<p>Thanks parentofbear for the information but I was not aware of the athletic admission to private high schools as the poor performance of the D's school has always been attributed to the fact that the school don't recruit athletes and don't offer any scholarship in that regard.</p>
<p>"more deserving" is a value conclusion without much real support. If the athletes support the goals on the school they are more deserving.</p>
<p>epiphany: my comment criticizing people for piling on POIH was not directed at you. Anyway, I didn't think many people knew that the policy of recruitment of athletes had recently changed. I read it in a pretty obscure article. </p>
<p>With respect to the general discussion, I don't think it's easy to manipulate either academic or athletic performance successfully. IMHO things like community service are much easier to be manufactured by one's parents or a college counseling service like IvyWise.</p>
<p>barrons: "more deserving" is a value conclusion without much real support. If the athletes support the goals on the school they are more deserving.</p>
<p>I think we all understand your point. However, I think people are trying to find out what is the most logical in the absolute rather than the relative sense.</p>
<p>There have been numerous studies that point to the fact that people who play sports often have ...</p>
<p>1) great leadership skills (managing a team is much like managing a small business)
2) hard work ethic (Those 4 hour practices/per day are brutal + schoolwork)
3) motivation (they are driven by the pursuit of success)</p>
<p>ParentOfIvyHopeful, you make sports out to be some easy thing you can do just to get into a certain college. People who can be recruited at the D1 level (ivies, stanford, etc) spend hours and hours of practice time to be good at what they do. </p>
<p>This is no easy task. I would say that its harder than being great at academics, since there is an easier way to measure how good you are at the sport than how smart you are and assess whether you are worthy of the college. </p>
<p>Colleges are supposed to be a meritocratic in sense, but we all know that isn't the truth. Sports are a small issue in preferred admits. If you must attack people that are taking up your daughter's spot, then attack legacy admits or something.</p>
<p>Should read "support the goals of the school." Bad typing day.</p>
<p>barrons: At least no one makes fun of your language skill!</p>
<p>POIH, re your post 139:</p>
<p>WHEN did I say this, or imply it? This is an example of your being inflammatory -- then acting surprised when people object to your method of discussion. (And you're the supposedly adept -- in your view -- practitioner of logic. This illogical jump would tend to prove the opposite.) This is not language-barrier related, either.</p>
<h1>1 - I never said, nor implied, that EITHER athletic manipulation OR academic manipulation (or attempts at either) were moral, ethical, etc.</h1>
<h1>2 - The irony of someone in your district/location/school region complaining about <em>athletic</em> manipulation when in fact that region is known by the residents that live in the area, & the residents of the surrounding counties, for extreme ACADEMIC competitiveness, including attempts at manipulation, is an irony I cannot pass up noting.</h1>
<p>collegealum, thanks for your reply. I only disagree with you that some of the academic manipulations are not successful: many are. And do I agree that also many campus & off-campus e.c.'s are subject to attempted manipulation (not necessarily more so than the academic). Thankfully, however, I have read quite a bit recently about adm.officers getting wise to this, & questioning the authenticity of some of this unless backed up by a third party (recognition, reporting, awards, & many other kinds of validation), and unless a pretty convincing argument is made by the student. (The best kinds of <em>student</em> validation being those that show the comm.svc. or leadership to be an outgrowth of an already pursued interest, including academic interest.)
This is why, btw, I urge students & their parents not to behave dismissively around teachers, or to assume that recs are "worthless," compromised, political, trivial -- whatever epithets people like to hurl when the recs do not state that the student is headed for the next Pulitzer or Nobel Prize. Getting to know teachers, plural, well --developing honest relationships with them, can only benefit a student unless the teacher is really corrupt. (I'm sure there are some of those;the vast majority are not.) The more the student is known as a whole person (not just as a student, although clearly that's the thrust), I guarantee you the more the teacher will write about the character, leadership, etc. aspects, and will WANT to write about those. They don't have to do a trillion hours of anything. It just has to be evident (again, to a 3rd party), that the student accomplishes in AND out of school.
