Are Olympic medallists who have decent GPAs basically guaranteed admits?

[Pizzagirl]

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Hey, I’m simply saying that some people, not necessarily including me, still consider Shields’s Princeton admission to be controversial, due to rumors that her parents exerted undue influence on the admissions process.

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<p>Really, Sakky, whoever these folks are, they need to just let it go, given that she graduated 20 years ago, ROFL. </p>

<p>By all accounts, she appears to be one of the more intelligent actresses out there – more like a Natalie Portman or Jodie Foster type. You’d have a better sense of outrage if Princeton were admitting Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton (or whoever their equivalents were 20 years ago) on the basis of their celebrity. </p>

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Now, to be fair, that’s still probably better than some of the more egregious examples of undue influence on the admissions process. {For example, let’s be honest, how did GW Bush really get admitted to Yale? How did Al Gore get admitted to Harvard despite only having graduated 25th out of a high school class of 51? In both cases, they were the scions of powerful political families.

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<p>If I were to spend my time being outraged over “people who don’t deserve to go to the Ivies,” I think I’d be more outraged over those who were admitted because of influence AND didn’t do that well (e.g., GWB), rather than those who might have been admitted because of celebrity, but were up to the challenge.</p>