TCY Frustration - Help

[litangel]

I am stuck in TCY and ready to stop playing. I have asked this question several times and not gotten a satisfactory answer. I am trying to build up an academic superpower, and I can not. In the Academic reputation screen there is a column called "overall reputation" There is a number in quotes, and it plateaus, often at 74, sometimes higher, sometimes lower, and never goes above that, even if I put my entire team on hard studying, and I can never get over 3.25 om my GPA whatever I do, my team always ends up about 5th in Academic reputation.

How do I break this glass ceiling?

[sidewinder66]

first of all, I think 5th in academic reputation is pretty good. Other than that, do you recruit players with very good SAT scores (1100+) and very good HS GPAs? That always helped me getting very good academic scores. If you already do that I don't know anything else from the top of my head, except maybe allocating study help blocks to struggling players and maybe cutting walk-ons with low scores.

[QuikSand]

It sounds to me like the correct answer here is:

You are aiming for a target that cannot be reached in the game. Academics are important in the game, most would argue too much so, and what you are doing seems to be fully exploiting that element of the game likely giving your school a great advantage with many recruits. Congratulations. Insisting that some arbitrary ranking or numeric value isn't at some different level than where it appears to be stuck is simply not a productive pursuit. Enjoy the game.

[litangel]

I could live with it, if I just understood, and if the game made sense. Does anyone understand that number in parentheses under overall reputation, and what effects it, and if each team has a glass ceiling with that number?

[A-Husker-4-Life]

Make sure all your walk on's are at 100% study hall for prep..

All None players at 100 also.. Hopes that helps..

[litangel]

Thanks for all the tips. I will try recruiting with a little more discipline and only taking players players with over 1100 SAT and good GPA and putting all non-scholarship players and players who will never be starters on maximum study. I have leaned in both of these directions before, but made exceptions.

In terms of releasing in-season walk-ons with horrid academics, I have mixed results with this, often I get someone worse, so I usually will not release unless that player is absolutely horrible academically. I think another key may be choosing coordinators with good injury prevention skills, and injured players are usually what causes the need for in-season walk-ons.

[cannonballs]

I've found some odd inconsistencies with how the Academic Reputation and the Academic Ranking go. I've had teams that finished the season (actually, quite a few consecutive seasons) with GPAs over 3.75, yet my Academic Reputation goes down (4 or 5 points a year, so it goes down substantially) and my Academic Ranking will only be Top 10.

Conversely, other schools will skyrocket on both ratings with mediocre academic performance.

So, yes, there's some stupid glass ceiling in the programming.

One thing to look out for is in your recruiting. Don't just pay attention to a recruit's SAT or GPA numbers, but also their Academic Preparation. This can give a kid with a 3.4 GPA/1200 SAT a Pretty Good rating if their Academic Preparation is only 50.