Transitioning from high school to college is a major part of a teenager’s life. Applying to colleges and getting approved by the National Collegiate Athletic Association poses several challenges for student athletes.
For an athlete to secure a spot on an NCAA team, regardless of the division, dedication to the sport and academics is essential.
Eligibility in the NCAA is taken quite seriously and is a painstakingly tedious process that can take up to four years of preparation for some high school athletes.
The student athlete must be competitive and highly accomplished in his or her respective sport to be considered for a Division I team.
But if your mom is Aunt Becky from “Full House” (Lori Laughlin) or an extremely desperate housewife (Felicity Huffman), don’t worry about these requirements that tens of thousands of high schoolers throughout the nation must fulfill. Don’t even worry about being an athlete. You will still get into the institution of your parent’s dreams. With Photoshop and a few hundred thousand dollars, the college experience is yours.
The recent college admissions scandal unveiled the power of the wealthy, the weakness of athletic administrators and the corruption of coaches and others at prestigious universities such as Yale, Stanford, USC and Georgetown.
Even without an athletic scholarship, acceptance into any of these colleges or any college is a great success. Students use their time in high school to build their repertoire in hopes of standing out from their fellow classmates so colleges will notice their achievements.
Whether a student is leading the debate team or leading the nation in rebounds, high schoolers put in a lot of work to get into college.
Students must be involved in multiple extracurricular activities or spend time doing community service while maintaining a high GPA in order to appeal to esteemed colleges.
Knowing that rich and famous families who clearly have too much money at their disposal can bribe their way not only through the admissions board, but through the NCAA as well, is stomach-turning.
Plenty of high schoolers are from low-income families, are first-generation students or simply are not privileged. These students were the ones cheated from being admitted to the opportunity of a lifetime because some affluent parents could not bear the fact that their child was incapable of getting accepted into a college on their own.
Competing in the NCAA is a full-time job that requires hours of training, watching film, perfecting technique and working with a team to achieve a goal. Thousands of collegiate student athletes in all divisions dedicate their days to improving themselves for their team and for their school.
Attending an Ivy League or prestigious university is also a full-time commitment. Along with the competitiveness in the classroom, the classes are strenuous and challenging.
The standardized testing, interviews, FASFA and scholarship applications make getting into college a demanding endeavor. It is presumed that those you sit next to in your three-hour lecture got accepted into the university because of their commitment to higher education.
For all we know, their parents could have slid a shiny dollar to the athletic director or crew team coach for their child to have a spot on the roster and the college experience thousands of high schoolers were stripped of because their application or athletic ability was subpar.
The college experience, especially as a student athlete, is earned- not given and it is unfair that upper-class families cheated the system to boost their reputations.