Serious studies and College soccer

[Unregistered]

With grade inflation these numbers are meaningless. Not everyone should aspire to get to med school, but a 3.4 is NOT an impressive GPA, sorry. The person who posted this needs to consider that the absence of Harvard from this list, for example, likely reflects higher academic rigor there from other schools who publish that their "whole team" has a higher cumulative GPA.

Yes, Harvard is so much more rigorous than Dartmouth.

"Harvard University is the poster campus for academic prestige - and for grade inflation, even though some of its top officials have warned about grade creep. About 15 percent of Harvard students got a B-plus or better in 1950, according to one study. In 2007, more than half of all Harvard grades were in the A range." (from http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ma...t_a_c_anymore/)


Middlebury and Wesleyan are so much more rigorous than Amherst, Carleton and Haverford. Right. anyone who knows realizes that is about as ludicrous as harvard being more rigorous than the other Ivy's.

A 3.4 average GPA is an average. That means there are players on the team with 3.6's, 3.8's and 4.0's. And those with 2.8's, 3.0's and 3.2's. That is how an average of 3.4 is arrived at.

Methinks those with, 3.8's and 4.0's stand a pretty good chance of getting into med school. even if they aren't from Dartmouth, Amherst, Carleton, and Haverford. If they are, I'll bet a 3.6 might do quite nicely, assuming all the other pieces are in place.

methinks you do not like the list and the conclusions that follow because it is not what you WANT to believe.

[Unregistered]

Harvard doesn't scale GAP like other schools, just a quirk from long ago....

The scale is not 1-4 it is I think 1-14, so # are different. I was not involved in any grade inflation while there. I do not know about the last 8 years or so But I would doubt that Harvard would be giving out GPAs of the athletes. I am sure that would add fuel to many fires burning in Cambridge. Another quirk is that GPA seem to be inversely proportional to how much money alumni donate....

[Unregistered]

A lot of chat has been about GPA. There is much more to being a serious student than just GPA. You need to find out about the culture of the team and coach. If you want ot go to med school, how are afternoon labs handled? If the team has much travel, how accomodating are professors to missed classes? You need to really do your homework. Not even all Ivy schools are that student friendly for athletes.

[Unregistered]

A lot of chat has been about GPA. There is much more to being a serious student than just GPA. You need to find out about the culture of the team and coach. If you want ot go to med school, how are afternoon labs handled? If the team has much travel, how accomodating are professors to missed classes? You need to really do your homework. Not even all Ivy schools are that student friendly for athletes.

Excellent points. Thank you!

[Unregistered]

Another point that I would like to make is that this sort of post represents a fairly typical "academic" point of view. A lot of professors and school administrators will hold up the expectional student/athlete as the standard for all athletes to emulate with seemingly little respect to either the academic or athletic environment they exist in. Honestly the type of student/athlete they will point to is not really representative of an average student much less one that is primarily focused on their sports performance. Unfortunately this sort of mindset creates a lot of false academic expectations and helps to create an environment where most athletes end up being viewed as failures.

You also need to understand how easy it is for an athlete to become myopically focused on their sports perfromance and not school. Athletes, have more structure than just about any other student on campus. Do not lose site of the fact that the whole point of that structure is to actually help the athlete perform their sport not excel in the classroom.

BTDT: As someone who is a college athletics administrator I take exception to that last comment. When did you graduate college? All of the work the NCAA has done over the years based on the negative press and bad rep DI and other schools had impacted how things are currently done. Presidents, provosts, and chancellors are involved in many decisions now. Structure is there to help student-athletes be exactly that: student(first) athletes. Of course there are exceptions, and in some sports it is much worse than others, but I personally have grown tired of your rants against the positive experience many DI student-athletes can enjoy. You are clearly a jaded individual.

Next January you should attend the NCAA convention and general voting session to see the strides that are made every year, across all three divisions, to get an updated sense of how academics and the time demands and expectations of student-athletes are handled.

And as a PS, my nephew graduated from Notre Dame a few years back (first year Weis took over) as an engineering major. Played football, graduated cum laude, now in grad school. What he gave up was "thirsty Thursday" and other late nights to abide by team rules and stay on track with his studies, but as he told me during his second season at ND, when they entered the stadium on game day he knew that thousands of his fellow classmates would have made that trade any day to wear the uniform he wore.

