A day or two ago Dick Harmon had a bit in the Desperate News about the football recruits for Utah, byu and USU. He mentioned that byu has strict entrance requirements which is hurting their recruiting.
Unless something changed recently, that isn’t the case. I know that during the LaVell years and into the Crowton years, byu would take anyone who met the minimum NCAA GPA and test scores. In fact for a few years there they were letting in Prop 48 players.
So, doesn’t the PAC require all schools to hold a higher standard for athletes, than the NCAA minimum requirements?
It could be that Harmon was complaining about byu having a higher GPA standard when in reality it could be Utah that holds recruits to a higher standard. Anyone know for sure?
I’m sure the minimum requirements at BYU are not public. They will happily allow people to believe that the athlete admission standards are high because it deflects blame and/or invites praise. Stanford does the same thing. But we all know that they have flexibility to bend those standards for the right athlete.
There are 100 factors hurting BYU’s recruiting, and admissions standards are probably #95 on the list.
East Provo is not anywhere near as exclusive as they like to allege. The truth is Stanford, USC, Cal, UCLA, and Washington have lower acceptance rates than East Provo. East Provo has always used the NCAA minimums for athlete acceptance. What usually gets them “screened out” in 2020 is the Honor Code. If saying they are exclusive because kids choose not to sign LOI’s because they don’t want to deal with the minutia of the Honor Code, then yes - they are exclusive. With that noted…
They also take in about 70 percent of “completed” applications generally, meaning of the kids who actually file a fully completed application for admission are admitted. Since the full completion of the application is generally considered the standard by which exclusivity is judged, they’re not very exclusive, Utah’s acceptance rate is similar by this standard.