PDA

View Full Version : Athletes/Admissions process?



duke79
11-21-2013, 05:17 PM
Being the parent of a child in the 11th grade who will be applying to college next year, I'm curious about how schools like Duke handle the admissions process for the scholarship athletes. Just in the past month or so, Duke athletics have announced that several athletes have signed letters of intent to attend Duke in September of 2014 (including men's basketball, women's basketball, men's tennis, women's golf, etc.). However, the early admissions process for prospective students will not even be complete until December. Do these athletes have to even go through the normal admissions process (taking all of the tests, completing the application, getting teacher recommendations, writing the essays, etc.) or do the coaches just tell the admissions office what athletes they would like to recruit to Duke and then the coaches get some sort of assurance from the admissions office that those students will be admitted (assuming their grades and test scores and other information have been reviewed by the admissions office?). Most of the announcements on GoDuke.com make it sound like it is already a done deal with these athletes. Or is there some sort of "Early Early Admissions" process for the athletes? Given how competitive it has become to get into many of these top schools, I've never read anywhere exactly how this is handled by the admissions office and the athletic department.

Does anyone on here know what the process is?

scottdude8
11-21-2013, 05:44 PM
Having been a tour guide both for general students and briefly for the football program, I've heard bits and pieces about how this works (although nothing completely official, so please take the following with a "heard through the grapevine"-esque grain of salt). My understanding is that in order for an athlete to play at Duke, they have to be approved in some capacity by the admissions department, although this isn't necessary the same rigorous evaluation that normal students go through. The admissions department has the right to veto a potential student athlete, ie say that they do not fit the academic requirements of Duke University. However, this is a more of a nebulous distinction: a student athlete just has to show they show the potential to fit as a Duke student, while the typical applying student has to show that they are exceptional and rise about the normal students who could just "fit" as a Duke student in order to be accepted.

I will say that I did hear from Chris Guttentaug himself (the Dean of Admissions) that there have been numerous times where the admissions department has said "no" to coaches regarding potential scholarship athletes, and there have been rumors with regards to various basketball players that the reason our recruitment of said players cooled was due to academic issues.

Hope this answers your question, I tried to answer to the best of my (admittedly limited) knowledge!

duke79
11-21-2013, 05:58 PM
Thanks for that info. I sort of figured that process had to work something like that. And I'm sure there have been many prospective athletes who have not "made the grade" with the admissions office. I'm guessing the coaches do not have carte blanche with respect to recruiting athletes.

-jk
11-21-2013, 06:03 PM
Thanks for that info. I sort of figured that process had to work something like that. And I'm sure there have been many prospective athletes who have not "made the grade" with the admissions office. I'm guessing the coaches do not have carte blanche with respect to recruiting athletes.

I suspect leniency somewhat correlates to revenues and visibility. But there is certainly a floor.

-jk

duke79
11-21-2013, 06:13 PM
I suspect leniency somewhat correlates to revenues and visibility. But there is certainly a floor.

-jk

Yea, I'm guessing that "floor" is quite a bit lower for football and basketball than with the other non-revenue sports. No great surprise there.

johnb
11-21-2013, 06:21 PM
...My understanding is that in order for an athlete to play at Duke, they have to be approved in some capacity by the admissions department, although this isn't necessary the same rigorous evaluation that normal students go through...

I would just add that the evaluation is probably very rigorous/careful. For nationally elite athletes who are top priorities of the coaches, the key factor is probably whether or not the student is likely to function academically. And there is some deference/flexibility given to sports and coaches with a track record of graduating "marginal" students as well as to student-athletes in the revenue sports. That might lead to SAT's lower than our average but quite high graduation rates. It's a trade-off, of course, and there is undoubtedly ongoing discussion about how flexible we should be in regards to athletes from all the teams, but the basic reality is that if we are going to be nationally competitive in all sports--which is currently the case--we'll need to accept students whose main extracurricular is a sport and whose numbers may be below our average.

This process may seem to have less "rigor" than that of the "normal" student (I'd probably use "non-athlete"), but I'd guess that they evaluate these athletes as least as closely as the non-athletes, partly because failure is very public (certainly for basketball and football) and also because a disproportionate number of the (revenue) athletes hail from nontraditional backgrounds where the metrics are less obvious than with the typical Duke student who was raised in a privileged setting (privileged as in academically privileged, not necessarily financially privileged).

