6th year seniors?

[damontucker]

I understand medical hardship....and plenty players seem to be able to get it... most recently Ian Sample from UH.

I don't understand the term 6th year senior.

Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior, Senior 5th, Senior 6th?

I thought it was grad school after your senior year?

I remember reading the QB at USC taking a ball room dancing course just so he could have required credits....

Is this happening locally?

[kimo55]

Re: 6th year seniors?

some people flunk grades. and haveta repeat.

[Surfingfarmboy]

Re: 6th year seniors?

I understand medical hardship....and plenty players seem to be able to get it... most recently Ian Sample from UH.

I don't understand the term 6th year senior.

Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior, Senior 5th, Senior 6th?

I thought it was grad school after your senior year?

I remember reading the QB at USC taking a ball room dancing course just so he could have required credits....

Is this happening locally?

I don't know if this is how class rankings are determined in every college and university, but where I went to college for undergraduate studies (Southern Illinois), you were catagorized as to your class status based on the number of credit hours you had earned, not by the number of years one actually attended classes there.

At SIU, the class ranking was earned in this manner, if you were matriculated in to a degree-earning program that required the normal 120 credit hours to earn a diploma for one's chosen major:

0-29 credit hours earned got you first-year undergraduate status.
30-59 credit hours got you sophomore status.
60-89 credit hours got you junior status.
90-120 credit hours got you senior status.

Grad school comes only after having graduated from an undergraduate program, regardless of how many years it actually took a student to graduate.

It was clearly possible to achieve senior status after only attending 5 semesters of classes, but to do that required some serious discipline and studies. Conversely, it was possible (and quite common) to be a 5th or 6th year senior if a student either failed a couple of classes along the way, or chose to take less than the standard 15 credit hour load for a given semester.

In college sports, one will hear the term "5th year senior" often about a student athlete, as he/she was "redshirted" for a year, which basically is deferment of eligibility from one season of the inter-collegiate sport they play in. Many times, a fifth-year senior has actually graduated from the degree program they had been matriculated into, but, due to previous redshirting, they still have a year left of playing eligibility.

[Vanguard]

Re: 6th year seniors?

They call them "Super Seniors" in some colleges :P

[Bard]

Re: 6th year seniors?

Yes, I was a "super senior" for a number of years. I ended up with some extra college credits going into college, but they weren't the ones I needed to graduate in my major. And I took my time about getting done (time off for work, half-time, etc) because it got a bit stressful at times.

So I graduated with about 6 years' worth of credits, and it took me a total of about 7 years to do it

I don't feel bad about that though 'cause I learned later it's not unusual for the school/major I was in. The official degree plan actually called for 5 years.

[pzarquon]

Re: 6th year seniors?

Well, then, I was a tenth year senior. And the only sport I played was parking space hunting.

By my sixth year, I started getting letters from UH telling me that I had over 120 credits, and would I please get the hell out. Of course, having changed majors more than a few times, I had a metric buttload of credits but none that would go directly toward an exit.

Add in a wife and baby and both campus and part-time work, and therefore several six-credit semesters, and you get a journalism graduate who outlived the journalism department.

At one point, I could have easily seen myself becoming a "professional student," and ending up an inmate of a UH campus for the rest of my life. I still browse those job listings... But fortunately, I think I got some sense knocked into me.

[damontucker]

Re: 6th year seniors?

What I'm trying to get at... is academics versus sports in a sense.

If a player was working more towards his academics then towards his athletics...then they would be able to graduate on time.

Take away the thing that is taking up the most of his time...apply that time to classes and studying...then presto we have someone who has graduated in 4 years and can go out to the real world and start contributing back by paying more in taxes etc.

Yes this is coming from someone who was on the 6 year plan (through 3 colleges) however, my first four didn't count as my major was girls and alcohol )

[Surfingfarmboy]

Re: 6th year seniors?

What I'm trying to get at... is academics versus sports in a sense.

If a player was working more towards his academics then towards his athletics...then they would be able to graduate on time.

Take away the thing that is taking up the most of his time...apply that time to classes and studying...then presto we have someone who has graduated in 4 years and can go out to the real world and start contributing back by paying more in taxes etc.

In principle, your proposal on how a "student-athlete" should balance his/her time, in terms of how much should be devoted to academics and how much should be allocated towards sports as been a hot topic of debate for years on college campuses.

It seems the heart of the debate is just what is the true purpose of a student-athlete: Is it primarily to get a college education, with his/her participation in athletics secondary, or are they all, in a sense, non-paid athletes who main purpose for being on campus is to play sports and make money for their respective athletic departments?

In many of the big-time sports schools, I would have say that many of their athletes, if they couldn't run the 40 in a sub-4.5, or shoot threes from the NBA arc, probably would not have even be considered as an undergraduate student. Many of the student-athletes we today see are marginal students at best...and their GPAs and overall graduation rates mirror this.

To be honest, the NCAA Div. 1A football program, though it may be operated under the guise of being a traditional part of the collegiate experience, in my opinion, is nothing more than the AAA minor league of the NFL. Academic excellence, (with the exception of schools such as Stanford and Northwestern) is secondary to academics at many powerhouse D1A programs. They use their student-athletes for all they can on the playing field, and when their four years of NCAA eligibility are up, do they really care if they go on to graduate or not? Student-athletes' poor graduation rate can attest to this.

I can't say that the student-athletes are at fault on this. While many of them do have intentions of going on to graduate, ( and many of them actually do) the amount of time they must dedicate to being a semi-pro athlete, with morning work-outs, mandatory training sessions, etc., ultimately dooms them academically to failure.

Big-time schools need to change the focus what the true purpose of their athletic departments are, if they truly want to see student-athletes succeed academically. They need to stop thinking of them as monetary assets who primary purpose is to raise money for the athletic departments.

[Bard]

Re: 6th year seniors?

Oh man. Don't even get me started about schools who ditch their academic assets in favor of sports because the sports program is a profit center. My school was big enough to avoid that trap for the most part (there was money to go around) but e.g. UofA in Arizona was getting ready to shut down their famous planetarium center due to funding, and had just built a big sports museum

[Lei Liko]

Re: 6th year seniors?

LOL I thought you guys was talking about me.

By the time I got that degree I was a 6th year senior. When you factor in transferring from a mainland school, not knowing right away what to major in, studying for a semester in Angers and Annecy, France, changing majors at least 3 times -- 'das how you get to be one 6th year senior too. I think when I graduated I had well over 130+ credits.

I remember taking my Goldenrod paper to my department chair only to have him tell me, "About f*****g time!"

Now I get to do it all again with my Masters Degree.

[MadAzza]

Re: 6th year seniors?

Big-time schools need to change the focus what the true purpose of their athletic departments are, if they truly want to see student-athletes succeed academically. They need to stop thinking of them as monetary assets who primary purpose is to raise money for the athletic departments.

If anyone needs me, I'll be over here rolling around on the floor laughing my ass off.

Hey, Randy! Howzit!