This is not true.
The NCAA is widely believed to provide a permanent test optional path for athletes. Proposals to drop test scores for incoming college athletes advance - NCAA.org
Thatâs how it always was before covid. The NCAA only suspended the requirement when students couldnât take the SAT/ACTs.
Maybe theyâll get rid of the requirement, but I doubt it. Itâs not really Harvard that they are worried about but there have been plenty of athletes who didnât make the cut and werenât cleared by the National Clearinghouse.
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If a recruit is targeting any Florida or Georgia publics, for example, they still need to test.
I agree itâs ridiculous when a coach at Rochester, or Columbia, or any other test optional school requires a test, whether for some or all of their recruits.
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I will have to respectfully disagree with you on this, at least for Harvard. While most recruited athletes are not academically unqualified, their academic ranking is lower, on average, than other accepted students. Based on the Harvard trial data, only 17% of the unhooked admitted students had academic ratings on less than 2. However, among the recruited athletes, 75% had academic ratings of 3, 4, and 5. Among unhooked admits, 5% were rated as 1, while among athletes, there was a single one, so it was 0.08%.
So 83% of all unhooked admitted were basically academic stars or superstars (a ranking of 2 is âMagna Cum Laude potentialâ). However only 25% of the admitted athletes are of that academic caliber.
For unhooked applicants, the admission rates of 3s was around 20% of the admission rate of 1s and 2. For athletes, admission rates of 3s was 91% that of 1s and 2s.
So yes, academic standards for recruited athletes at Harvard at least are lower.
Admittedly, a 3 in considered âCum Laudeâ potential, so not somebody who is academically weak by any means, and 85% of all recruited athlete are at least a 3.
As I wrote, not âunqualifiedâ, but not at the academic standards that are demanded from unhooked applicants.
As for ârich kids from prep schoolsâ
Yes, theyâre rich. According to âThe Crimsonâ, in 2019 (the last year that âprefer not to sayâ was not an option for family income), almost 70% of the recruited athletes came from families with an annual income of $125,000 or more, and almost 50% came from families making more than $250,000. Fewer than 13% came from families making less than $80,000 a year.
In 2019, $125,000 put you in the top 21%, $250,000 put you in the top 5%, and less than $80,000 put you in the bottom 40%.
So yes, recruited athletes are mostly from wealthy or very wealthy families.
As for being from prep schools, that also seems to be the case:
Bottom line, recruited athletes at Ivies are not âtop students who would likely be accepted without being athletesâ, but mostly âtop athletes who are selected because they are great at their sport, but are good at academics and will be able to keep upâ. True, 25% belong to the first category, however, 14.5% belong to the category of âif they werenât star athletes, there is no way that we would even look at them, and theyâll need help, in some cases lots of help, to keep upâ.
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Harvard (the âfirmâ), or any college with sports, essentially posts a âhelp wantedâ ad every year, with prerequisites, required and desired qualifications and skills to be considered for a âpositionâ with their âfirm.â The âfirmâ fills positions based on their criteria, whatever the criteria the âfirmâ has established for their âhiringâ process.
I donât see a problem here. If you donât the âfirmâsâ hiring criteria (sports or educationally-related), then you can take your talents to another âfirm.â
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The problem isnât with the criteria Harvard and itâs peer institutions use for selecting their undergraduate classes. The problem is that certain companies and graduate programs recruit so heavily from them such that if you donât attend one, your chances of being hired or admitted are slim to none. If it werenât for the preferential treatment their graduates receive, people would be far less concerned about who they choose to admit and would very gladly "take their talents to another âfirmâ.
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This is âtomato, tomatoâ issue for me. Some might call recruited athletes receiving âpreferential treatment.â I see it as âinstitutional priorities,â or âa companyâs mission,â where 20% of the freshman class is being filled by recruited athletes.
Harvard has a âlimited resource,â and if youâre not a recruited athlete, then the applicant must attempt to be admitted to the other 80% of the freshman class.
Iâm not going to shed a tear for any applicant that cannot get into âcertain companies and graduate programs,â because they canât or wonât be admitted to the 80% of the class that arenât recruited athletes. Sorry, I wonât.
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You say you donât shed a tear for the kids who donât make it into the remaining 80% of the spots, just wondering how do you feel about affirmative action when it comes to college acceptances?
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I honestly donât care what Harvard does or doesnât do.
And how I feel about affirmative action is not relevant to the discussion. Having said that, I assume, Harvard and all colleges are currently following the law, when they fill out their freshman classes.
Harvardâs mission is to reserve 20% of its class for recruited athletes. Thatâs the âlay of the land.â Is that against the law? If someone is rejected at Harvard, then like most of us in life, weâll find an alternative. But that alternative might not be as good, though it could possibly be better. You never know.
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Yes, thatâs their prerogative to choose who they want. The admissions officers are more like alchemists deciding what mixture of applicants they think best helps the school. Itâs definitely not just about academic merit because they are including many factors that are completely extraneous to education.
I would say that applying to Harvard and other elite schools is like trying to a join a secret society. Just like a secret society, the universities have their own mysterious methods. You have no idea where you stand as an applicant. You have no idea what they are looking for because they can change their own criteria every year. Often only after a long, circuitous journey, do you finally find out whether they want you or not. And there is no obvious explanation why you were chosen and why your equally or more talented classmate wasnât.
I would argue that the recruited athlete undergoes the easiest and most transparent application process because there is no ambiguity. The coach gives the recruited athlete objective information very early on. Their process is a very painless shortcut, so thatâs also an obvious âtellâ that schools greatly value athletes. Yes, athletics have been a long part of the schoolâs history and DNA. But I still think that maintaining a strong, athletic tradition has been a significant factor in their financial prosperity for the past 100 years. And thatâs probably why schools like Harvard have athletes representing 10-20% of every class.
