forums

Confirmed Water Is Wet and Universities Have Different Admissions Standards For Athletes

Advertisement
“I probably had better SAT scores/grades than the vast majority of student-athletes who were in my year at FSU but they provided A LOT more to the school than I ever did. I’d show up to class hungover and barely participate. For some classes, I’d only show up on the days of exams. The athletes were out there raising the profile of the university and the admissions standards are much higher now than when I was accepted.”

Amen to that
 
Headline of the article is totally misleading. SAT score difference between athletes and non athletes at Georgia Tech was 425 points. The same difference at Harvard was 104points. Similarly, Harvard athletes had SAT scores nearly 400 points above Georgia Tech athletes.

Bogus conclusion and headline in this article.
 
Canedog said:
The article has a puzzling statement re Harvard.

"An Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation found the 2014 freshman class at Georgia Tech had an average SAT score of 1445. However, for incoming football players, the average SAT was 420 points below the class as a whole. Gaps were also found among athletes at the University of Georgia, Georgia State and Georgia Southern. The annual survey of admitted students by the Harvard Crimson found recruited athletes in the class of 2025 had an average SAT score of 1397, while non-athletes averaged 1501"

First of all, even someone with a 6th grade education like me nose that an SAT score of 1397 is good as ****. Ain't a hill of Granny's baked beans difference between a kid with a 1397 SAT brain and a kid with a 1501 SAT brain. They both smart as ****.

Secondly, who da fug is Harvard recruiting fur there 2025 class. I mean they thinking that far ahead for real?
Click to expand...
For "top 25"* academic schools, 1397 is below average, unless mommy and daddy buy a building to ensure your acceptance.


*A very dubious ranking obviously
 
Canedog said:
The article has a puzzling statement re Harvard.

"An Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation found the 2014 freshman class at Georgia Tech had an average SAT score of 1445. However, for incoming football players, the average SAT was 420 points below the class as a whole. Gaps were also found among athletes at the University of Georgia, Georgia State and Georgia Southern. The annual survey of admitted students by the Harvard Crimson found recruited athletes in the class of 2025 had an average SAT score of 1397, while non-athletes averaged 1501"

First of all, even someone with a 6th grade education like me nose that an SAT score of 1397 is good as ****. Ain't a hill of Granny's baked beans difference between a kid with a 1397 SAT brain and a kid with a 1501 SAT brain. They both smart as ****.

Secondly, who da fug is Harvard recruiting fur there 2025 class. I mean they thinking that far ahead for real?
Click to expand...
They offered Arch Manning.

NIL gearing up in Baahstaaan.
 
Advertisement
I don’t understand the issue here. Did the ncaa clearing house change standards or something? It used to be a sliding scale. The higher your high school GPA, the lower your SAT score could be and vice versa. Measuring SAT scores only seems to be kinda dumb, if you don’t mention the GPA. And that’s coming from me, who believes SAT scores should matter a lot when it comes to admissions.
 
Canedog said:
The article has a puzzling statement re Harvard.

"An Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation found the 2014 freshman class at Georgia Tech had an average SAT score of 1445. However, for incoming football players, the average SAT was 420 points below the class as a whole. Gaps were also found among athletes at the University of Georgia, Georgia State and Georgia Southern. The annual survey of admitted students by the Harvard Crimson found recruited athletes in the class of 2025 had an average SAT score of 1397, while non-athletes averaged 1501"

First of all, even someone with a 6th grade education like me nose that an SAT score of 1397 is good as ****. Ain't a hill of Granny's baked beans difference between a kid with a 1397 SAT brain and a kid with a 1501 SAT brain. They both smart as ****.

Secondly, who da fug is Harvard recruiting fur there 2025 class. I mean they thinking that far ahead for real?
Click to expand...

They probably mean the Harvard graduating class of 2025, not HS graduating class. Someone who was HS graduating class of 2025 wouldn't have taken the SAT yet (well, maybe the kind of freaks that have their heart set on Harvard from childhood. But that's not what's going on here). Harvard Crimson is a campus paper, not a recruiting website, so they're probably not used to referring to recruits by their HS grad year.
 
