money than education, and sports is more lucrative in the US than educating people.
  - grandmczeb 4y ago
    Most schools lose money on sports overall (especially true for D3), so this explanation seems unlikely. “The 2020 report found only 25 Division I programs had revenues exceeding expenses. No Division II or III program had revenues exceeding expenses.” https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-explain-it-me/should-institutions-support-sports-programs-don’t-make-money https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-explain-it-me/shou...
- grogenaut 4y ago
  Honestly my school did the math. It's division 3 non scholarship, this means people play sports for fun. Almost none play pro. Sports are there as an enrichment for the school and student, they don't earn a direct profit for the school, they're actually a loss leader the same as other student activities. But they realized that if you did extra activities in college you were 70% more likely to donate as alumni. Statistically everyone who went to the school was successful and made decent money. They realized you did 50% less activities in college than you did in HS. Most kids have one or two activities max in HS unless you count sports. I was a 2 sport athlete, ran pep rallies for student council and started the TV station, so four. I did 3 activities in college, football, TV station, and fraternity. So I'm a school that half the applicants are valedictorians and stuco presidents, how do you decide who to bring in: you go for breadth and variety. If you were an outstanding athlete then the team would do better and everyone had a better time and more money. Also it's another bullet point to toss on the list on the brochures: we made the playoffs in X, Y, Z, Q, S, T. We have 31 national championships. Most of the sports teams there are above average. They like to be in consideration for the former Sears Trophy, now Directors' Cup, the trophy for the best overall athletics program, aka the most national championships across ALL sports in a season. Why admissions officer access? Simple, there are 5k undergrad, about 20 admissions officers and around 400 incoming athletes across all sports. That means 2k+ applicants. With around 32k applications a year for the school more than enough to warrant a dedicated officer. However I believe they were shared with the academic scholarship intake queue as well. Why did the athletic department have an former admissions officer? Because admissions officer is an entry point job at a lot of schools. This person had been a mid level officer and then went into administration at the athletic department. Surprising or not there were a very large number of very smart kids in athletics there. One soccer player was a Rhodes scholar. One season we had 2 burger King academic all Americans on our football team, they give out one a week across all college sports. My year in football alone graduated 4 doctor's who all had near 4.0 in engineering undergrad which had a 2.8 average. Athletics didn't allow me to skate by. It did give me a professor who was in my court, the coach. Like having a second parent. Like your advisor is SUPPOSED to be but usually isn't. That was the only real advantage once in school. I personally did the normal college load, and did around 3600 hours of sports on top of it as did the other athletes. I also graduated with a computer science degree. My grades were actually better in season because I had negative free time. All I did was school and sports. This isn't your Hollywood movie D1 athletic department. I actually had several teachers try and fail me for playing sports. And several very supportive teachers It's a nerdy school. One teacher tried to fail 3 of the volleyball players because they would miss their Saturday final because they were traveling for the national championship instead of just moving the exam 1 day. The vast majority of schools are not Division 1 sports. The reason I heard from other schools on my admissions was I applied to a d3 school, a d2 school, and a several D1 schools. Two of the D1 schools told me not to waste my time playing college D1 ball, I wasn't big enough. Northwestern told me the same and told me that they'd had one person even do football and graduate from engineering in the last 30 years. They were kind enough to meet with me in person as I was at an academic summer camp there. They were more like 6k hours in sports. I was grateful for that frank advice, even though I would have had the experience of beating notre dame at notre dame and going to the rose bowl the next season (and very bad seasons thereafter) if I had gone. But thank you for assuming I got through college by being a mediocre football player.

TeMPOraL 4y ago

> Why did I get to talk to the admissions officers? I played sports. Even D3 schools had a former admissions officer or dedicated one who gave the coaches reads on everyone pre-admission. I got these reads from them. How come sports have such important role in the US school system? Between this and all the scholarships I hear or read about, I feel that sports are effectively a "cheat code" for academic success - why learn anything when you can play all day and still get into the best universities because of athletic accomplishments?

