"Admissions Tour Numbers Fall" - (Chronicle, 9.6.06)

<p>It's all good. Apparently its not who you <em>invite</em> to the party but who <em>shows up</em> that determines your selectivity.</p>

<p>I don't believe that the Duke overlap with HYPSM is quite that high. On what do you base the claim that the overlap is 1,200 with these 5 schools?</p>

<p>And according to USNews, Duke awards merit aid to well over 30 people, through one program or another.</p>

<p>Finally, you should remember also that 4% of the Duke freshman class receives "merit aid" in the form of a so-called "athletic scholarship" averaging over $25,000. None of the Ivies - or MIT - awards athletic scholarships, although Stanford does.</p>

<p>My understanding was that the lack of athletics awards was well understood to be a myth - a laughingstock of a rule among actual Ivy students. Is that not correct?</p>

<p>No, that is not correct. "Need-based financial aid only" is the primary principle around which the Ivy League is organized.</p>

<p>So I suppose it's no coincidence that many athletes happen to get very attractive financial aid packages.</p>

<p>Yes, Byerly, I know that's the official position of the Ivies. I was just under the impression that that was a joke - the sort of thing that will make your average Princeton student roll his eyes and say, "Yeah, whatever."</p>

<p>No it is not. Not long ago, Brown got severely sanctioned for funneling outside scholarship moneyto potential football recruits.
<a href="http://www.yaleherald.com/archive/xxx/2000.09.08/sports/p24.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.yaleherald.com/archive/xxx/2000.09.08/sports/p24.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The rigidity of the prohibition is - in my cynical view - one of the reasons the coaches at Harvard are so supportive of the new financial aid initiative expanding opportunities for applicants in the lowest economic quadrant.</p>

<p>Harvard loses a number of prime athletic recruits to Stanford, Duke and elsewhere because it can offer fewer financial enducements to middle class applicants.</p>

<p>With the poorer applicants, however, who are entitled to large "need-based" awards, Harvard (and Princeton and Yale) can now go toe-to-toe with the factory schools for their "services" - assuming they qualify academically.</p>

<p>Uh Byerly, Harvard loses a number of prime athletic recruits to Stanford and Duke because its I AA...serious athletes at Duke and Stanford aren't as strong academically as those at Harvard either so it actually brings the academic statistics for these schools down</p>

<p>Also, I'm not sure if you want to double check this, but Stanford and Duke have roughly 50 athletic scholarships a year, many sports other than the big few aren't scholarship</p>

<p>4% of the undergrads receive athletic scholarships at Stanford and Duke. </p>

<p>Harvard has more Division I varsity teams - and Division I varsity athletes - than any other college or university in the United States of America.</p>

<p>The Ivy League is in Division 1 AA in only a single sport: football.</p>

<p>I certainly agree with you that the generally lower academic quality of the athletic recruits at Stanford and Duke "brings the academic statistics for those schools down." I have been emphasizing this point for some time.</p>

<p>ThoughtProcess - Duke has around 235 full scholarships that get divvied up among over 300 students. It's a goodly number of students.</p>

<p>On the other hand, statistics show that the generally less-elitist attitudes of those student-athletes make Stanford and Duke a far more pleasant place to work.</p>

<p>Did you say .... <em>LESS</em> elitist attitude????? You mean ... like ... the Lax guys?</p>

<p>Which "statistics" are these??</p>

<p>I was just thinking to myself, "I wonder if anyone is ever going to decide their argument is so weak that they'll throw out something about the Lacrosse team." Amazing.</p>

<p>hahaha mentioning the Lax team...sweet.</p>

<p>well, around 50 a year = 200 which is only 35 less than the actual number...i didn't realize they split the scholarships</p>

<p>The weakest argument I'VE ever heard for the presence of highly-recruited, salaried athletes on campus is the "generally less-elitist attitudes of those student-athletes".</p>

<p>THAT'S a new one.</p>

<p>Stanford offers 300 or so full athletic scholarships (with squash set to get a few now) - some of which are split among two or more recipients.</p>

<p>Salaried? What? Who cares? Its not like Harvard or Yale or JHU or Penn have less elitist sports than Duke.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Is this speculation? I suspect that many of the athletes at Duke are much too good to consider playing at schools like Harvard. A top basketball player, for instance, is more likely to choose between Duke and Gonzaga or Duke and UNC than between Duke and an Ivy. Duke has a number of top-notch programs, which require top-notch athletes -- who choose based on athletics, not academics.</p>

<p>For the record, I think this actually proves a point contrary to the one you'd like to advance -- Duke's athletic recruits, many of whom would not have been admitted on the strength of their academics, actually bring down the school's statistics on the whole. Therefore, rather than fighting with Harvard for top students, we fight with "lesser" schools for top athletes.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Quoting myself from this thread: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?p=2467771%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?p=2467771&lt;/a>, where we had the exact same argument not long ago. Maybe this is a sign that you should find another hobby, Byerly?</p>

<p>Anyway, a couple of important facts from the thread I cited: a) the majority of Duke's athletes are not recruited or on scholarship, so they choose Duke for other reasons, and b) our athletes bring down our academic credentials; athletic scholarships aren't a way to attract Harvard's best and brightest with financial incentives.</p>

<p>Another perk of Duke is that its alumni don't have to dedicate their entire lives to harassing teenagers and insulting their educations and universities. Quite frankly, if many years after college this is all you have to do, your education has failed you.</p>

<p>Typical. When you don't like the argument, mount an ad hominem attack on the person making it.</p>

<p>(ring)
"Hello?"
"Hey! P-man, you're in! What's cooking?"
"Oh, hey Kettle, not much. Just hanging out at college confidential. Can I call you back?"
"Dude - you <em>know</em> it's black, and sure."
(click)</p>

<p>Byerly, I actually devoted four-fifths of my post to responding to the issue at hand, which, as I point out, has already been argued ad nauseum on this forum -- by you. If you'd like, feel free to respond to the "substance" of my first four paragraphs and ignore the fifth. I do think, however, that my last comment is rather telling -- can you honestly tell me that this is what you wanted from your Harvard education? I think most prospective Harvard applicants aspire to more.</p>

<p>FYI the day before Byerly posted this thread here, he paid a visit to the MIT Thread. I guess he's making the rounds.</p>