[Unregistered]

Haven't been on the site in a while, but I am glad someone reposted the link to the list. I posted the link on another thread a while ago saying I thought it was shocking that schools like Amherst, Willliams, Middlebury and Bowdoin had such a poor showings. But no one really picked up on it. And since I have a son at Amherst (not on the soccer team) I can tell you that the "B" mean there is actually true. It is hard to get an A, but its also hard to get LESS than a B. The funny thing is Amherst seems to be getting better--which coincides with their picking up Scarpone as the coach. So I do think this comes from the coach. I have a junior who has ambitions to play Nescac soccer--as well as getting a great education. Based on this, if I am going to have to pay for his school, I am going to suggest he look seriously at Colby. A good school. And at least those kids seem to be getting an education.

[Unregistered]

Just a reminder about the NSCAA link. The list does not include all schools who have the required GPA. It lists all the schools that have paid their NSCAA dues and submitted the paperwork that have the required GPA. There are schools who do not pay for this membership, especially if their coaches have their own membership on their own. Also, the paperwork includes coordination between compliance, academic services, and the faculty athletics representative to be submitted. For full-time coaches, this is much more likely to be done; but for part time coaches who hardly have enough time to plan practices and recruit, not a bit priority for them.

Not saying it's good or bad, just a fact that should not be lost.

[Unregistered]

Just a reminder about the NSCAA link. The list does not include all schools who have the required GPA. It lists all the schools that have paid their NSCAA dues and submitted the paperwork that have the required GPA. There are schools who do not pay for this membership, especially if their coaches have their own membership on their own. Also, the paperwork includes coordination between compliance, academic services, and the faculty athletics representative to be submitted. For full-time coaches, this is much more likely to be done; but for part time coaches who hardly have enough time to plan practices and recruit, not a bit priority for them.

Not saying it's good or bad, just a fact that should not be lost.

Valid points but if a school had such an administrative hurdle that they could not get the good news about their players' academic performance listed, or if that isn't a priority for an overworked coach or the school itself, I would suggest that also is some information that some might take into account when shopping colleges.

Someone just posted a list that is a good starting resource for people interested in academic/athletic balance. Surprising how many people seem to have a problem with that. If its just that your favorite school or the one your daughter or son attends and plays for is not on the list, then please feel free to tell people why that school is still a great choice for academics/soccer. Just don't throw out a lot of generic pap as to why the list may not be complete, why you should take the list with a grain of salt, etc.

[dd2]

Here are a couple of other links of interest - to the all time list of schools making the NSCAA Academic list. Relatively few schools have made it more than 3 times:

http://www.nscaa.com/subpages/20080425112240793.php (men's list)

http://www.nscaa.com/subpages/20080425133959794.php (women's list)

[dd2]

Valid points but if a school had such an administrative hurdle that they could not get the good news about their players' academic performance listed, or if that isn't a priority for an overworked coach or the school itself, I would suggest that also is some information that some might take into account when shopping colleges.

Someone just posted a list that is a good starting resource for people interested in academic/athletic balance. Surprising how many people seem to have a problem with that. If its just that your favorite school or the one your daughter or son attends and plays for is not on the list, then please feel free to tell people why that school is still a great choice for academics/soccer. Just don't throw out a lot of generic pap as to why the list may not be complete, why you should take the list with a grain of salt, etc.

I am unsure whether a school's failure to get its teams on this list mean that it is a "weak" soccer/academic balance institution. It's possible, of course, but not certain. One explanation is that the school's soccer program doesn't support its student/soccer players, demands too much time, and turns kids who would get GPAs above 3.0 into kids who won't. In a school like this, it would be hard even for an academically gifted soccer player to keep his grades up.

Another explanation is that the school selects its soccer players with less attention to their academic ability. Maybe they make large academic concessions to admit soccer players, support the players like crazy to keep them eligible, but those students were unlikely to get 3.0 regardless of whether they were on the soccer team. In an environment like this, the player who happens to be academically gifted might do just fine because the time demands are reasonable and there's plenty of support.

My guess is that there are schools that fit one or the other of these descriptions, and perhaps both. One thing seems pretty clear to me though. On the whole, and with notable exceptions, soccer players do not get grades as good as the general student body at most colleges.

[Unregistered]

I am unsure whether a school's failure to get its teams on this list mean that it is a "weak" soccer/academic balance institution. It's possible, of course, but not certain. One explanation is that the school's soccer program doesn't support its student/soccer players, demands too much time, and turns kids who would get GPAs above 3.0 into kids who won't. In a school like this, it would be hard even for an academically gifted soccer player to keep his grades up.

Another explanation is that the school selects its soccer players with less attention to their academic ability. Maybe they make large academic concessions to admit soccer players, support the players like crazy to keep them eligible, but those students were unlikely to get 3.0 regardless of whether they were on the soccer team. In an environment like this, the player who happens to be academically gifted might do just fine because the time demands are reasonable and there's plenty of support.