And, of course, admissions for the really elite athletes is different from the more typical applicant who is all conference or a team captain; for those students, their sports efforts are likely to be a smallish upward bump in the overall assessment.

rthomas
11-21-2013, 06:32 PM
One of the things that made me a Duke fan forever when I was a postdoc back in the later 80's early 90's was that athletes may be accepted but once accepted they are expected to perform academically. And while I was there, several basketball players had to sit when they did not perform. For a while everyone held their breath at the end of fall semester to learn that someone or another had made the fall semester or not. It seems now that Duke and many colleges have things in place to make sure athletes are studying and working hard at academics. Another reason I am a Duke fan forever. College ain't hard. It just takes commitment and work.

sagegrouse
11-21-2013, 06:40 PM
One thing is certain: athletes don't have to wait until April to find out whether they are admitted. Every school, even those in Division III (see story on U. of Chicago football in the NY Times about 15 months ago) give prospective athletes an expedited decision process. And, yup, that includes HYP.

WRT "standards:" It seems to be the athlete must have a reasonable chance of academic success at Duke. I don't know what that means, but I suspect it means that every such candidate is looked at individually. I also don't know if, say, a scholarship baseball player would get the same breaks as a football or basketball player. It is also possible that a world-class musician or artist would also receive special consideration.

sagegrouse

BD80
11-21-2013, 06:57 PM
Johnny Dawkins just signed a kid that had been waiting to hear from Stanford admissions to see if he had been accepted.

Reilly
11-21-2013, 07:09 PM
... It seems to be the athlete must have a reasonable chance of academic success at Duke. ... It is also possible that a world-class musician or artist would also receive special consideration.

sagegrouse

Billy King famously "won" his admissions interview with Clark Cahow.

Yes, others get special consideration, as well. What's fun is when the development office sends their list over to the admissions office.

Devil in the Blue Dress
11-21-2013, 07:21 PM
Yea, I'm guessing that "floor" is quite a bit lower for football and basketball than with the other non-revenue sports. No great surprise there.
The last report I read, 10% of the undergraduate student body participates in a varsity sport at Duke, a high number involved in athletics.

BTW Since Coach Cutcliffe's arrival, the football team's academic average has continued to move up and is now in the mid to high B range.

Atlanta Duke
11-21-2013, 07:34 PM
The issue of Duke athletes in the basketball program getting exceptionally preferential treatment has been percolating since at least the time Dean got vexed about the "J.R. Can't Reid" signs in the early 90s

Smith once compared the combined SAT scores of Danny Ferry and Laettner to the combined scores of J.R. Reid and Scott Williams (since the comparison was favorable to his players).

http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/02/08/1838091/no-rivalry-can-top-this-one.html

Recruiting one and done players raises a lot of issues, including whether keeping someone academically eligible for one semester indicates any real commitment to balancing academics and the need to maintain a top flight program

You buy the ticket, you take the ride

MarkD83
11-22-2013, 05:59 AM
During the summer the Duke Alumni magazine had a great article about what they generally look for in Duke applicants.

Of course the type of courses that a student took in high school, their grades in those classes and SAT scores all were prominent metrics. However, there were also critical criteria related to leadership qualities, character, work ethic and what you can bring to Duke.

This thread has hinted at admissions criteria being "lower" for scholarship athletes. However, I would suggest that in terms of leadership, character and work ethic, elite high school athletes would have the maximum scores in these areas. Add to that you have Duke basketball players and football players having to "interview" with Coach K and Coach Cut and I think there is no question about these qualities.

So, are scholarship athletes really accepted with "lower" standards? Maybe not, we may be just looking at only one part of the selection criteria.

BlueDevilinNYC
11-22-2013, 09:30 AM
Being the parent of a child in the 11th grade who will be applying to college next year, I'm curious about how schools like Duke handle the admissions process for the scholarship athletes. Just in the past month or so, Duke athletics have announced that several athletes have signed letters of intent to attend Duke in September of 2014 (including men's basketball, women's basketball, men's tennis, women's golf, etc.). However, the early admissions process for prospective students will not even be complete until December. Do these athletes have to even go through the normal admissions process (taking all of the tests, completing the application, getting teacher recommendations, writing the essays, etc.) or do the coaches just tell the admissions office what athletes they would like to recruit to Duke and then the coaches get some sort of assurance from the admissions office that those students will be admitted (assuming their grades and test scores and other information have been reviewed by the admissions office?). Most of the announcements on GoDuke.com make it sound like it is already a done deal with these athletes. Or is there some sort of "Early Early Admissions" process for the athletes? Given how competitive it has become to get into many of these top schools, I've never read anywhere exactly how this is handled by the admissions office and the athletic department.

Does anyone on here know what the process is?

As a former student athlete on a non-revenue sport (T '11) that was recruited and accepted into Duke through the athletic department's process, I'll share my story.