NC_Canes_11 said:
I don’t understand the issue here. Did the ncaa clearing house change standards or something? It used to be a sliding scale. The higher your high school GPA, the lower your SAT score could be and vice versa. Measuring SAT scores only seems to be kinda dumb, if you don’t mention the GPA. And that’s coming from me, who believes SAT scores should matter a lot when it comes to admissions.
Click to expand...
You aren’t allowed to fail kids anymore so how much value do GPA’s truly have in many cases?
 
Cortez55403 said:
Headline of the article is totally misleading. SAT score difference between athletes and non athletes at Georgia Tech was 425 points. The same difference at Harvard was 104points. Similarly, Harvard athletes had SAT scores nearly 400 points above Georgia Tech athletes.

Bogus conclusion and headline in this article.
Click to expand...

I will pipe in here with this:

Yes, it was more just a couple years ago BUT .... among my teammates at Yale, the average SAT score was within, maybe 40-50 points of the rest of the student body. The average for Yale at the time was around 1510 (different era than today) ... and average for the team during my four years, was about 1460-1470.

What was different was the median dispersion, which was probably a bit greater than the rest of the school. But the average was pretty close.

The average GPA, interestingly enough, ended up being slightly higher than the student body average. And no, we didn't have those UNC/FSU/UF "athlete classes" like "Fundamentals of Staring At Your ****" and that sort of thing. Classes were mostly brutal.

Also, not all athletic teams had the same academic profile. Women's equestrian team and men's basketball and lacrosse ....a bit lower than we were. Men's golf and women's swimming. A bit higher.

Point is, at FSU and UNC, as long as you can read the exit sign on the locker room door, you're in. Big difference than trying to use the accommodation for athletes as evidence that Harvard, Yale, Penn, Dartmouth, etc don't have high standards. Personally, I don't think there should be material accommodation for athletes, and I'm somewhat ambivalent as to wether there should even be athletic scholarships. But that's another story.

p.s. I certainly didn't make it in on my football prowess alone. If I did, then Coach Cozza was a really lousy judge of talent.
 
Last edited:
Advertisement
I know the sons of two friends who received the equivalent of a football scholarship to Ivy League schools (Brown and Dartmouth, I believe). Both were OL.

To be fair, both are uber smart, but may not have been accepted if it werent for their football skills. And the parents could definitely afford the tuition.
 
PSU Cane said:
You aren’t allowed to fail kids anymore so how much value do GPA’s truly have in many cases?
Click to expand...
That’s exactly why I think SAT scores are so important. But the scale wasn’t anything crazy. Even if you are given a passing grade bc you showed up, thats a D. A few of those are gonna kill your GPA. You still need at least a C average to qualify for the low end, which means your SAT had to be on the high end.
 
I would add this wave of "SAT/ACT optional" is infuriating and quite frankly disrespectful to the student-applicants. It is now everywhere.

No admissions staff will provide a straight answer: how do you truly determine accept/not-accept between essentially identical candidates when one submits SAT/ACT and one doesn't?

Garbage for all and I do believe in the long-term the Universities are going to find the penny isn't as shiny as they thought with their opt-out selectees.
 
Last edited:
This is a dumb article.

1) yeah no ****

2) it’s still relative to that individual school’s acceptance standards. Harvard’s football player SAT is very close to GT’s regular admissions SAT - and GT is a good school.
 
Advertisement
RedSquare said:
I will pipe in here with this:

Yes, it was more just a couple years ago BUT .... among my teammates at Yale, the average SAT score was within, maybe 40-50 points of the rest of the student body. The average for Yale at the time was around 1510 (different era than today) ... and average for the team during my four years, was about 1460-1470.

What was different was the median dispersion, which was probably a bit greater than the rest of the school. But the average was pretty close.

The average GPA, interestingly enough, ended up being slightly higher than the student body average. And no, we didn't have those UNC/FSU/UF "athlete classes" like "Fundamentals of Staring At Your ****" and that sort of thing. Classes were mostly brutal.

Also, not all athletic teams had the same academic profile. Women's equestrian team and men's basketball and lacrosse ....a bit lower than we were. Men's golf and women's swimming. A bit higher.

