We're going through the college process with my Senior daughter, not a soccer player, and if I had an extra $200,000 laying around I might consider the back door approach. Seriously though the whole college process has become such a contrived process, particularly in California. Kudos to any kid that can get into a top notch school without any outside professional consulting on essays and tests. My daughter has a 4.6/4.0 with a heavy load of AP and honors classes with a decent extracurricular resume; however, she hasn't cured cancer, founded a woke startup or grown up in a grass hut raised by hyenas. It's highly unlikely she will get into Berkeley, UCLA or even UCSB.
I don't condone anything that the Operation Varsity Blues parents did but our University admissions system is FUBAR'ed. And don't get me started on the cost of a college education.
At the end of the day, I'm a firm believer that it doesn't matter where you go to school, other than maybe your first job. It's just frustrating to see your child work so hard and get great results in their classes, yet have that be not enough.
Yeah for regular non Athletics definitely more difficult to get in.
At UCLA for Athletics you can have a 3.5 and get in even if you don't meet all the NCAA requirements, with the Auto Covid-19 waviers for 21-23 applicants that only need 13 of the required 16 core classes classes with a 2.8gpa to get NCCA qualified.
At UCSB even easier coaches pre-read his qualifications and they asigneed a athletic advisor to him to help with the process. Ultimately decided to go elsewhere due to campus life, coaching staff, and the desire to have more opportunities for minutes as a freshman or sophomore, and a better less tempting housing environment.
Guess we where fortunate that all our students were very good writers with good gpa's and scores that where only about average but they where accepted to all the university they really wanted to attend and just had to narrow down the choices and pick one. Early applications help, admission and qualifications sent help. My students did all the work and I wasn't involved much besides some questions about paperwork. Didn't seem any different vs anything else govt ran to them and I didn't hear too many rumblings.
Where you go can matter from a network, connections, facilities, or professors standpoint. USC has some great alumni, donors, facilities and programs for certain majors that would be difficult to match with industry experience compared to some places. Without FA most people just can't afford to attend but if you do like our neighborhood does can be great.
Specialized field but she already got a good internship her freshman year and now is working part time in her chosen field of study.
Hope things work out for your daughter and she can always transfer in later which can be easier for admissions.
Changing your life and going away to college is big step and it's not easy finding the right match, 2 out of the 3bof ours took much longer to decide vs what they thought originally but where happy on the end the went over everything including multiple on site history before making the decisions. We didn't even know until it was already done,. Oh by the way I accepted and will be attending xyz during a causal conversation or dinner can come as a surprise.