Originally Posted by CageSage
Originally Posted by Anonymous
Cage I think what I am talking about and your golden ticket person are vastly different. The golden ticket kid is the below 1000 SAT with a GPA below 3.0 and the coach gets them into a descent school. I am talking about the 1100 SAT kid with a 3.5 GPA who gets into the Dukes, UVA, Vandy schools when in reality had no chance at getting into those schools without lacrosse, these I have seen many times.Obviously a guess but would say it happens about 4-6 times a year at most top 50 schools in girls lacrosse alone.
A 3.5 GPA with hard work sounds like it would be fine at these institutions however the 1100 SAT I two-way score is the real problem here. Even if that score included a 600 Math SAT section, the problem is that you will quickly find that student in a calculus section when the algebra and geometry skills were only slightly better than average.

Yes, lacrosse might have gotten that student into those schools, but what happens in the classroom from that point forward remains a question. Thank you for your thoughts and contributions to this thread - extremely interesting discussion.

Interesting topic. I have talked with the Duke coach about this subject. Her response was, "the hardest part is getting in". She said the classes are not necessarily harder than other institutions with lower standards. With the extra academic support their athletes get, the track record of those good but not gifted students are very good. The graduation rate is close to 100 percent. Most of these girls who play at a high level usually have one thing in common and that is a great work ethic, so they usually refuse to fail.