| . |
SYNOPSIS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INDEX
AUTHORS
BACK COVER
ORDERING
WHO CAN BENEFIT
COMMON QUESTIONS
EXCERPTS | |
Chapter 1
Excerpt
Applying to college can be one of the most
difficult processes your child will go through in high school. In
today’s ultra-competitive college environment where students are
pressured to think they need to get into the best schools possible,
and/or apply early, many would argue that the college application
process is far too daunting a process for the average high school
student to handle alone. When you factor in the challenges of finding
and applying to schools that are also a good fit athletically for a
student-athlete, the application process becomes even more archaic.
Students don’t really understand what
college is about, what college is like, or what the admissions criteria
is, and they go through the whole application process apprehensive on
what the end result is really going to be. They get information and
advice from so many people, that they often become confused on who to
trust and what to believe.
The college application process is
inherently broken but no one has been able to come up with a better
alternative. While there are guidelines that all schools use to evaluate
students (test scores, grades, extra-curricular activities,
recommendations, interviews) the selection process is at best an inexact
science and utterly unfair for many people. Schools that receive 20,000
applications from qualified students but only have spots for 2,000
students throw objectivity out the window and must unfortunately reject
a multitude of students that were not only qualified, but were more than
qualified. In many cases, its not the less qualified students that are
getting rejected, but the more qualified student because the school is
seeking some academic balance that it cannot find in accepting 5,000
students with 4.0 GPA’s and 1500 SAT scores. This inexact science often
causes confusion, despair, & frustration amongst parents and students
who have little recourse and are left with little understanding of what
they had to do to “get in.”
The actual process of applying to schools
is fairly simple, you fill out an application that includes test scores,
GPA, recommendations, essays, short answers and send it to schools where
it is reviewed by an admissions representative. What is easy ends there.
The hard part is knowing
what to look for in a college and knowing how what you are looking for
applies and relates to you. It is a basic matching game where you have a
set of skills, talents, and desires and a school has a set of desires
and qualifications it looks for in a student. Your goal is to find the
best fit for you personally and the goal of the schools is to find
students that they think will not only be successful, but contribute to
the growth of the school. The application process used to be a whole lot
easier. While the actual process hasn’t changed much, there are now
thousands of more qualified and more prepared students vying for
basically the same amount of college spaces. 10 years ago a school might
have gotten 10,000 applications and now it could be up to not only
20,000, but also have thousands of more qualified applicants.
Wanting to be a successful college athlete
elevates the college search often to levels that the average student or
family cannot handle alone. They are not sure whether to look for
schools that might be a good athletic fit, or schools that might be a
good academic fit, or both. They are not sure what is more important,
athletics or academics. They are not sure when to start the process.
They are getting advice from people that are not qualified to give them
advice. They are not sure how to contact coaches or whether or not
coaches will be contacting them. They do not know how to assess what
level of college athletics they can play at. They are not sure what they
can afford and if an athletic scholarship is possible or practical.
What once started out as a noble goal of
finding the right school starts to slowly disintegrate for them because
they have no real basis or criteria for which to make more accurate
decisions. Before they know they are in trouble, they have lost valuable
time for this process and are no closer to making an informed decision
that is in the best interest of their son or daughter.
In many cases there are parents and
students who understand that there is important criteria they need to
use to come to a decision on a college. The obvious ones are size of the
school, distance and what particular programs are offered. While this
helps, in most cases they simply say, “hmm, do I want to go to a big
school or a small school?” But they fail to take that thought process
the extra mile and find out what the tangible differences are between
smaller schools and larger schools or public schools and private
schools. Size affects “many things” and it’s the “many things” that you
need to discover and explore before you reject a school with a 1,000
students or apply to a school with 40,000 students. That is the only way
you can come to a more informed decision.
As a student-athlete wishing to continue
your college athletic career, you will be required to go through the
same exact process that your non-athletic peers go through when
researching and selecting colleges. You have the unfortunate
responsibility though of having to not only research schools socially
and academically, but also athletically. There will be instances where
your athletic talents and the exposure you have received in your league
or state has provided opportunities for college coaches to find you. Do
not make the mistake of assuming the burden of responsibility has been
removed form you. You should not think, “why do I need to find them,
when they are finding me.”
|
| . |
