DavidsonCats.com

I am confident that DU Admissions is sophisticated enuff to evaluate the whole package presented to the school by each applicant. Indeed, many "non-academic" characteristics of the individual applying to be admitted to DU are included in this decision matrix, including athletic prowess among many others.

Can there be any doubt in Board membership here (based upon my body of posts) that the Admissions Office in 1967 was in need of one more arrogant, opinionated, combative and obnoxious northern Yankee invader, when my yes decision was ignominiously made?

Let there be no ambiguity here - this is exclusively a rhetorical inquiry.

BDF wrote:I suspect, though, that the admissions office also has a pretty good idea of an academic profile in high school that indicates the ability to succeed at Davidson. Davidson is difficult, and as BDL noted, it is more difficult if you are an athlete. If the argument is we should let in a great athlete whose academic profile suggests that they will not be able to handle the academic rigors of Davidson, I think that would be unfair to the student, the team and the college. While some courses at Davidson are easier than others, I don't think there is an easy path to graduation. We should not be admitting students who we don't think will be able to graduate.

I think this is an incredibly important point, and one of the great things about Davidson (and many other small, high-quality academic schools) is that when there is a smaller student body, there is nowhere to hide as a student and everyone is held to a high standard. If we accept a tremendous basketball player-who very well might be a tremendous person-but he is not capable of handling the Davidson academic experience, that individual is not set up for success in life.

CatsUpNorth wrote:

BDF wrote:I suspect, though, that the admissions office also has a pretty good idea of an academic profile in high school that indicates the ability to succeed at Davidson. Davidson is difficult, and as BDL noted, it is more difficult if you are an athlete. If the argument is we should let in a great athlete whose academic profile suggests that they will not be able to handle the academic rigors of Davidson, I think that would be unfair to the student, the team and the college. While some courses at Davidson are easier than others, I don't think there is an easy path to graduation. We should not be admitting students who we don't think will be able to graduate.

I think this is an incredibly important point, and one of the great things about Davidson (and many other small, high-quality academic schools) is that when there is a smaller student body, there is nowhere to hide as a student and everyone is held to a high standard. If we accept a tremendous basketball player-who very well might be a tremendous person-but he is not capable of handling the Davidson academic experience, that individual is not set up for success in life.

Success in life or success at Davidson?

2008wildcat wrote:

CatsUpNorth wrote:

BDF wrote:I suspect, though, that the admissions office also has a pretty good idea of an academic profile in high school that indicates the ability to succeed at Davidson. Davidson is difficult, and as BDL noted, it is more difficult if you are an athlete. If the argument is we should let in a great athlete whose academic profile suggests that they will not be able to handle the academic rigors of Davidson, I think that would be unfair to the student, the team and the college. While some courses at Davidson are easier than others, I don't think there is an easy path to graduation. We should not be admitting students who we don't think will be able to graduate.

I think this is an incredibly important point, and one of the great things about Davidson (and many other small, high-quality academic schools) is that when there is a smaller student body, there is nowhere to hide as a student and everyone is held to a high standard. If we accept a tremendous basketball player-who very well might be a tremendous person-but he is not capable of handling the Davidson academic experience, that individual is not set up for success in life.

Success in life or success at Davidson?

I would put them hand in hand; say a student wasn't capable of getting a passing GPA at Davidson, they probably shouldn't be at Davidson and the school isn't doing them any favors or setting them up for long-term success.

CatsUpNorth wrote:

2008wildcat wrote:

CatsUpNorth wrote:

BDF wrote:I suspect, though, that the admissions office also has a pretty good idea of an academic profile in high school that indicates the ability to succeed at Davidson. Davidson is difficult, and as BDL noted, it is more difficult if you are an athlete. If the argument is we should let in a great athlete whose academic profile suggests that they will not be able to handle the academic rigors of Davidson, I think that would be unfair to the student, the team and the college. While some courses at Davidson are easier than others, I don't think there is an easy path to graduation. We should not be admitting students who we don't think will be able to graduate.

I think this is an incredibly important point, and one of the great things about Davidson (and many other small, high-quality academic schools) is that when there is a smaller student body, there is nowhere to hide as a student and everyone is held to a high standard. If we accept a tremendous basketball player-who very well might be a tremendous person-but he is not capable of handling the Davidson academic experience, that individual is not set up for success in life.

Success in life or success at Davidson?

I would put them hand in hand; say a student wasn't capable of getting a passing GPA at Davidson, they probably shouldn't be at Davidson and the school isn't doing them any favors or setting them up for long-term success.

Got it. Appreciate the clarification!

From the series of messages, I gather that the posters here get it as far as the way Davidson expresses core values in admissions criteria.

A couple of examples come to mind, from both recent and ancient history.

I recalling seeing a profile the college issued about my potential classmates. That included the number of people admitted and rejected in brackets of SAT scores. One person who scored in the upper 1500s (out of 1600 back then) was turned down.

