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September 2006 Varsityedge.com newsletter - Newsletter Homepage
SAT INFO
A sign that the world is ending. After The College Board (the SAT company) miscored over 4,000 SAT tests and rewarded mostly lower scores to students, it has come up with a brilliant solution to reduce errors on future tests. It is now selling “score verification” insurance. For an extra $100.00 you can guarantee your test will be hand-scored to assure accuracy. This is a fantastic company, you pay them to take a test, then you have to pay them more to make sure it is scored correctly. Is this even legal?
ARTICLES OF INTEREST
Article on Text Messaging - Read
Another article on Text Messaging - Read
Article on Harvard Admissions - Read
** Not sure how long this one will be available, the Boston Globe likes to archive articles after a few weeks
COACHING CHANGES
- Former Arkansas-Little Rock assistant coach Bobby Pierce has been named head baseball coach at Metro State,
- Former Duke Lacrosse coach Mike Pressler has been hired by Bryant College (Rhode Island) as the new men’s lacrosse coach
- Ramsey Pualwan has been names the new coach of the Norwich University men's and women's cross country teams
- Ron Everhart is the new men’s basketball coach at Duquesne
- Notre Dame women’s golf coach Debby King resigned
- Southern Vermont named Ahmad Jumili volleyball coach
- Syracuse named Leigh Ross softball coach
ODDS N ENDS
- The University of Northern Colorado's reserve punter was arrested Tuesday, accused of stabbing his rival in his kicking leg in an attempt to win the starting job. We don’t talk about this method as a way to gain more playing time in The Making of a Student-Athlete, but lets just say it probably isn’t a good idea!
- I would like to think this is a joke but, nationwide there are on average 491 students per public high school college counselor.
- The Ivy League is pushing for a possible ban of text messaging from coaches to recruits.
- There is a new NCAA rule this year that allows graduate students who have NCAA eligibility left over to enroll in another NCAA D1 school and play football and basketball immediately without having to sit out a year. One basketball player, Almamy Thiero, has already taken advantage of the rule and enrolled at Duquesne, after playing at Memphis.
- The NCAA is close to approving a new drug testing and education program for 100 division 3 schools
- High school students from Massachusetts were tops in the country on the Math portion of the Act test. I would like to congratulate that ONE student who took the test from my State!
- Once every 4 years D1 basketball teams are allowed to take an International trip to play basketball during the off-season. U Mass Amherst packed their bags at the end of August and flew to the Bahamas to play several games which outlines the time commitments that college athletes can come under even when the season or school is not taking place.
- In 2007, the percentage of assets students will be required to use for education expenses when filling out the FAFSA form will drop to 20 percent from the current 35 percent. Individual Colleges will use different percentages when dispersing institutional financial aid. Good news!
- New research has shown that wealthier families participate in more SAT prep classes than lower income families. In other news, researchers discovered that breathing oxygen helps you stay alive…
NEWS ON INDIVIDUAL COLLEGES
Harvard University made a bold statement this week when it announced that it is dropping early admission as an option for acceptance. Harvard had been operating on an early action program that was non-binding, but eliminating all ealry applications sends a strong message to both students and other colleges and the move will probably have a ripple effect among other colleges.
Stanford University has waived tuition requirements for accepted students from families that earn less than $45,000. Tuition requirements for families with middle-class incomes will be cut in half.
Saint Louis University is targeting August 28 to break ground on its new $80.5 million multipurpose arena
Ground was broken for a $4.5 million Field House at The University of North Carolina at Pembroke. When completed in spring 2007, it will be home to the University's football program.
Providence College, Holy Cross (Worcester, MA) and Mount Holyoke (Western, MA) have all waived the SAT requirements for admission.
University of Notre Dame announced that Linda and Paul Demo, the mother and stepfather of Notre Dame alumna Melissa Cook, have made a $3 million gift to the university for the construction of a new softball stadium.
Regis College (MA) will be starting a new men’s basketball program in 2007
Catholic University forfeited three women's lacrosse games and will place the team on probationary status for the 2006-07 school year following an investigation of an off-campus freshman initiation party. Keep your pictures off Myspace!