My guess is that there are schools that fit one or the other of these descriptions, and perhaps both. One thing seems pretty clear to me though. On the whole, and with notable exceptions, soccer players do not get grades as good as the general student body at most colleges.

All reasonable points but I think the nuances need to be determined by individuals when they research and visit potential schools. There are always exceptions this way and that way, but I still think the list that was posted is a great resource because it suggests some schools where there might be a culture conducive to good academic performance.

When you join a team and see that players are studying on the away bus, bringing books to use downtime before practice to get in some extra study, etc., there is a culture that promotes academic achievement. An already good student will feel comfortable, not conflicted. A student who can go either way will tend to make like a Roman when in Rome and be much better off than at a school where the team has a low achieving party culture. A recruit who has their head somewhere else entirely will probably not go there assuming they get an accurate picture of the culture on a visit. Or get admitted to begin with.

[beentheredonethat]

BTDT: As someone who is a college athletics administrator I take exception to that last comment. When did you graduate college? All of the work the NCAA has done over the years based on the negative press and bad rep DI and other schools had impacted how things are currently done. Presidents, provosts, and chancellors are involved in many decisions now. Structure is there to help student-athletes be exactly that: student(first) athletes. Of course there are exceptions, and in some sports it is much worse than others, but I personally have grown tired of your rants against the positive experience many DI student-athletes can enjoy. You are clearly a jaded individual.

Next January you should attend the NCAA convention and general voting session to see the strides that are made every year, across all three divisions, to get an updated sense of how academics and the time demands and expectations of student-athletes are handled.

And as a PS, my nephew graduated from Notre Dame a few years back (first year Weis took over) as an engineering major. Played football, graduated cum laude, now in grad school. What he gave up was "thirsty Thursday" and other late nights to abide by team rules and stay on track with his studies, but as he told me during his second season at ND, when they entered the stadium on game day he knew that thousands of his fellow classmates would have made that trade any day to wear the uniform he wore.

I did graduate back in a time when few D1 athletes got degrees but I played in a program that prided itself in it’s graduation rate and had in place many of the measures that are common now. If I remember correctly, of the 25 guys in my recruiting class, 24 of us graduated in 8 semesters. We were the laughing stock of the ACC on the football field but the school sure did like to thump its chest about our academic prowess. Our academic coordinator actually got a NCAA award for his work with our team.

Now if you take a closer look what they were actually doing you might not be as impressed as the NCAA apparently was. First off, they pushed the majority of us into the same majors (which were considered the easiest on campus) and put our schedules together so that all of our classes were either with “athlete friendly” professors or we were one of the common low intensity “gutt” classes that average students took outside of their major to fulfill a curriculum requirement. Functionally, all you had to do was show up for class and do the minimal amount of work required and you would get a C+/B-. While we did have things like study hall, as I remember the threshold was something like a 2.25 so I don’t think any of us actually had to go to it. I would not be surprised if at many colleges today’s 3.0 (which seems to be a fairly common study hall threshold) is similarly fairly easy to get. Tutors were available but the culture was such that because of the extra time commitment involved you only used one when you were in dire straights in a class and that seldom happened because the classes were not all that challenging. As far as everyone outside of the program was concerned we were doing great things but the reality was that we hardly doing much at all. Most of us just muddled our way through school and were focused primarily on football.

As I remember it, statistically our team looked great. I would not be surprised at all if the team’s GPA was somewhere around a 3.2-3.3. This is why I would not put too much stock in those lists of team GPA’s because team GPA’s are easily manufactured. For example, there were about 5-6 guys in my class who were exceptionally good students and really drove up the team’s GPA. Unfortunately most of them were such bad football players that they never got off the practice squad. One or two of them were so bad that they could not have even played for my high school team. The sad thing is I don’t know how any of them actually stayed with it because they were the laughing stock of the team and the brunt of a lot of abuse. It was only as an adult that I recognized why they were actually on scholarship. They were there to balance off the academic concessions.

As an 18 year old young man none of this really mattered to me. I was a decent student in high school (in fact my grades/scores were well above those that are reported on this forum as the average for academic concessions at my alma mater) but truthfully I was not really interested in getting an education, just playing football. Like a lot of the kids I see today, at that stage of my life I actually was pretty bored with school and often did just enough to keep my parents off my back. As far as I was concerned back then simply graduating from a big name college was enough. Just like the D1 baseball player who posted similar feelings, my lack of maturity and insight at this stage in my life is one of my biggest regrets. I know now that I did not take advantage of the educational opportunity and the decisions that I made resulted in me getting a pretty meaningless piece of paper. The thing that really bothers me is that when I think back I realize how utterly compliant I was. I did what I was told and it never occurred to me that all that really mattered academically from the school’s point of view was that I stayed eligible and my grades fell within the parameters that I later learned had been set by the admissions department. They didn’t care what I was or wasn’t learning and they most certainly didn’t care that I got a worthless degree. As far as they were concerned they had done a great job with all of us.

