The student athletes who will take the field Saturday for the UCLA and Stanford football teams were not easy to find.
Athletic departments at both schools search for a very particular profile as they recruit. Earlier this week, Stanford football coach Jim Harbaugh boasted that the Cardinal athletic department has the strictest admissions standards in the country. Harbaugh’s claim is difficult to validate because admissions often work on a case-by-case basis.
Still, it is clear that both schools demand academic rigor from their athletes.
“You’re going to find athletes who you want to recruit athletically and you can’t recruit them academically,” Bob Field, an associate athletic director who oversees the UCLA football program, said. “You have to cast the net wider, you have to look a little bit longer and harder to find the profile of (a) student athlete that can achieve at UCLA.”
The UCLA football team has heightened its admissions standards as admissions to the school in general have become more competitive, Field said. Last year, UCLA received more applications than any other school in the country.
“For football players to come in and compete in that (academic) environment, they have to be good students,” UCLA coach Rick Neuheisel said. “Otherwise it’s not fair to them. That doesn’t mean they all have to have the same scores … but they have to be able to compete.”
The average freshman at UCLA had a 4.3 GPA in high school, Field said, and many athletes do not meet that standard. Instead, the school’s admissions department considers recruits on an individual basis.
Neuheisel said that the most important factor is getting to know the recruit; his family, teachers and coaches, and making sure he is aware of the academic standards.
Even still, the admissions department often flatly rejects recruits.
“It can be frustrating at times when you don’t get to recruit somebody that you have to play against, because you know what they’re capable of doing on the field,” Neuheisel said. “But I trust our admissions people in making those evaluations.”
Harbaugh described a similarly selective process at Stanford.
“Recruiting is totally different because the pool is so much smaller,” he said. “We’re not going after student athletes, we’re going after scholar athletes.”
In certain cases, the UCLA admissions department will ask that a recruit raise test scores or complete some other academic accolade, and then grant admission.
But even in that case, the Bruin athletic department expects academic success.
“When you bring in students who get in through a special admissions process, they need to produce in the classroom. We need to be able to show the admissions committee, yes ““ these people can compete and they can graduate from UCLA.”
Both schools use a variety of academic support services to help athletes succeed in class. The UCLA athletic department in particular has invested heavily in their academic support services over the past four years.
Field added that he often encounters misconceptions about the nature of those services.
“It’s an effort to hold athletes accountable and improve skills in certain areas,” he said. “It’s not a group of people doing the work for them.”
Harbaugh also mentioned the emphasis placed on academic achievement at Stanford.
“We work just as hard here to make sure that they are becoming better students,” he said.
Football players at UCLA often say that they feel like being an athlete is having a full time job, once fall quarter begins at the end of September.
“I would say that our student athletes are held to a higher standard of accountability than anyone else on campus,” Field said.