Welcome to the world of public universities and fiscal responsibility - Rutgers University will eliminate six intercollegiate sports, effective at the end of the 2006-07 season. The affected sports are men’s heavyweight rowing, men’s lightweight rowing, men’s and women’s fencing, men’s swimming and diving, and men’s tennis. Those sports will compete during the 2006-07 season. All scholarship commitments made to any of the affected student-athletes will be honored. Before you enroll in a State University playing a less-popular sport, try and find out if that sport will be around by the time you show up at school to actually play!
The NCAA Division II Committee on Infractions has placed Kentucky Wesleyan College on probation for three years. The committee also vacated all contests in which 45 student-athletes competed while improperly certified as eligible and adopted a number of penalties and corrective actions that were self-imposed by the institution in a case involving several major violations. Among the penalties are a reduction of one full scholarship for men’s basketball for the 2006-07 season and Reduction of a partial scholarship for baseball during the 2007 season.
The United States Naval Academy broke ground on a 140,000 square foot field-house for both intercollegiate athletics and physical development of cadets.
Boston College placed over 5,000 students on its 2005 Weightlist, of those only 225 students were admitted that year.
Looking to break into NASCAR? East Tennessee State University, Indiana University, Belmont Abbey College and Purdue University are now offering degree programs in sports management with a concentration in motorsports operations.
NCAA investigators have found major violations in the University of Iowa men's swimming program after learning that three foreign swimmers and a former head coach falsified admission records in 2002 and 2003.
11 things to do in September to get your recruiting process going
1A – Make sure you are educated on the process. If you think you are going to be discovered forget it. The most successful recruits are those that are proactive and grab the bull by the horns as we say, while others sit at home and wait for the phone to ring. Varsityedge.com exists to help you with recruiting and if you haven’t picked up a copy of The Making of a Student-Athlete you are not doing yourself any favors.
1 – Make a commitment to being a better student. There is no recruiting process without you doing well academically and NCAA D1 and NCAA D2 colleges have minimum academic requirements in order to participate and D3 colleges usually have stricter admissions guidelines than many D1 and D2 Schools. The choice is yours.
2 – Inform your coach that you are interested in continuing you athletic career at the college level. Regardless of how much or how little they will be able to help you, many players don’t even inform their coach about their desires.
3 – Determine what role your coach will play. If you think your coach is going to go home and research 50 programs for you and make phone calls forget it. Your coach should help you evaluate your ability, write recommendations and place or field phone calls from college coaches for specific coaches you have already spoken to.
4 – Inform your guidance counselor that you are interested in playing athletics at the college level. They too need to know what your goals and plans are.
5 – Change or create a new email address. Pimpdaddy23@aol.com or Longhornsforlife@yahoo.com may seem like a cool email name, but many college coaches won’t think so. There are easy ways to get free email accounts or to create additional email accounts through your existing internet provider at home. Choose a normal name like your full name.
6 – Evaluate your cell phone plan. Communicating via cell phone is becoming a growing trend for college coaches, especially text messaging starting your junior year because it does not count as a phone call. The problem is, many students are running up huge phone bills because they have 20 coaches sending them text messages every day. Evaluate your plan and what you can pay and consider choosing wisely whom you give your cell phone number out to….
7 – Change your cell phone message. “Yo it’s Mikey D, leave a message and I will holla back at you” might not be the most appropriate message for a college coach to hear when calling you. “Hi this is Mike, leave a message and I will get back to you as soon as possible” will suffice.
8 – Be careful where you answer your cell phone. I was at a year-end baseball party for a team I work for and a player fielded a call from a college coach. It was noisy and the player had to run outside after he picked up. If you are not sure where a call is coming from and you are in a place where it isn’t best to answer the call, let it go to voicemail and deal with it later.
9 – Pick a night (or several nights) to research colleges and communicate with college coaches. The most successful recruits are those that turn over the most stones as they say. Some students research 5 schools, others need to research 50 and athletics usually complicates the college search. You need to find time to researching colleges in a diligent manner, communicate with coaches, take notes and narrow down your choices.
10 – Register for the NCAA Clearinghouse. This is for anyone interested in competing at NCAA D1 or NCAA D2 colleges as an athlete. You should have done this at the end of your junior year, but we know you forgot or wasn’t aware of what to do. You can do it online or your counselor should have the proper forms. LINK
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