Point is, at FSU and UNC, as long as you can read the exit sign on the locker room door, you're in. Big difference than trying to use the accommodation for athletes as evidence that Harvard, Yale, Penn, Dartmouth, etc don't have high standards. Personally, I don't think there should be material accommodation for athletes, and I'm somewhat ambivalent as to wether there should even be athletic scholarships. But that's another story.

p.s. I certainly didn't make it in on my football prowess alone. If I did, then Coach Cozza was a really lousy judge of talent.
Click to expand...
There’s always gonna be accommodations for athletes bc they generate money. The only way to truly determine the level of accommodations they get, is to test them all and make all of their admissions paperwork public. Which will never happen.

Personally I don’t think getting into most schools is as hard as everyone makes it seem. Not to mention all the help they get on their application paperwork, essay, etc. The real issue that needs to be studied is how these kids get handed degrees, when they can’t read on a 10th grade level.
 
NC_Canes_11 said:
There’s always gonna be accommodations for athletes bc they generate money. The only way to truly determine the level of accommodations they get, is to test them all and make all of their admissions paperwork public. Which will never happen.

Personally I don’t think getting into most schools is as hard as everyone makes it seem. Not to mention all the help they get on their application paperwork, essay, etc. The real issue that needs to be studied is how these kids get handed degrees, when they can’t read on a 10th grade level.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty active with Yale, (sit on one of the boards) and involved with interviewing kids and meeting with prospective families.

I can tell you the process is beyond rough. It's horrifically difficult (for non-athletes) to get in. even with all the support. Acceptance rate at Yale this year will be less than 4% on applications over 50,000 in number

Even for athletes, it's no cakewalk. I met with a kid (good QB, great boarding school, high GPA, 1580 SAT's, fluent in 3 languages, and won a physics competition in the State of Connecticut.) ... rejected last week at early decision. not even deferred, and he was on the list as a football recruit.

It's a jungle out there
 
ThomasG954 said:
This is a dumb article.

1) yeah no ****

2) it’s still relative to that individual school’s acceptance standards. Harvard’s football player SAT is very close to GT’s regular admissions SAT - and GT is a good school.
Click to expand...
I don't think Harvard's athletes, as a whole, equal GTs student body acceptance credentials.
 
Advertisement
Canedog said:
The article has a puzzling statement re Harvard.

"An Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation found the 2014 freshman class at Georgia Tech had an average SAT score of 1445. However, for incoming football players, the average SAT was 420 points below the class as a whole. Gaps were also found among athletes at the University of Georgia, Georgia State and Georgia Southern. The annual survey of admitted students by the Harvard Crimson found recruited athletes in the class of 2025 had an average SAT score of 1397, while non-athletes averaged 1501"

First of all, even someone with a 6th grade education like me nose that an SAT score of 1397 is good as ****. Ain't a hill of Granny's baked beans difference between a kid with a 1397 SAT brain and a kid with a 1501 SAT brain. They both smart as ****.

Secondly, who da fug is Harvard recruiting fur there 2025 class. I mean they thinking that far ahead for real?
Click to expand...

Yes, they're smart
 
Canedog said:
The article has a puzzling statement re Harvard.

"An Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation found the 2014 freshman class at Georgia Tech had an average SAT score of 1445. However, for incoming football players, the average SAT was 420 points below the class as a whole. Gaps were also found among athletes at the University of Georgia, Georgia State and Georgia Southern. The annual survey of admitted students by the Harvard Crimson found recruited athletes in the class of 2025 had an average SAT score of 1397, while non-athletes averaged 1501"

First of all, even someone with a 6th grade education like me nose that an SAT score of 1397 is good as ****. Ain't a hill of Granny's baked beans difference between a kid with a 1397 SAT brain and a kid with a 1501 SAT brain. They both smart as ****.

Secondly, who da fug is Harvard recruiting fur there 2025 class. I mean they thinking that far ahead for real?
Click to expand...

I think they mean the college graduating class which would be the class of 2021 HS seniors
 
"SEC Schools" and then bases the article off of a study about Georgia Tech
Confused Always Sunny GIF by It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
 
Advertisement
Back
Top