If you’re the type of person who thinks that athletics should be a factor in determining who gets scholarship money for higher education, much less who gets admitted in the first place, you might want to stop reading now.
When I was a junior at William and Mary, my fraternity hosted an event to attract potential new members at a local sports bar. One of my fraternity brothers called me over and said that there’s someone who he wanted me to meet; apparently we’d gone to high school in the same town. It turns out that the guy in question was a football player, which was pretty cool.
Well, it was until he started telling me how great his scholarship was. In addition to free tuition for five years (redshirting, after all), he got access to top tutors, preferential dorm selection, and even better food at a ‘secret’ cafeteria downstairs from the main dining hall.
Did I mention that he was on a full scholarship, and he could. Not. Stop. Talking. About. It.
Needless to say, that rubbed a lot of guys (including me!) who had taken out hefty loans the wrong way, and he didn’t come to anything else.
However, the fact that this guy was getting a full ride because of his ability to play a sport always rubbed me the wrong way.
Admittedly, there are some issues even in my own household about this. My wife is a major college football fan, and as she had many friends at her SEC school who were on scholarship for football, assures me that they put in the work. I don’t doubt her.
But for me, it just seemed silly to give someone an opportunity that many people have to go into debt for in order to obtain it.
What I didn’t realize at the time was how the importance of athletics to admissions at elite universities. A couple of years ago, it emerged that upwards of 20% of Ivy League admits were athletes. Outside of legacy admissions, it seems being an athlete, and willing to play a sport, is the best way to catch the eye of a Harvard or Dartmouth admissions officer. In some cases, the admit rate could be more than 1000% higher, such as using Harvard’s academic scale of 1 to 6, when the applicant scored at a 4 (for reference, when I applied I got a 2, the second highest ratings, with a 4.6 weighted GPA and a 33 on my ACT).
For an athlete who gets a 1 or a 2 and is recruited, his/her chances of admission are 83%. That’s twenty times that of a typical applicant.
Athletics, like any other extracurricular activity, should be a part of a well rounded student experience, but we still firmly believe that academics should determine where a student gains admission. That’s no small part of the reason that we’re still firmly dedicated to international admissions.
After all, no UK or EU university admits on the basis of athletics, extracurriculars, or the like. Instead, it’s all about grades and test scores.
If that sounds better to you, give An Education Abroad a shot.