<p>Just wanted to get a thread going on the whole athlete admissions thing. My school has three sailors who are going to Stanford, Brown, and Yale. However, these kids could definitely not have gotten into a school half as good as any of these without sailing, but they are taking away spots of people who are more qualified and would most likely do better at these schools. I saw in a blog that Brown's ED acceptance was 26% recruited athletes, which seems like an awful lot and quite unfair to those who end up getting denied. What's everyone's take on this?</p>
<p>Do some research on AI (Academic Index) and you will have a better sense of the type of students they still have to be. Everybody brings something different to the table – but they still have to get to the table academically.</p>
<p>@Ramon712 I’m aware that they can’t fail all of their classes, but I know someone who is going to Vanderbilt for tennis who has a 24 ACT score, while I talked to someone who was an admissions officer for Vanderbilt last year who told me that to be seriously considered for admission, you must have at least a 34. </p>
<p>I don’t think that it’s fair that athletes are taking the places of other students applying. But to play devil’s advocate, just as the regular students have the grades that the athletes don’t, the athletes have something that the regular students don’t. Though I do think that colleges do this mainly for their reputations, it’s not like these athletes sit around and do nothing once they get in. They have to be on the team and still train vigorously in order to keep their scholarship; this could be very stressful.
Also, do these student athletes still have to maintain a minimum gpa throughout college?</p>
<p>@dontdodrgugs Again take a look at the AI – Brown and Yale have to use that. And scores are only a piece of the admissions puzzle. Also – I always find it interesting what “scores” a kid supposedly earned but still got in…the rumor going around is that one of the school’s athletes got in with a 25. What they neglect to mention is that the second time taken, the score was 6 points higher.</p>
<p>It also varies team to team, and athlete to athlete. We know “recruited” swimmers at Brown, Columbia and Dartmouth that had the stats to get in without the likely letters - swimming just happens to be their extracurricular activity. And by the way, Division 1 athletes train so hard. They spend more time on their sport than their classwork. So any advantage gained on admssion is taken back by what they give to their schools.</p>
<p>egh, At least they worked hard at something and that got them in.
Athletes v Scholars is nothing compared to URMs.
I know two that got full-ride scholarships with average to slightly above grades. </p>
<p>This is the thing. In some ways it is unfair but in other ways they also worked their tails off. The bottom line is no school wants to have an entire student body of perfect GPA’s and ACT’s because honestly it would get boring. Also, don’t underestimate some of the kids who had lower scores because they maybe a shining star in college academically. College is so different and the standardized test scores do not show the capabilities of all students. There are many great minds who didn’t do so well in high school who took the world by storm as they matured.</p>
<p>@Ramon712 - AI is part of the BS that is holistic admissions. </p>
<p>
This is the scariest line I have seen in quite a while. If they spend more time on their sport than their classwork, how do they pass their classes? Can you say UNC Chapel Hill? Why do you need AI if these folks can spend more time on their sport than their classwork and still pass? </p>
<p>@Stemmmm - to use the sports example, non-athletes start the game down 2-0 and have to score 3 goals to win - all the while, coaches admissions, and administrators are working against the non-athletes so in reality 3 goals probably won’t be enough to win.</p>
<p>@menefrega</p>
<p>To be honest most of high school (and college if you are a humanity major) is easy. Lots of classes are simple to get by if you A) pay attention during lecture and B) do the homework and then cram a few hours before taking a test or quiz. Calculus (and anything STEM) is one of the few exceptions that requires an actual high amount of effort. </p>
<p>They got in on the basis of their own ACHIEVEMENT. Careerwise, a lot of athletes will exceed their egghead classmates.</p>
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</p>
<p>Wow @GMTplu7 - a platitude, a statement that can be supported only in very small cherry-picked datasets, and a back handed slap (egghead is a derogatory term in case you didn’t know) at those that achieved academically in two sentences. Scoring 4 touchdowns in 1 high school football game is truly an achievement.</p>
