this argument confuses cause and effect. yes, money buys the ability to join select. this creates an access issue which is fair comment. but my experience, at a point i was on the B select team, and i earned my way up when i hat tricked the A team in a preseason scrimmage and we beat them. performance. kids who could afford it got cut when they became weak players or too unathletic for their age. performance. and then we would destroy most club teams out there plus any HS teams we scrimmaged. performance. that performance then shows up when you try out for HS or a college coach is watching. people are picking select for that performance and surviving that ordeal. money merely buys the ability to try out for the system and make what team you earn.
one of the best kids age 10 -- the juggle king -- was slow as molasses age 16, useless on defense, cut from the good selects, on his varsity bench. rich parents, nice house. it was paying off only when he could play well. when it got too fast for him, the money ceased to buy anything. we cut him and picked up a kid who played d1. you could then argue he's buying college sports, but sorry, you're oversimplifying, he was fast as heck and scored a bunch of goals.
it gets even worse with something like skiing. there are a limited amount of skiing colleges. in skiing if you're not racking up US youth circuit or lower tier pro circuit points, they aren't picking you for college. that alone is performance. now, if you wound that back, the kids who perform all seem to go to the same handful of expensive ski academies. they are then being recruited for doing the best job of exploiting that opportunity. you and i will never ski college because we didn't go to the right ski schools. but going to the ski school alone guarantees nothing if you don't perform. ie, they want the best kids from the ski schools finishing the highest with the best rankings. ditto tennis.
and fencing is even more niche than that, and coaches probably know for a fact this coach or that team produces kids who can fence how they want. again, you can get into access to that coaching or team, but you're being picked to perform. not everyone in those scenarios performs, and the good ones don't all perform same level. over-simplification.
I think you're being a bit naive, but your larger point stands nonetheless.
Not naive at all. The college paid the sports coach $150,000 a year and offered them 20 roster spots with reduced academic requirements to put together a competitive team.
The admissions consultant offered the coach $250,000 to waste one of the roster spots for a non athlete, who would otherwise not gain admission. The consultant is then paid $500,000 from the parents to make a nice profit for himself.
This is all done without the knowledge of the admissions department.
How am I naive to see the college as victim?
The coach obviously gets fired for violating trust of the school, and the University recruiting policy. Consultant and parents faced fines and/or jail time for fraud against the college.
As another poster pointed out, these wealthy parents may have just donated $500,000 and improved chance of admission anyway.
Not naive at all. The college paid the sports coach $150,000 a year and offered them 20 roster spots with reduced academic requirements to put together a competitive team.
The admissions consultant offered the coach $250,000 to waste one of the roster spots for a non athlete, who would otherwise not gain admission. The consultant is then paid $500,000 from the parents to make a nice profit for himself.
This is all done without the knowledge of the admissions department.
How am I naive to see the college as victim?
The coach obviously gets fired for violating trust of the school, and the University recruiting policy. Consultant and parents faced fines and/or jail time for fraud against the college.
As another poster pointed out, these wealthy parents may have just donated $500,000 and improved chance of admission anyway.
No, I get what you're saying. I guess I am just skeptical that the "powers that be" at the schools never knew what was going on. Technically, they cannot offer a spot to a wealthy donor's kid, but through the coach they can let the kid into the school and likely STILL benefit from large donations from the parents.
Do I know that happened? No, not at all. That is just my cynical view of the whole Varsity Blues thing.
This isn't about extra-cirriculars bolstering your application; it's about getting your application accepted based on the fact that the softball coach walked into the admissions department and told them to accept your application. Michael Lewis says he knows a college softball coach and this is how things work. Michael Lewis says his daughters play competitive kids' softball and the parents think of it as a way to get their kids into good schools. Because it's actually easier to be in the top, say, 4% of softball players than to score in the top 0.4% on the SAT. The former requires some minimum level of athletic skill but the main barrier is having the money and time to play competitively from an early age.
This comparison is way off. Most D1 schools do not require top 0.4% of SAT to get into as non-athletes. In schools the top 0.4% is required (Stanford, NW, ND, Duke, etc.) softball coaches do not have this much power. The admission standard is lower than it is for non-athletes, but not much lower. And their softball programs are good. So you need better than average D1 talent to get in.
On the other hand, only 2% of HS softball players get to play in D1. 6% in all NCAA schools. So the top 4% is probably at some D2 or D3 school. If you want to play for a team that makes the College World Series, you are looking at the top 0.1% or higher.
Well if JohnR has never met anyone, then it has to be bogus.
I worked in fencing for a bit. The attitude of fencing to get into a good school was rampant. I also saw what it did to a lot of kids. Parental pressure (paying thousands of dollars on lessons and competitions) was being felt by the kids. Could be pretty toxic at times. (Also lots of good folks to be fair).
A fencing coach from a top private school told me that (and the numbers are just illustrative) that if the admissions in general required (whether by rule or not) a 1400 SAT, if someone was offered an athletic grant it would be lowered to 1250. (Still solid). So the fencing partial scholarship increased a person's chances significantly. Even in that case, the cost was going to be high since that school gave few full fencing scholarships.
sorry, this is bull. same mistake as my colleague. you even kind of admit the truth implicitly when you say, "if they are offered a scholarship." the special help is usually reserved for the top prospects. not for the kid who is both subpar academically for the profile, and also barely walkon worthy.
example. teammate of mine had a lower SAT. occasionally flashed some skills but would disappear a lot, and then didn't like playing defense. he needs more admissions help. he doesn't get it. he gets admitted on his own. i have a higher SAT but also am scouted that i will start soccer as a freshman and be on the relays for track. i am top half of the profile. i pretty much know i am getting in. i am told if anything goes haywire with admissions, i will be helped. i get admitted within days of sending in my application. no need for help. start as a frosh and 3rd leg relays.
we're both select players. his being select and needing help didn't get him in. he had to sweat it. i got the push offer because i could make an immediate impact.
what you're confused about, is the AD is trusting his coach to do this process honestly and with a clue about the sport. they likely are not sitting over the HC's shoulder saying, wait, kid x is better than kid y you want help with, or kid z is not worthy of our team. and the team doesn't necessarily know who got help or scholarships, unless someone involved says it. this creates limited room for corruption.