As I was getting recruited for my sport, I did not look at Duke initially (Dartmouth, BC and Princeton were the three schools recruiting me the hardest). My HS coach had a child that happened to be an athlete on the specific team I participated in, and he knew that the coach was still looking to fill one more spot. Now, this was the first week in February (on a Monday to be specific). He said he would talk to the coach that night and suggested that i send my transcript to the her. That next day I spoke on the phone and she invited me on an official visit that weekend. I made my trip to Duke, loved it (of course) and gave her my verbal commitment on that next Monday.

That night I filled out the entire application to the university (essay and all). The way my coach described it is they send the application to the admissions department with essentially a dog-ear on the top saying "Hey, as a coach for X sport I get a Y number of spots per year for my team, this is one of those kids." They admissions department then checked to make sure I fulfilled the academic needs expected of a student athlete at the university (just fyi I had a 3.94 out of possible 4.31 GPA and a 1310 out of 1600 on my SATs). That next Monday I received my acceptance letter as well as my official letter of intent in the mail, which I then signed to make it official.


It is my belief that no two recuriting processes ever take the same path (I went from not even thinking about Duke to Blue Devil in two weeks). However, each sport has certain standards their recruits must meet in order to gain admittance.

P.S. At the same time, if a student athlete has such good grades that the admissions dept. determines they could gain admittance w/o using an "athlete spot" for that sport, they will be accepted normally and that sport gets a non-scholarship roster spot back. This was the case for many of my teammates.

duketaylor
11-22-2013, 02:47 PM
I echo the post above me. I was a walk-on, accepted as a J-Frosh, later learning my coach had submitted a long list of names (I was 23rd on the list) for consideration which I believe is standard practice for all sports. I also interviewed here in Richmond with an alumna and must've received a favorable response from her. I do have a few Duke alums in the family which certainly didn't hurt and had strong grades and good scores. It doesn't hurt that my public school sent two to Duke the year before me and three from my class, so there's some history there as well. There are certain "feeder" schools. I got to know Chris Kennedy quite well and I asked a lot of questions about admissions as I also roomed with two basketball players and was curious. Most important thing I was told was that in the evaluation process admissions tries to determine if that student-athlete can handle the work and understands the time responsibility involved. It's worth noting that bball and fball players largely stay on campus in the summer and attend both sessions of summer school, which includes coming in the summer before their freshman year, i.e., they already have credits before August/September rolls around. That's huge for eligibility purposes. I spent one summer on campus, which was when I met and roomed with Doug McNeely and Vince Taylor on central campus. Doug and I later got an apartment off-campus and I learned a lot more about the early days of Coach K;)

throatybeard
11-22-2013, 10:03 PM
As a former student athlete on a non-revenue sport (T '11) that was recruited and accepted into Duke through the athletic department's process, I'll share my story.

As I was getting recruited for my sport, I did not look at Duke initially (Dartmouth, BC and Princeton were the three schools recruiting me the hardest). My HS coach had a child that happened to be an athlete on the specific team I participated in, and he knew that the coach was still looking to fill one more spot. Now, this was the first week in February (on a Monday to be specific). He said he would talk to the coach that night and suggested that i send my transcript to the her. That next day I spoke on the phone and she invited me on an official visit that weekend. I made my trip to Duke, loved it (of course) and gave her my verbal commitment on that next Monday.

That night I filled out the entire application to the university (essay and all). The way my coach described it is they send the application to the admissions department with essentially a dog-ear on the top saying "Hey, as a coach for X sport I get a Y number of spots per year for my team, this is one of those kids." They admissions department then checked to make sure I fulfilled the academic needs expected of a student athlete at the university (just fyi I had a 3.94 out of possible 4.31 GPA and a 1310 out of 1600 on my SATs). That next Monday I received my acceptance letter as well as my official letter of intent in the mail, which I then signed to make it official.


It is my belief that no two recuriting processes ever take the same path (I went from not even thinking about Duke to Blue Devil in two weeks). However, each sport has certain standards their recruits must meet in order to gain admittance.

P.S. At the same time, if a student athlete has such good grades that the admissions dept. determines they could gain admittance w/o using an "athlete spot" for that sport, they will be accepted normally and that sport gets a non-scholarship roster spot back. This was the case for many of my teammates.

Thanks for the inside info. I've long suspected it worked something like that, but I didn't know.

I suppose when you have a Langdon or Battier or someone like that, you can get them tossed into the general pool, and not the athlete-only pool, freeing up a slot in the second pool, the folks who can cut it academically at Duke, but might not get in regular decision and not being able to play a sport.