<p>An interesting conclusion from this paper (<a href=“http://ftp.iza.org/dp1882.pdf”>http://ftp.iza.org/dp1882.pdf</a>)</p>
<p>“Although we found that on average athletes obtain a wage premium, we were able to show that over half of them did
not.”</p>
<p>If you’re so worked up about this, try to go to schools where athletes don’t have an admissions advantage.</p>
<p>Caltech famously doesn’t give athletes any admissions boost. Pretty certain that is true at WashU and that may be true at UChicago, Swarthmore, and Reed.</p>
<p>Colleges can decide who they want to admit by the criteria that they set, and athletics are valued at some schools for various reasons.</p>
<p>If you would like some input from those that have actually lived it, rather than assume to know it, post this thread in the athletic forum.</p>
<p>DS, at Columbia, says the athletes hang out with each other and are not, as a group, doing well academically. But of course some are fine students.</p>
<p>Son at Vandy observed that athletes are mainly in the easier majors or an easier school within the University.</p>
<p>Like @PurpleTitan said: if you don’t like it, go to a college that doesn’t set aside spots for athelte recruits. And your anger is misplaced and you’re holding onto a fallacy. NO ATHLETE TAKES THE SPOT AWAY from a scholar. Those allocations were made by the administration – long before you entered high school. Do you know whose spot a top athlete takes away? The spot of a lesser athlete. That spot WAS NEVER AVAILABLE to the scholar/dancer/artist/musician/international/nursing student to begin with. Stop hating when you only have maybe 25% of the story. Get your facts straight before you light the torches and reach for the pitchforks.</p>
<p>Same thing with the URM. She takes the spot of a lesser talented URM – not the football player or field hockey star or acting genius’ spot. These soft quotas are set long in advance.</p>
<p>But why don’t you share the outrage for the disproportionately MOST oppressed category? Academically superior international applicants. Without a hint of shame, the unis clearly lock them in a quota. Yet their avg SATs continue to rise, their applicant #s continue to rise – but their presence on many campuses stays the same. Why no outrage on behalf of them? Can’t identify with the Korean Prep school applicants or super Pakistani or Indian science geniuses? Having a problem being sympathetic for that Austrian math whiz? Or Chinese violin virtuoso? </p>
<p>@T26E4
So, that would not only mean athletes do not get in over scholars, it would mean that it’s IMPOSSIBLE for them to get in over a more academically gifted student because they have their own applicant bubble- in most situations.</p>
<p>Personally I have no issue with a non-scholar getting in ahead of a scholar, whether it’s an athlete, a musician, an artist, etc. Their line of work and study is something the scholar can’t compare with. Sports are like academics to athletes. Scholars study math, athletes study baseball. The same goes with actors and instrumentalists and the like. Playing the violin isn’t academic, but it certainly takes mastery, just like any academic subject would. </p>
<p>
That’s not necessarily a reflection on the student or his/her abilities. Even at a school that is not an athletic powerhouse, it is often a challenge, if not an impossibility, to physically schedule labs around the practice schedule.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t draw that sharp a line – but the meta decisions aren’t being made by the admissions officers’ level, that’s for sure. Those slots are being allocated at some getaway where the provost, deans, college president, corporation members and the athletic directors are hashing things out. </p>
<p>Please read the following excerpt from an essay entitled “Admissions Messages vs. Admissions Realities” by the former admissions dean for Reed College, Paul Marthers:</p>
<p>"Perhaps the most controversial and high-profile aspect of institutional self-interest concerns the students we admit. Who gets admitted and why? The simple answer to that question is the applicants we want the most. But colleges and universities seem to say, or imply, that only “the best” or “the most qualified” get chosen. Does every (or any) college simply admit the most qualified applicants? Who defines most qualified? During my stints as an administrator at Bennington College (Vt.), Vassar College (N.Y.), Duke University (N.C.), Boston College, Oberlin (Ohio), and Reed, I have seen in nearly every case, a version of admission by category, with the categories determined by institutional needs and priorities.</p>
