<p>How many of you think it is fair for Princeton to have such a lower standard for athletes and almost let them in the door sometimes? There are thousands of students who get rejected with amazing stats yet athletes with the same or lower scores get accepted.....</p>
<p>Who says academic success should be the only criterion for acceptance? If someone has a talent in sports and works hard to develop it, shouldn't they have the opportunity to express that talent without sacrificing their academic career?</p>
<p>A common misconception is that admissions only cares about your grades and test scores. Grades and test scores are only useful to demonstrate the quality of your character and work ethic. Success in sports simply shows the same values in a different light.</p>
<p>Besides, from a more practical standpoint, imagine how bad our sports teams would be if there wasn't an advantage for athletes! Athletes have had an advantage since time immemorial, and it won't go away anytime soon.</p>
<p>This argument really irritates me. Your wording suggests that any ole athlete that applies to Princeton (or any Ivy for that matter) has an easy road to acceptance. This isn't true, for many reasons.</p>
<p>(A) Ivy League intentionally does not permit athletic scholarships for this reason. Coaches can merely 'support' a player's application, put a few words in with the admissions office, and after that, the applicant is on their own. This is why Ivy coaches often struggle with recruiting.. they cannot guarantee anything, thus lose many recruits who seek that security. Or, seek that financial scholarship which the Ivy League simply does not/can not provide.</p>
<p>(Additionally, these same coaches are aware of this situation, and thus must recruit accordingly. IE: as they move along in the process, possible recruits with subpar grades or test scores must be eliminated from their 'prospective' list).</p>
<p>(B) "Thousand of students get rejected with amazing stats.." Yes. But a very high number of athletes also get denied. I know that was particularly true this year.</p>
<p>(C) Success on the playing field is a sign of well-roundedness, and just as candidate A excels in debate team, or candidate B in another time-consuming EC, candidate and athlete C is merely demonstrating that same dedication and talent in non-academic setting. The purely academic students' contributions to the school and the athleticly-gifted students' contributions serve as a balancing act of sorts, and this would not be made possible if top tier universities did not allow some mild advantage for the latter population.</p>
<p>Ok I'm done. And I'm not even planning to pursue a Varsity Sport next year, which is slightly amusing. But I have many friends who are, and am writing this for them. Just things to consider.</p>
<p>Zooey is absolutely right. On top of that, many of the athletes that are accepted are accepted because they also have high academic standing or show a huge amount of committment in other activities. Besides, we are not in Europe, so admission to top schools does not only mean standardized test scores and GPA.</p>
<p>i totally agree with zooey, since i am an athlete. I have been searching this message board the last couple of days and looking at SAT scores and other things and I am either very very lucky I got accepted or I am in trouble, lol! I got a 1980 on my SAT, mid-500's on SAT II's. ranked 17 out of 115. I just hope I can handle Princeton</p>
<p>texas what was your gpa UW/W? also, what sport</p>
<p>gpa was 3.59 ill be playing baseball</p>
<p>thats unweighted i assume, since your rank is pretty good?</p>
<p>i know this is off topic but
princeton does not consider freshman grades at all right?</p>
<p>Princeton looks at all of your high school grades, but yes, it will consider them much less than your grades for later years.</p>
<p>of the matter is that Princeton is a private school and can accept or reject any applicant it chooses. Certainly the school has never held itself out as a place that will welcome you if you achieve academically at or above a certain level. </p>
<p>Many applicants misunderstand the above. The common misperception is that if you're first in your class and ace the SAT you're somehow entitled to preferential treatment, if not outright admission. Applicants and parents and friends express astonishment when the smartest, most deserving kid they know is rejected. </p>
<p>There are hundreds of posts on these boards to this effect, voicing everything from numbed bewilderment to rage. Many are flummoxed to read that a rock climbing flautist from Wyoming with a 2100 SAT was accepted over them or their 2400 SAT/valedictorian buddy.</p>
<p>True, it's cold and it's hurtful, but the bottom line is that all the selective private schools assemble classes in accordance with their own agendas. And they have the absolute right to do that.</p>
<p>The OP talked in terms of fairness. Fairness has nothing to do with it. These schools have no obligation to be fair or evenhanded in the admissions process. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, like they say, a 4.0 UW GPA and a 2400 only buy you a ticket to the sweepstakes. Will you win? Who knows? It's a crapshoot.</p>
<p>i played varsity rugby, cricket, and cross country...but i don't especially think american universities care enough about any of these for this to give me any kind of edge.</p>
<p>why dont go to caltech or MIT.... I would assume that they concentrate much more on academics</p>