Retric 4y ago
A big part of this is collages have plenty of candidates with good grades and test scores it’s hard to differentiate at the high end. Writing a successful novel is a bigger boost than sports, but sports are easier.
Mountain_Skies 4y ago
Sports are name recognition advertising for the schools. They also generate an affinity in potential students while they are still children as they follow the teams games. It also creates an affinity for the schools with the general population, which is politically advantageous, especially when the school wants their state to appropriate more funding. There are also some of the smaller schools who use slots on the sports teams as a way of boosting enrollment. Some Division III schools have nearly half the students on a team. Division III schools do not provide athletics scholarships so that expense doesn't exist but they do get tuition money from the student-athletes. Many of these schools don't care if you have talent or not, they're using the lure of being a "college athlete" and the ego boost it provides the student and their family, as an enrollment tool.
- grogenaut 4y ago
  To elaborate, there are 130 "D1" scholarship teams in football in the US. There are 893 (https://www.ncsasports.org/football/colleges https://www.ncsasports.org/football/colleges) teams overall. This is similar for other sports. This means 12% of college sports are what people are thinking of when they say college sports (eg what they might see on tv). So a very vocal minority.
isthisthingon99 4y ago
Sound body and sound mind go together. The popular idea of jocks being dumb meatheads is not true. I have worked in the uppermost echelons of the financial markets and a lot of the big players are/were athletes.
- grogenaut 4y ago
  one of the things I continue to find hilarious is how much we got recruited at my uni for work in financial industry. My school is in St. Louis, and D3 sports. Every year someone from one of the trading firms up in chicago would roll down (and started to be alumni) and talk to all of the business athletes. They'd go after the ones with good but not stellar grades. They didn't talk to engineers as they figured they had jobs already. I eventually asked... WHY do you show up every year. Turns out they needed smart kids who could deal with pressure and who were PHYSICALLY LARGE. Why not the smartest? they already had good offers elsewhere. Why large? because they trained them up and tossed them in the pit. They loved the 6'5" kids from football and basketball. They took our football center who was 6'9" 375 and had a 7' wingspan and could box out like no body's business. He told me later it was easy once he got the math. He'd just stand in the middle of the floor, he could see everyone on the walls, and when surrounded, could make space but also just reach 3-4 levels of surround deep to other people and hear them more easily as well. "This is their entree into a career, use what you got kid". I don't know why but I just get a chuckle out of seeing my giant buddies in suits, but also of a place that physical attributes actually help in a mostly mental activity.
  - isthisthingon99 4y ago
    My first job at a hedge fund, a lawyer friend asked me: "how'd you get the job" "I think it's because I'm tall" I literally had no explanation. As you said, not particularly smart...
    - grogenaut 4y ago
      Did you immediately get signed up for the basketball team?
lotsofpulp 4y ago
Corruption. Allows an additional non objective criteria to let the powers at be manipulate the “rules” to their favor with plausible deniability. It also inherently benefits richer people because poorer people will not have as much resources to invest in sports (for example, the kids need to help parents’ operate business). On the high end (division 1), it is also a taxpayer subsidized training/filtering mechanism for the for profit professional sports leagues. The taxpayers, from high school to college, fund the development and resources for figuring out who the best players will be to hire for the professional sports businesses.
saghm 4y ago
Unfortunately, most US colleges are more interested in making money than education, and sports is more lucrative in the US than educating people.
- grandmczeb 4y ago
  Most schools lose money on sports overall (especially true for D3), so this explanation seems unlikely. “The 2020 report found only 25 Division I programs had revenues exceeding expenses. No Division II or III program had revenues exceeding expenses.” https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-explain-it-me/should-institutions-support-sports-programs-don’t-make-money https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-explain-it-me/shou...
grogenaut 4y ago
Honestly my school did the math. It's division 3 non scholarship, this means people play sports for fun. Almost none play pro. Sports are there as an enrichment for the school and student, they don't earn a direct profit for the school, they're actually a loss leader the same as other student activities. But they realized that if you did extra activities in college you were 70% more likely to donate as alumni. Statistically everyone who went to the school was successful and made decent money. They realized you did 50% less activities in college than you did in HS. Most kids have one or two activities max in HS unless you count sports. I was a 2 sport athlete, ran pep rallies for student council and started the TV station, so four. I did 3 activities in college, football, TV station, and fraternity. So I'm a school that half the applicants are valedictorians and stuco presidents, how do you decide who to bring in: you go for breadth and variety. If you were an outstanding athlete then the team would do better and everyone had a better time and more money. Also it's another bullet point to toss on the list on the brochures: we made the playoffs in X, Y, Z, Q, S, T. We have 31 national championships. Most of the sports teams there are above average. They like to be in consideration for the former Sears Trophy, now Directors' Cup, the trophy for the best overall athletics program, aka the most national championships across ALL sports in a season. Why admissions officer access? Simple, there are 5k undergrad, about 20 admissions officers and around 400 incoming athletes across all sports. That means 2k+ applicants. With around 32k applications a year for the school more than enough to warrant a dedicated officer. However I believe they were shared with the academic scholarship intake queue as well. Why did the athletic department have an former admissions officer? Because admissions officer is an entry point job at a lot of schools. This person had been a mid level officer and then went into administration at the athletic department. Surprising or not there were a very large number of very smart kids in athletics there. One soccer player was a Rhodes scholar. One season we had 2 burger King academic all Americans on our football team, they give out one a week across all college sports. My year in football alone graduated 4 doctor's who all had near 4.0 in engineering undergrad which had a 2.8 average. Athletics didn't allow me to skate by. It did give me a professor who was in my court, the coach. Like having a second parent. Like your advisor is SUPPOSED to be but usually isn't. That was the only real advantage once in school. I personally did the normal college load, and did around 3600 hours of sports on top of it as did the other athletes. I also graduated with a computer science degree. My grades were actually better in season because I had negative free time. All I did was school and sports. This isn't your Hollywood movie D1 athletic department. I actually had several teachers try and fail me for playing sports. And several very supportive teachers It's a nerdy school. One teacher tried to fail 3 of the volleyball players because they would miss their Saturday final because they were traveling for the national championship instead of just moving the exam 1 day. The vast majority of schools are not Division 1 sports. The reason I heard from other schools on my admissions was I applied to a d3 school, a d2 school, and a several D1 schools. Two of the D1 schools told me not to waste my time playing college D1 ball, I wasn't big enough. Northwestern told me the same and told me that they'd had one person even do football and graduate from engineering in the last 30 years. They were kind enough to meet with me in person as I was at an academic summer camp there. They were more like 6k hours in sports. I was grateful for that frank advice, even though I would have had the experience of beating notre dame at notre dame and going to the rose bowl the next season (and very bad seasons thereafter) if I had gone. But thank you for assuming I got through college by being a mediocre football player.