<p>Most applicants compete not with the whole applicant pool but within specific categories, where the applicant-to-available-space ratio may be more, or less, favorable than in the pool at large. Categories can exist for athletics, ethnic diversity, international citizenship, institutional legacy and loyalty, musical and artistic needs, component schools or special academic programs, and in some cases, even gender. Students in the selected categories, which vary from institution to institution, have a “hook” because they help meet institutional needs.</p>
<p>Books such as Elizabeth Duffy and Idana Goldberg’s Crafting a Class; former Stanford admission dean Jean Fetter’s Questions and Admissions; and former University of California, Santa Cruz, Vassar, and Bowdoin College (Maine) dean Richard Moll’s Playing the Private College Admissions Game peer into the hidden reality of category admission.</p>
<p>If we want to provide useful back-fence counsel to prospective students, we must be frank about category admissions. The public is shrewd enough to extrapolate from books like Jacques Steinberg’s The Gatekeepers the reality that most applicants are “hookless” and thus in fierce competition for a limited number of spaces, once the institutional priorities are filled. Our candid explanations of the reality of selective admission can help prospective students understand that behind every rejection letter, whether stated or not, is the undeniable fact that the candidates selected best matched the institution’s needs. Admissions decisions are not random or arbitrary, but neither are they infallible or exact science. Sometimes we grossly underestimate the talent we see before us; I think of the student I wait-listed at Oberlin who went to Reed and earned a 3.6 GPA and a student I counseled who, after being spurned by Stanford, went to Washington University in St. Louis and became a Rhodes Scholar.
I suspect that prospective students and their parents wonder sometimes whether admission deans are educators or sales managers.</p>
<p>At the risk of redundancy, I need to say again that there are no random or arbitrary decisions in selective college admissions. Every decision is discussed, sometimes again and again, and again. Still, annually I encounter at least a dozen students who tell me some version of the following scenario: “I am going to apply to the University of Ultra-Selectivity and Prestige, even though I know I have no chance to get admitted. I know it sounds crazy, but maybe when the committee gets to my application, the dean will be asleep, or they will flip a coin, or they will stamp my file accept instead of wait list or reject.” Sorry to break your illusions, prospective students, but just as there is no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny, there is no random quirk of fate that will overrule the reality of transcripts, test scores, essays, recommendations, and institutional priorities.</p>
<p>Do all colleges and universities practice category admissions vigorously? No. Most colleges and universities are not ultra-selective. Many quality colleges admit students up to the first day of classes. Even when practiced, the category admissions approach has different impacts, from institution to institution. Major state universities, for example, reserve slots for recruited athletes but in the aggregate those slots are a small percentage of the incoming class. Assaults on affirmative action have all but closed an explicit ethnic diversity category for state colleges. A few small colleges lack varsity teams and face no pressure to favor alumni children. Small colleges rarely admit students to individual departments or schools. Yet there is no avoiding the daunting fact that the most selective colleges and universities pose an admissions challenge-where applicants outnumber available spaces by multiples of 10 or even 20 to 1, category admissions cuts an unforgiving swath.</p>
<p>What does all this mean for confused prospective students who simply want to get a good education? It means you need to keep your options open, because there is no way to guarantee that you have what your first-, second- or third-choice college wants. That is not as bad as it may sound, because if all you want is a good education (and you want that more than you want a brand-name degree), you can get a good education just about anywhere. It also means rejection is less about you and more about the college or university doing the rejecting.</p>
<p>Remember that well-used break-up line, “It’s not you, it’s me”? This time it’s true. '</p>
<p>The entire text can be found here
<a href=“http://www.universitybusiness.com/article/admissions-messages-vs-admissions-realities”>http://www.universitybusiness.com/article/admissions-messages-vs-admissions-realities</a></p>