Biggest Pet Peeve for College Admissions (thanks Craig for being my memory)

You know what really grinds my gears?

I cannot stand it when athletes are accepted to major universities on full ride scholarships, yet here I am, along with many other people, with a 6.0+ GPA and we cannot earn enough in scholarships to attend the college of our choice.

As I know many people are finding out about whether or not they have been accepted to their college of choice, I decided to talk about a matter that means a lot to me, since I have less than a year to apply for colleges, along with many other students in the class of 2010.

Now let me clarify something. There are many athletes that are strong academic leaders and are involved in many extracurricular activities, but there are many athletes that do not make the cuts for admissions, or make the bare minimum on SAT scores and a minimum 2.0 GPA. And these athletes are accepted based purely on athletic skill and not on academic ability.

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't the college or university so called for being an "institution of higher learning"? In my opinion, anybody that is attending a college or university should be primarily attending to earn a higher education. Even athletes should be more concerned with higher education for their career choice, since there are more jobs and career fields than there are professional sports positions.

But anyway, back to admissions. So I am very concerned about how I will pay for college. I may not attend an in-state university, so I cannot receive Bright Futures, but I do have prepaid college at the tuition rate of a Florida public university, which equates to one class at an out-of-state university (slight exaggeration). My PSAT scores may help with some scholarships for National Merit, but it is improbable, since they were kind of low. After that, I would have to rely on independent scholarships and scholarships offered by the university of choice. In the end, I will end up taking out college loans in order to attend college. But if I were a football player with half of my current GPA and SAT scores, plus little leadership qualities and fewer extra-curricular activities, I could attend a major university with no cost to me, plus I would receive the best care and academic advising in the entire university. Does anybody else see a problem with this, or is it just me?

Just to give you an idea of the money spent for athletes. In 2008, the University of Oklahoma spent $2.4 million dollars on counselling, tutoring, and salaries for academic advising and tutoring for football players. Let me say that $2.4 million is a lot of money to spend. This doesn't even include the tuitions covered by universities to allow these players to attend the university.

So money that I could use for my own tuition or improvements to the university programs is being used to help athletes earn their degrees which they may not even need if they become professional athletes.

The big question is why?

Why can't I go to college for less money because I am a strong academic student?

The answer is obviously money. Colleges need money to run their schools, so they rely on athletes to become professional players, so they can then donate their millions of dollars from their salaries to return to the schools for allowing them to attend their university.

Is this fair? Probably not.

Is it reality? Certainly.

For those of you that feel that this issue also grinds your gears, here is a link to an article that helped me with this post that I believe you would enjoy:

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/feb/01/co-athletes-eyes-on-degrees/

And that is what grinds my gears.

Cameron