I have no doubt that on occasion "leadership" & comm. svc. can be manipulated. (Seen examples on CC, from students admitting and/or planning to do exactly that -- i.e., posing.) There was a feature article in a paper, that I posted on CC sometime in '06, which included groaning remarks from adm. officers about "set-up" comm. svc. in foreign lands (as opposed to local shelters, etc.) I think there have been similar CC follow-ups since my thread.</p>
<p>"WHEN did I say this, or imply it? This is an example of your being inflammatory -- then acting surprised when people object to your method of discussion. (And you're the supposedly adept -- in your view -- practitioner of logic. This illogical jump would tend to prove the opposite.) This is not language-barrier related, either."</p>
<p>epiphany : What I asked was a question, since on the issue of drugs/steroid use you gave the example of manipulation in other extra curricular activities.</p>
<p>It came out to me that you are trying to justify one by pointing another wrong.</p>
<p>If it has been a part of conversion face to face I would have asked the same question.</p>
<p>Then, POIH, you need not to assume that the order of posting proceeds in lock-step reply order. When I composed my reply about academic competition, I did not happen to have in mind the use of steroids. Did you see that phrase or reference in my post? No. My reply was not a reply to "the use of steroids." But even had it been, it did not validate the use of steroids, or any other manipulation. I was arguing AGAINST manipulation, but merely identifying academic manipulation as the one rampant in the area in which you yourself reside.</p>
<p>Why do people continue to respond to this bafoon?</p>
<p>"Why do people continue to respond to this bafoon?"</p>
<p>don't be so hard on yourself, collegekid! ;)</p>
<p>I agree Collegekid. The only thing PoIH can do is go around insulting people.</p>
<p>Let's just not respond to him/her.</p>
<p>Just because Jerome published a thick book doesnt mean his opinions are right. I agree with his overall conclusion, HYP want to admit future business and political leaders, which he supports, but many of his opinions are unsupported. Especially his opinions on athletics and geographic diversity lack proper support. Dan Kindlon of Harvard makes the better point in his book Alpha Girls. The girls heading off to top colleges now are good at everything. Sports are a big part of their lives why should it change in college?</p>
<p>The best line of The Chosen: Too many kids look like the dazed survivors of some bewildering life long boot camp. From Harvard admissions naturally.</p>
<p>The superintendent of our affluent and high achieving high school district wrote a column for our local paper:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.latc.com/comment/comment3.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.latc.com/comment/comment3.html</a></p>
<p>Interesting his take on this, from both a parent and educator's point of view.</p>
<p>I wonder what the probability of having the Pomona experience at all would've been had he not made the sacrifices in high school. The key is finding a balance I suppose. My kids work hard in school because they HAVE to if they don't wan't to be saddled with tremendous undergraduate debt. My D has "sacrificed" some of her high school and college experiences to focus on her sport of choice. It has paid off in a big way. A full ride, no debt, teamates like sisters and some remarkable experiences that will last a lifetime. Of course to maintain her GPA for future grad school considerations and because being a student athlete in a top athletic program takes tremendous sacrifice, you won't have the same experiences as a regular student. Regardless if you are able to afford it all or not, to reach certain goals, there have to be trade offs. Rare is the individual who can "have it all" or "do it all." If your primary focus is simply to get into college or specifically a selective school, or just to make money, then it's no wonder when you reach those goals it's unfulfilling.</p>
<p>im a complete advocate for it. Those who excel at sports have put a lot of effort into their sport as well as their academics and should be rewarded for their efforts. Quite often, sports are much more consuming than academics, and excelling at sports should always be rewarded perhaps even more so than academics because these types of people are rarer.</p>
<p>The word "excelling" is a vague term. I would expect the distribution of athletic and academic ability to be the same. There is more to excelling academically than just getting straight A's just like there is a difference between the all-america and olympic athlete.</p>
<p>completely ludicrous is the idea that people who highly excel in academics i.e 2300+ 4.0 gpa should get in over athletes. These people are just suffering from jealously. The athletes with their 2100 3.9 deserve to get in way more than that perfect academic.</p>
<p>i dunno if this is relevant but i noticed cornell recently sent out recruitment letter. I'm guessing the other ivies are around this time as well. Two kids in our grade got letters for track. From what I've seen, these schools send out letters based solely on athletics, with no academic research.</p>