Why Athletes Have an Edge at Elite Colleges

by Lynn O’Shaughnessy | Jun 2, 2009 | Comments

Key Stats

• Who’s what: You can find the lists of Divisions I, II, and III schools, along with their respective athletic conferences, at the NCAA website.
• The odds: About 7.3 million kids participate in high school athletics, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. About 380,000 play in Divisions I, II, and III schools. Of those, only about 130,000 receive full or partial scholarships for their abilities on the playing field.
• Who qualifies: Athletes must complete 14 core courses in high school and receive minimum grades and SAT or ACT scores to even think about getting on a team. (For details, check the NCAA’s guide for students).
• How much can kids get? The average scholarship is about $10,400.

When fans think about college sports, what comes to mind are epic Division I battles that pack stadiums and attract millions of TV viewers — USC fighting against Ohio State for Rose Bowl honors or North Carolina battling Kansas at the Big Dance in March. However, most college athletes compete far away from ESPN’s cameras and color commentators. They attend the 429 schools in the NCAA’s Division III, where by definition, sports are supposed to take a backseat to education. Many elite liberal arts colleges, such as Amherst, Middlebury, Pomona, Carleton, and Bryn Mawr, belong to D-III. In theory, athletes applying to these schools should enjoy no particular advantage in admissions or financial aid; and when at these schools, they should be given the time and freedom to study abroad, work on the school newspaper, participate in an internship, and enjoy other school activities. The reality is a lot more complicated — and that can make a huge difference in your child-athlete’s success and happiness at school.

The D-III Play

Officially, financial favoritism for athletes at D-III schools is strictly forbidden. NCAA rules prohibit D-III schools from awarding athletic scholarships. (Ivy League schools play in Division I, but don’t provide athletic scholarships.) And while merit scholarships are perfectly permissible, a baseball pitcher’s merit award shouldn’t look any different than the one extended to a philosophy major with the same academic profile whose extracurricular activity is the gospel choir.

The Low-Down

That’s the NCAA’s story, and they’re sticking to it. In its 2006 report on gender equity and sports in fact, the organization reports not one dime spent on athletic scholarships for Division III schools. But the fact is that athletes still enjoy an advantage. A scholar-athlete who could boost a sports program’s performance stats could be irresistible to coaches and admission offices. You should never discount the level of competition between elite schools and their athletic departments, says Ellen Staurowsky, professor and graduate chair in the Department of Sport Management and Media at Ithaca College. “Even though there are no formal athletic scholarships, there is always a feeling that another institution may be out-recruiting yours because they are more generous about giving assistance.” And despite the rules, there is no shortage of money for athletes at elite schools. “Small private schools have amazing supplies of money for talent and leadership awards,” observes Scott Brayton, who is founder of Varsity Student Institute in Bellevue, Wash., which has advised hundreds of student athletes. The simple truth, he says: D-III schools can award any kind of financial aid they want, “as long as they don’t call it an athletic scholarship.”

A college that wants your child can offer a merit scholarship based on his or her academic record, special talents, or the catch-all category known as “leadership.” Leadership scholarships go to teenagers who have demonstrated “leadership abilities” in various activities, including student government, charitable work, and other extracurriculars. The NCAA theoretically forbids using leadership scholarships for sports. But jocks capture them anyway, according to Brayton. He has a client, for instance, who received a leadership scholarship to a liberal arts college in the Pacific Northwest last year, where she plays soccer. In addition to a $12,000 merit award, she won an $8,000 leadership scholarship that requires her to give a presentation on an unspecified topic on campus once a year. Doesn’t sound too demanding.

Using Athletics as a Hook

What applies to financial aid, of course, also applies to admissions. Being a jock dramatically improves your child’s odds of getting into even the nation’s most elite colleges. At Ivy League schools, sports candidates are four times more likely than other applicants to be accepted, according to Reclaiming the Game: College Sports and Educational Values, a book co-authored by William G. Bowen, a past president of Princeton University. Robert Malekoff, a former associate athletic director at Harvard University and past women’s soccer coach at Princeton, concurs. Sports give students an admissions edge at other highly selective schools, too. “There is no question that there is an admission advantage for students who play sports,” Malekoff says.

The Hitches

Ideally, your child, once admitted, enjoys a well-rounded elite education that includes varsity sports. But not all D-III coaches share this vision. To rack up a record of wins and to further their own careers, some coaches may demand as much time and effort from their players as do their D-I counterparts. The upshot: a student athlete may end up feeling more like a school’s employee. “The most important thing is to figure out who the coach would be and what sort of program he runs and what his attitude is about a student’s balance between academics and athletics,” says Michael Davidson, a history professor at Wilkes University, who blogs about intercollegiate athletics. If a coach is an alma mater of the school or has coached at the college for many years, chances are he will run a traditional program that allows an athlete to also be a scholar, Davidson says. On the flip side, coaches who competed at Division I schools or served as assistant coaches at top schools, are more likely to see their current jobs as stepping stones to head coach posts at big-name sports schools. Such coaches are more likely to demand more from team members.

Another drawback: social isolation. Oftentimes athletes, regardless of their NCAA division, don’t socialize with other students, says Murray Sperber, a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and the author of Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education. Surprisingly, that problem may crop up more often in D-III schools. “At a school like Indiana, there are about 800 intercollegiate athletes and student managers, but they are a small subgroup when you have a student population of 38,000,” says Sperber. “At D-III schools, the jocks often become the largest subgroup.” Before your kid decides to enroll, he or she should talk to a couple of prospective teammates to learn how they spend their spare hours, whether they eat all their meals together, attend parties only with each other, or have friends from classes or other extracurricular activities.

The Final Score

If your teenager is an academic dunce with a GPA that looks like binary code, he or she is not likely to gain admission to a selective school on the strength of his or her chops as a wrestler or shot-putter — and definitely unlikely to get scholarship help. But if your child could walk the walk, talk the talk, and basically hold his or her own academically, then excellence in a sport could help him or her win admission — and financial help.