Then there is the recent example (and we don't have to trot out his name again) of a basketball signee who had a good enough record, but the admissions people noted that his high school performance dropped off during basketball season. They saw that as a sign that he would have trouble making it through here if he played basketball. Among other things, that suggests an attention to detail that might be too much a luxury of time for a larger school. We also know the ending of the story where we "settled" for T$ in his place.

I'll also remind us that the goal of having equal numbers of male and female students in itself gives some break to male applicants generally.

No one - and I mean absolutely no one is admitted to Davidson - absent a firm belief by Admissions that the individual so invited to enroll has the intellectual capacity for successfully being graduated by our School. Top tier participation in highly competitive high school athletics is an appropriate criterion for Admissions consideration in making that subjective judgment because that individual's demonstrated self-discipline, time management skills and competitive drive to succeed are objectively valid indicators of ability to master DU's academic programs, so long as the other high school academic measures are within acceptable ranges.

In short, Camelot's royalty know the tru nature of aspiring warriors of the Knights of the Round Ball when they see them pulling that sword from the rock.

The simple fact is that every rigorous academic institution that also plays DI athletics takes that into account in the admissions process. I saw high school classmates of my daughters who were lacrosse All Americans get into Ivy League institutions with 1200 SATs. That is not smart enough to get admitted in the normal pool, but smart enough to earn a diploma.

We know that Tommy Amaker got Harvard to give his recruits extra "points" in the admissions process. And William Avery was accepoted at Duke, and Julius Peppers at Chapel Hole. . .

JerseyLawyer wrote:The simple fact is that every rigorous academic institution that also plays DI athletics takes that into account in the admissions process. I saw high school classmates of my daughters who were lacrosse All Americans get into Ivy League institutions with 1200 SATs. That is not smart enough to get admitted in the normal pool, but smart enough to earn a diploma.

We know that Tommy Amaker got Harvard to give his recruits extra "points" in the admissions process. And William Avery was accepoted at Duke, and Julius Peppers at Chapel Hole. . .

And this happens at Davidson. There is a difference between admitting people (athletes or not) that are capable of graduating from Davidson and those that would get admitted if they applied and were up against the rest of the pool, absent of athletic endeavors.

There are some that think we don't make exceptions for our basketball team and/or other teams. This is not true. I don't disagree with what we do, but some would boast that our athletes get admitted using the same criteria as the rest of the student-body.

I fully support taking into account the contribution that an applicant would make to the college community as a whole. As others have suggested above, that can entail quite a range of areas including athletics.

I also think it is good that now some accommodation is made for the NCAA signing dates and such. There's no reason to lose an athlete who would surely be admitted just because of adhering to some alternate timeline for the admissions department.

That all said, I am aware that our basketball staff gets transcripts from players who eventually wind up at other schools. They don't share confidential individual information, of course, but it is not unusual for one of our assistants to mention that there are Duke players, for example, whom they believe to have had no chance of being admitted here.

TiredCat88 wrote:And this happens at Davidson. There is a difference between admitting people (athletes or not) that are capable of graduating from Davidson and those that would get admitted if they applied and were up against the rest of the pool, absent of athletic endeavors.

There are some that think we don't make exceptions for our basketball team and/or other teams. This is not true. I don't disagree with what we do, but some would boast that our athletes get admitted using the same criteria as the rest of the student-body.

In recalling the case of the player who was not admitted, I had the thought that here was a case perhaps where ironically he might have been admitted if he were not planning to play basketball.

TC88 said:

There are some that think we don't make exceptions for our basketball team and/or other teams. This is not true. I don't disagree with what we do, but some would boast that our athletes get admitted using the same criteria as the rest of the student-body.[/quote]

I am concerned that your view is that our athletes in some instances are inferior students because they get admitted using different criteria than the rest of the students. I may be wrong here, but as I understand DU Admissions, all applicants are given added benefits for extra-curricula activities, be it orchestra participation, debate club, football team membership or community volunteer service. Any applicant characteristic which demonstrates student commitment to broader than "book learnin" is deemed a positive by Admissions.

Accordingly, I believe that our athletic scholarship athletes do indeed compete for admission to DU on a level playing field.

So let's make an example.
Player x is capable of getting us to the elite 8 with current talent around him. But he would be a C student, cuspy pass/fail in non elects.   ðŸ'ðŸ'Žyes or no.

I say yes.

Admissions apps increase
Ticket Revenues / giving increase
More high quality players come because bob has coached more than one NBA player.

And Cs get degrees

DCA06 wrote:

Dr Bliss ain't leading us to the Elite Eight.

DCA06 wrote:
And Cs get degrees

Lots of Davidson students survive on Cs. I did, despite having a strong application and, I presume, a smooth path through admissions.

Let's recenter the example on D students. Cs aren't good, but also aren't abnormal. Ds, on the other hand, are bad. Do we want admissions to let in athletes that are going to skate by on Ds? No, because a student with a D average isn't academically eligible to participate in athletics.