NOVEMBER 2017
OPINION 19
ACADEMICALLY INCLINED STUDENTS are at an unfair 1028
DISADVANTAGE
997
TOP TEN COLLEGES BASED ON FOOTBALL PLAYERS’ AVERAGE SAT SCORES
997
993
Statistics from USA Today
programs. Students begin to rely so heavily on the sport they play to get them into a college that everything else fades into the background, leaving them greatly underprepared for the reality of college life. The worst part of this issue is that these athletes are taking up spaces at schools that could have been filled by strong academic students just because they are good at a sport, which admittedly requires a lot of hard work and dedication, but should not be the predominant reason to get into a college. Students who are not as athletically inclined or don’t necessarily stand out as much as their other teammates might not get into the universities that they want or deserve to get into. Not all student-athletes struggle in
967
966
964
Iowa
Hawaii
Indiana
Purdue
Virginia
Michigan
Oregon State
968
Colorado
973
California
974
Georgia Tech
Lauren Upah Managing Editor For most students, the purpose of high school is to get into college and eventually join the workforce, but with colleges becoming more selective and the application process becoming more competitive, students must work much harder to stand out among many other college applicants. However, that process becomes much easier if they play a sport. Both high schools and colleges value students with athletic prowess over their more academically inclined peers, making it harder to succeed in school if someone doesn’t intend to play a sport. Ever since I began high school, it has been made very clear that in order to get a college’s attention, I would need to play a sport. I distinctly remember a counselor coming into my ninth grade English class and telling us horror stories of students who did not get into the colleges they applied to because they were “too academically focused”. Although athletes work incredibly hard and deserve equal recognition for their abilities both on and off the field, it is glaringly unfair that students who tend focus more on academics are not being granted the leeway that is sometimes offered to student-athletes. A CNN analysis in 2014 found that when looking at the SAT and ACT scores of college athletes admitted to NCAA schools, between seven and 18 percent were reading at an elementary school level. This is not just an anomaly for athletic universities such as the University of Florida or the University of Maryland; it’s also occurring in colleges with strong academic programs. One school widely known for this problem is the University of North Carolina (UNC). UNC’s learning specialist, Mary Willingham, has had student-athletes who could not read and write come in; she had to teach one student how to sound out the word “Wisconsin” (CNN). This perfectly illustrates the prevailing problem that exists between schools and their athletic
school; in fact, a majority excel in both academics and athletics, but they are not the problem. The problem is the few students who rest solely on their athletic laurels to get them into colleges that they wouldn’t get into otherwise. For most students, especially those more academically focused, their central goal is to get into a good college. While almost all athletes must play in college to make it pro, their reasons for going to college are drastically different than their academic counterparts. Seeing as the main point of college is to further education, schools should be focusing more on academically inclined students rather than student-athletes. Schools need to work on recognizing the achievements of all students, not just those that who can play a sport.