The point that I keep trying to make is that it is very easy for an athlete to get led down a path that results in a fairly meaningless education. Whether parent’s want to accept this or not, when a kid gets involved in college athletics there will be a lot more influences that can distract them from really taking advantage of the education they are being presented with. Never mind the normal things that distract all college students. Throw a demanding coach and a savvy educational coordinator into the mix and if they are not careful, the next thing you know your kid can end up to be on an educational path to nowhere.

I agree with you that I am jaded but in my travels with my daughter I didn’t see a whole lot of signs that things had changed all that much. That is because while the rules have clearly changed, human nature has not. You say that you work in an athletic department, do yourself a favor and start looking at looking at the majors and the courses of the athletes and then match it up with what is considered the easiest graduation path at your school. I bet you will find that a large number of your athletes are on it. What is that going to get them?

As far a Notre Dame goes. Read this post from an earlier thread and read a little between the lines. Does it sound all that different from what I describe?

I graduated from Notre Dame in 1985 with a degree in Math. I had a roommate majoring in business and I can't recall her having to take calculus. Regardless, Notre Dame provides an immense amount of help for student athletes. The Athletic Department has their own tutoring group; I had many classmates that worked there and spent many evening tutoring football and basketball players. Also, there are certain majors at ND, like any other school, that aren't as demanding, but courses required for all students did require decent writing skills. I have to say, most athletes when I went there went to class and got their degree. I think Lou Holtz did get them to lower their standards a bit and that is part of the reason why he left because there were grumblings about it. Interestingly enough, many of the female athletes at ND are also excellent students (and they do better on the fields and courts than their male counterparts!) Although there is a faction of alumni that would love for the university to lowere their standards to win a national championship, there is a strong group of administration and alumni that do not want to see it.

[Unregistered]

I did graduate back in a time when few D1 athletes got degrees but I played in a program that prided itself in it’s graduation rate and had in place many of the measures that are common now. If I remember correctly, of the 25 guys in my recruiting class, 24 of us graduated in 8 semesters. We were the laughing stock of the ACC on the football field but the school sure did like to thump its chest about our academic prowess. Our academic coordinator actually got a NCAA award for his work with our team.

Now if you take a closer look what they were actually doing you might not be as impressed as the NCAA apparently was. First off, they pushed the majority of us into the same majors (which were considered the easiest on campus) and put our schedules together so that all of our classes were either with “athlete friendly” professors or we were one of the common low intensity “gutt” classes that average students took outside of their major to fulfill a curriculum requirement. Functionally, all you had to do was show up for class and do the minimal amount of work required and you would get a C+/B-. While we did have things like study hall, as I remember the threshold was something like a 2.25 so I don’t think any of us actually had to go to it. I would not be surprised if at many colleges today’s 3.0 (which seems to be a fairly common study hall threshold) is similarly fairly easy to get. Tutors were available but the culture was such that because of the extra time commitment involved you only used one when you were in dire straights in a class and that seldom happened because the classes were not all that challenging.

You say that you work in an athletic department, do yourself a favor and start looking at looking at the majors and the courses of the athletes and then match it up with what is considered the easiest graduation path at your school. I bet you will find that a large number of your athletes are on it. What is that going to get them?

As far a Notre Dame goes. Read this post from an earlier thread and read a little between the lines. Does it sound all that different from what I describe?

I do not need to do myself that favor. I am the departments academic advisor and know without looking, and you are wrong. Over 38% of our female student-athletes are nursing majors. The team with the highest GPA has a roster of 22 players. 10 are nursing majors, team GPA last yeat was a 3.25. The next most popular major among student-athletes is exercise science, followed by business and criminal justice. Tell me which of those majors is easy? Of course there are a few teams with kids who are in easey majors, but they arw the minority.

Regarding ND, my nephew graduated in the current decade. The opinion from someone who graduated 25 years ago is not going to trump his.

[Unregistered]

Sorry for my spelling errors, I was up early shoveling all the snow!

[Unregistered]

Can you play college soccer and also be a serious student, pe-med, etc.?

One notable example is Magda Tomeckca (Fuller Hamlets)

Four years at NC. Now an MD and plays for the Boston Breakers.