| I'm not accusing ND of anything. I just think the same questions need to be asked of ND athletes as they were asked by the Ann Arbor News in their expose of Michigan football. Even though Michigan was rightfully exposed, I'm very curious about other football programs with good academics (like ND, BC, Stanford, Northwestern, UVA etc...)
The bottom line is that I don't think you can base success solely on graduation rates because there are so many other factors. You need to look at graduating GPA, the median GPA of graduates from a certain major (grade inflation) and entering credentials. Those factors, so far as I can tell, have yet to be examined.
With respect to entrance scores, I will be the first one to tell you they are given far too much weight by some admissions offices. Unfortunately, a lot of schools simply admit students with the highest scores irrespective of other aspects of their application in order to boost their U.S. News ranking. But let's be a little honest. The scores wouldn't be used at all if they didn't matter once you were admitted.
The service academies are different because their focus is most obviously not on athletics. None of the service academies have good athletes, in contrast to teams like ND who recruit the best (???) athletes. |