This isn't about extra-cirriculars bolstering your application; it's about getting your application accepted based on the fact that the softball coach walked into the admissions department and told them to accept your application. Michael Lewis says he knows a college softball coach and this is how things work. Michael Lewis says his daughters play competitive kids' softball and the parents think of it as a way to get their kids into good schools. Because it's actually easier to be in the top, say, 4% of softball players than to score in the top 0.4% on the SAT. The former requires some minimum level of athletic skill but the main barrier is having the money and time to play competitively from an early age.
Yeah, this is still super basic stuff. At super selective schools there is a committee off people going through applications. They accept a few obvious choices, reject some and are left with a huge pile where they have to decide. Generally, each part of the school is represented and they have a certain amount of equity to ‘spend’ picking kids. A mock trial coach might choose a few kids, arts department might pick some they want etc. it’s about having some skill that is going to make you valuable to the school. Being a top tier athlete in whatever sport is just one example, but obviously you need the foresight to reach out to the coach, and the skill in something to be valuable to someone. This is how things have been done for as long as I’ve been alive.
Author Michael Lewis: "youth sports" is a college admissions business in disguise
This is immediately apparent to anyone that has spent even a little bit of time in HS coaching.
Parents invest a great deal of time, money, and effort into maximizing their kids' performance. All of them are doing it because they want to see their kid succeed, but a few of them are a bit more calculated about how that success is achieved.
Private high schools recruit all the time. Parents move districts to get their kids onto a better team. They hire private coaches. The whole gamut. A lot of time, money, and effort. Its an investment.
XC and track are easy resume builders for kids. It's generally a no cut sport, it doesn't require skill, just work ethic (dedicated scholars usually equal dedicated athletes). Nobody is going to criticize someone for maintaining a high gpa while also running 5M a day at practice. Whether you are all state or career JV doesn't matter.
Author Michael Lewis: "youth sports" is a college admissions business in disguise
This is immediately apparent to anyone that has spent even a little bit of time in HS coaching.
Parents invest a great deal of time, money, and effort into maximizing their kids' performance. All of them are doing it because they want to see their kid succeed, but a few of them are a bit more calculated about how that success is achieved.
Private high schools recruit all the time. Parents move districts to get their kids onto a better team. They hire private coaches. The whole gamut. A lot of time, money, and effort. Its an investment.
Not to mention parents who hold their kids back a year (or even two) to hit a higher level of physical maturity before graduation. Or the parents who find a sympathetic doc to prescribe hGH. It's all part of the race by a subset of the population that places an outsized value on athletic scholarships or even just college admission. Just one outgrowth of the marketing of post-secondary education and expansion and watering down of college degrees that's occurred over the past several decades. I know I'm not the only one who had teammates who were clearly not college student material and were probably mostly there out of parental and societal expectations.
Since most kids drop out of sports by age 13, they're not even close to the college admissions process, so their parents are doing it for the alleged virtues of sports for children. For those who continue into high school, some are doing it for college admissions, no question, and it gets really expensive at the recruiting levels for private coaches and club teams and travel. Our men's national soccer team is so bad relative to the world powers because soccer is too much about money and not enough about developing talent without regard to ability to pay. Everywhere else, pro and amateur clubs and governments subsidize youth sports development.
High school athletes are already a select group, outside of no cut sports like xc, but even there of the 8 million competing in hs, only 530,000 compete at the NCAA level. Overall, chances of hs athletes competing in the NCAA range from 3% in wrestling and basketball to 13-14% in ice hockey and lacrosse (using stats for males only), and it ranges from under 1% to 5% (hockey) for Division One, with xc at 2.1%. Definitely a tough go in many sports and frankly, you're more likely to get into a good college by concentrating on academics and a couple extracurriculars, than putting all your effort into sports.
Nearly eight million students currently participate in high school athletics in the U.S.?? Approximately 530,000 compete as NCAA athletes, and just a select few??move
This does not apply to distance runners. Distance runners almost always out perform the rest of the student body by a large margin. On the flip side, probably 10% of football and basketball players would be able to gain entry to their current school based on academics alone.
I’m sure John Urschel needed the bump to get into Penn State. I mean after the NFL he only went on to get his Math PhD at MIT. Whereas I’m sure all the Stanford distance runners got in on academic merit.
It depends on the sport. For sure with field hockey, lacrosse, crew, those sorts of things. Kids lining up to see how can be first to the finish line, in a sport where the training can occur anywhere and that requires no special equipment -- for flat track races, that is -- eh, not so much. Personally, I didn't know any kid who got into the sport thinking about how that would help him for college admission.
It’s a far bigger issue with niche sports like fencing or crew. The equipment and travel costs are astronomical, and participation in these sports is very low overall. But many of the most prestigious colleges compete in these sports, so somebody who rows or fences decently well has a huge advantage in the admissions process in these schools. Participating in a lower barrier mass participation sport confers far less advantage (not none, but far less) for all but the best athletes.