<p>I agree that it's a tad bit unfair that being a good athlete can allow you to gain admission to an elite school with lesser stats than those required of a student with different talents. Of course a private college has the right to assemble its incoming class the way it wants. Still, non-athletes may be equally dedicated to their EC's, spend the same number of hours on their non-athletic pursuits, and even achieve a parallel level of excellence in those involvements yet do not receive the benefit of lowered standards to the degree athletes do. I could be wrong, but I haven't heard as much talk about schools allowing for lower test scores in order to attract elite musicians, actors, artists or writers.</p>
<p>This system is also unfair to students who are excellent athletes while still achieving top test scores and GPA's. Why do we cut athletes a break? How does being a top athlete preclude you from being a top student too? In the Asian population there are many accomplished violinists and pianist who are also brilliant students, for example.</p>
<p>My son's track coach counseled him to "lay off the academics" if he wanted to do better in his sport. He chose to ignore that piece of advice, but if he hadn't had to do the homework and studying for a full courseload of AP's each year, he could have gotten to bed earlier, been more rested, and his athletic performance might have been higher. I'm thinking that might have gotten him into his first choice school since the academics and other EC's obviously didn't do it.</p>
<p>i'm not sure what to make of that last post--seems misinformed in several ways.</p>
<p>1) it's not just being a good athlete. The applicant pool is filled with good athletes, who play a varsity sport or 2 or 3 at their school, maybe they start on their basketball team and maybe they are the most athletic kid in their grade. But that is different from being recruited. Athletes who get recruited are exceptional athletes who work just as hard (if not harder of course) as the "Asian population" with "accomplished violinists." There is nothing that bars Asians from being exceptional athletes and nothing that bars other races from being exceptional students, or exceptional something-other-than-atheletes. In addition, the athletes that get recruited and get accepted to schools like Princeton are most often also "brilliant students."</p>
<p>2) These schools do recruit "musicians, actors, artists, and writers." Athletes are not the only people recognized for their achievement. They are just part of the ranks of other applicants to schools like Princeton that are high achieving in more than one aspect of their life. To be able to succeed academically while devoting so much time and effort to athletics is the reason they get a benefit in recruitment. It is unfair to assume otherwise.</p>
<p>3) As for your coach, he obviously has no idea what it means to be a student-athlete or what it takes to get into college, so bringing him and his ideas up in this topic is irrelevent.</p>
<p>Actually, if you talk to the coaches about how to get recruited for a top tier school, the first thing they say is GET GOOD GRADES. And when they meet a prospect, the first thing they want to know is WHAT ARE YOUR STATS. The coach wants to know if it's possible to get a prospect admitted -- otherwise why waste his time. </p>
<p>To be recruited at an Ivy, you need both outstanding athletic achievment and well above average academics.</p>
<p>Well my anecdotal experience says it differently. Last year a dumb as a doorknob mediocre football player from my Son's school was admitted to Rice as well as Harvard.</p>
<p>plenty of people who get into schools like that with 4.9 GPAs and a tape of themselves playing piano are still dumb as a doorknob</p>
<p>Yes. But for every dumb as a doorknob piano player, there are ten dumb as a doorknob football players :)</p>
<p>Actually, they are useful. Because Princeton has strict grade capping, you do need someone in the bottom quintile, and guess who makes that quintile.</p>
<p>You can cast whatever aspersions you'd like based on anecdotal evidence. I am reporting direct conversations with lacrosse coaches from 5 Ivies and 3 other top tier schools, in addition to a talk about college recruiting sponsored by our lacrosse alumni association featuring an Ivy lax coach, in addition to reports from my son on coach's contacts from over 50 D1 and D3 schools.</p>
<p>After how's your season and how's your summer -- first question they want to know how's your grades and your scores -- what kind of colleges are you looking at and are you interested in my school? In other words, I've seen you play (or seen your awards) and I want to know if you are academically eligible.</p>
<p>If you don't meet their cutoff point, it's have a nice life and good luck.</p>
<p>
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Actually, they are useful. Because Princeton has strict grade capping, you do need someone in the bottom quintile, and guess who makes that quintile.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Whatever your feelings may be about recruited athletes, that comment was totally uncalled for. There are many athletes at Princeton who DO make the top quintile, among whom are my brother and his best friend. His best friend has - to date - maintained a 4.0. How many non-athletes can say that?</p>
<p>Look, to be totally fair, the admission standards for athletes - from an academic standpoint - are lower than that of non-URM, non-legacy, non-recruited applicants. This, in turn, means that there may be a greater percentage of athletes that have to work harder to survive at Princeton than non-athletes.</p>
<p>Yet to say that the only purpose athletes serve is to cushion the rest of the "deserving" student body is a totally callous statement that takes away from the achievements - academic and otherwise - of the many athletes at a place like Princeton. If you're going to engage in the business of making generalizations, please have the common courtesy not to make bitter ones.</p>