Question: What was the median family income of Yale College students in 2016? (This is presumably similar for most Ivy League schools.)
Answer: $193,000
Today’s Quiz: Ivy League Household Income
Category Archives: Intermediate Blogs
Videos – One Critique
One of the most effective ways we all learn is by watching others and their mistakes.
Here’s an email I wrote recently to a high school senior. Overall, he’s a solid, likable kid from a good family. Like a lot of kids (and families), in this case he’s beating himself. The recruiting process is tough enough without beating yourself. Much of it is out of your control. Take care of those things that you can control. This email is packed with important concepts that every family can benefit from.
Kenny,
You’re worried about getting a D1 offer and frustrated by things currently out of your control, but you’re not doing what you need to do to help yourself. I emailed you a couple weeks ago about fixing your HUDL page, but nothing’s changed. If you’re lucky enough to get a scholarship coach to visit your page, they are going to leave before they ever see what you want them to see. It’s a disorganized mess. When you make coaches go looking for what they want, when you make it hard on them, they just leave and go looking at videos of other kids. It needs to have some order and simplicity. Right now it’s just what I call a vanity page. It’s designed for you, your family and friends. If you do get serious about prep school, this page as it currently stands is making it harder for us to find one. Prep school coaches have all the same problems with it that the college coaches have with it. They need to see certain things and they’re not there.
You must have a highlight video from THIS year available and at the top of the page. At the very least you need to pin last year’s highlight video to the top instead of the video that’s there now. The problem with last year’s is when coaches see only last year’s video, they think you’re hiding something about this year, something you don’t want them to see. That makes them nervous. That’s a problem for you. You also need to get rid of some of the other short videos. They’re adding nothing but confusion.
Finally, the 4.5 40 time is still listed in the left hand column. We talked about that before and you told me you didn’t know how it got there. You need to delete that. It’s false advertising.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks.
Mike
Michael A. Stone
Prep School Sports Connection
Matching Athletes With Prep Schools
Phone: +1 (585) 348-7180
Skype: prepschoolsportsconnection
facebook: prepschoolsportsconnection
LinkedIn: prepschoolsportsconnection
Stat of the Day: Women’s Basketball Transfers
The transfer rate for women’s D1 basketball is up 33% over a ten year period.
In 2003 the rate was 6.8%. In 2013 it was 9.2%. Those numbers are still about 1/4 of the men’s numbers. As with many other parts of the game, the women’s game seems to be following the men’s.
Perhaps most interesting is that 6 of the top 10 rated girls in the 2013 recruiting class have transferred. A number of those 6 committed to colleges as sophomores (also similar to the boys) and some say they now realize that what they considered a dream school as high school sophomores is much different than where they want to be playing as 20 year olds. This is a pretty strong case that kids (and parents) are picking a college at too young an age.
Overwhelmed by the Recruiting Process? Put Education First.
I returned recently from a major east coast summer basketball camp where I had a lengthy discussion about the recruiting process with the mother of a talented junior. Her son is a good student who already holds offers from D1 schools, none of them big-time. A single mom with two kids who never went to college and never played sports, she told me she has little awareness of colleges or basketball programs. Working two jobs (they are a low income family) leaves her precious little time to deal with the recruiting process. I told her I’d had a conversation at the camp with a coach who said she was not returning his calls. She acknowledged that was a problem and said she feels overwhelmed by all the attention. “There are so many schools”, she said, “how do I handle this”?
The answer is simple, although a surprisingly large number of families never figure it out. Start with the schools offering the most highly rated educations. (See separate blog showing list). This quickly shrinks the list while having the added benefit of keeping priorities straight, often next to impossible in this process, even for those who are good at it. Focusing on the top-rated academic schools cuts the number of possible schools from approximately 265 (outside the big-time basketball conferences) to about 45, while maintaining priorities. For most, only about half of those 45 will actually show recruiting interest. Now the list is manageable and efficient, goals are intact and focus is tight. The chance of success has increased greatly.
Quote of the Day: Reapplying for College Financial Aid
I didn’t know you have to reapply for financial aid every year.
– This from a mother whose son received about $20,000 of financial aid last year as a college freshman and had a very good academic and athletic experience. Now, this high school principal with a master’s degree is scrambling to convince the school to give her son the same financial aid for the upcoming year. This is a smart woman. Don’t think this type of thing can’t happen to you.
Quote of the Day – Steve Kerr on AAU Problems
Even if today’s players are incredibly gifted, they grow up in a basketball environment that can only be called counterproductive. AAU basketball has replaced high school ball as the dominant form of development in the teen years. I coached my son’s AAU team for three years; it’s a genuinely weird subculture. Like everywhere else, you have good coaches and bad coaches, or strong programs and weak ones, but what troubled me was how much winning is devalued in the AAU structure. Teams play game after game after game, sometimes winning or losing four times in one day. Very rarely do teams ever hold a practice. Some programs fly in top players from out of state for a single weekend to join their team. Certain players play for one team in the morning and another one in the afternoon. If mom and dad aren’t happy with their son’s playing time, they switch club teams and stick him on a different one the following week. The process of growing as a team basketball player — learning how to become part of a whole, how to fit into something bigger than oneself — becomes completely lost within the AAU fabric.
– Steve Kerr, Head Coach, Golden State Warriors
Today’s Quiz: Men’s D1 Basketball Transfer %
Question: What % of all men’s basketball players who enter Division I directly out of high school depart their initial school by the end of their sophomore year?
Answer: 40%
Here’s the link to the complete article on the NCAA website.
http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/research/tracking-transfer-division-i-men-s-basketball
Quote of the Day – Teen Self-Restraint
Exercising self-restraint in today’s teen culture is downright un-American.
Teens are immersed in a popular culture that preaches that self-control is the one remaining sin in a world which has otherwise been washed free of guilt and responsibility.
– Dr. Leonard Sax in his book, The Collapse of Parenting.
Quote of the Day – Paying for Harvard
90% of American families would pay the same or less to send their child to Harvard as they would a state school, and 20% of our students’ families pay nothing.
– Harvard University Website
Quote of the Day – Recruiting Mistakes
I feel like everybody makes a few mistakes in life and I learned a huge lesson in recruiting and a huge lesson in life.
One of the top golfing recruits in the country talking about not knowing how to handle his recruitment. He transferred from one college to another just one month into his freshman year.