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Some recruited athletes who are in the donut hole just canât afford to go to an Ivy. They get a much better deal financially going to Duke or Stanford or Notre Dame and take those offers.
There was a guy featured on the QB1 documentary. He was recruited by Harvard and received the offer, but he qualified for little need based aid, so he took the full offer from Kentucky. He went to a catholic high school in Florida, it looked like his family home was in an above middle class neighborhood, so it was hard to tell if his parents could have afforded Harvard tuition x 4, but he just took the full scholarship deal.
Recruiting certainly helps some kids get into Harvard, but the lack of athletic scholarships makes other schools a much better deal for top athletes and may keep some middle class kids from going to Ivies because of the price tag.
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Twice as many non-athletes with academic ratings of 3 were admitted as athletes with the same academic rating. More than half of those with ratings of 3 were not athletes. Yet they were admitted. So Harvard appears to be relaxing their standards for more non-recruits than recruits. Or perhaps an academic rating of 3 meets the standard of what Harvard wants.
To share my perspective, my sport is track and field. When I think of Ivy sports I think first of sprinters, jumpers, hurdlers, throwers, distance runners. Itâs a diverse group. Maybe if I thought of golf or field hockey I wouldnât cringe as much when folks claim that standards were lowered for these kids to be admitted.
I guess we just view the wealth issue differently. When I go to track meets, football and basketball games at some of these schools I meet parents who are teachers, plumbers, doctors, hedge fund managers. Itâs a mix. If the purpose of athletic recruiting were to attract just the hedge fund guy, then the implementation is pretty poor at most of these schools. It might happen that way in some sports, but again I donât think those recruits are likely the ones getting slots for which the AD has to check the overall AI math.
I canât quote on my phone, Iâm responding to your assertion that athletes have the easiest and most transparent application process. Are you sure you have a recruited athlete?? Or, is your athlete so good it looks like they are going pro?
Because my experience with one recruited athlete and two other unrecruited kids is that going the recruited route is Way, Way harder!
The thing that makes college admissions stressful is uncertainty. Will you get in anywhere? Just safeties? Etc. Athletes have the same questions, just earlier than nonathletes. There is a ton of uncertainty with athletes. Coaches blow hot and cold. It isnât clear for a long time if they will get any offers, or any offers at schools they want to attend.
Also, the process lasts 2-3 years, instead of 6-9 months.
Now â once the athlete has their offer of support from the coach (the culmination likely of years of work), then, yes, the process is easy and relatively transparent.
With the caveats that of course there are exceptions to the usual process.
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At the time of the lawsuit, Harvardâs admission rating appeared to be primarily based on GPA/score stats for lower ratings (maximum 1 academic is different). Stats alone explained the vast majority of variance in academic rating. Presumably the very small portion of unhooked admits with a relatively GPA/score stats and corresponding 3 academic rating really excelled in non-stat criteria, and/or had contributing factors that may partially explain why they had notably lower stats than typical for Harvard admits. Harvard admission considers many criteria besides just stats, so it is expected that some admits will excel in other criteria enough to make up for weaker stats.
A 3 rating should not be thought of what Harvard wants. Itâs more the minimum stats for which chance of non-ALDC admission is significantly different from 0 at time of lawsuit⊠except for athletes, in which case this relatively low 3 rating is not rare. Instead the average athlete admit scored a 3, and 15% scored worse than 3. Admission standards were clearly being relaxed for typical athletes.
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Sorry about the misunderstanding. I am only referring to the part once you get committed when you are now a recruited athlete of that school. That is the part that I consider easy.
Yes, getting committed can be an extremely difficult process. Yes, coaches are flakey. Some are comparable to used car salesmen. In our sport, the process is a lot shorter than 2-3 years (typically 1-2 years), since D1 offers for elite players start coming in September 1 during Junior year. My kid wasnât a top 1% recruit, so it took a bit longer.
My major point is that the admissions process that the universities (Ivy League, Stanford, etc) set up for the recruited athletes is so much simpler and streamlined to what they set up for their regular applicants. If they made the admissions process for regular applicants the same way, no one would be complaining.
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A. There were also 70x as many unhooked applicants with a 3 as there were Athletes applying with a 3.
B. Only 2.4% of the unhooked applicants with a 3 were accepted, versus 87% of the Athletes
C. Students with a 3 or lower were fewer than 18% of the admitted unhooked applicants, but they were almost 76% of the athletes.
D. Finally, and definitively, the average academic rating for an athlete was 2.90, while for an unhooked admit, it was 2.13. The median academic rating for athletes was 3, while for non-hooked admits, it was 2.
Iâm pretty sure that the last statistic proved conclusively that Athletes are academically not rated as high as unhooked applicants, and by a decent margin.
Moreover, the acceptance rates for athletes rated as 4, or âadequateâ, is almost 80% that of athletes rated as 1, or the top academic rating, while, for unhooked applicants, the acceptance rate of those rated 4 is 0.03% of the acceptance rate of unhooked applicants rated as 1.
Finally, more than 87% of unhooked applicants who were accepted had academic ratings of 2 or 1, whereas, for athletes the percent of admits with ratings of 1 and 2 was less than 25%.
I should not write âunhookedâ, since they include âhooksâ such as URM and low income. That group also includes non hooks which substantially boost acceptance rates, such as national or international-level non-athletic awards and recognition.
The question isnât âwhich is the larger numberâ, itâs âwhat percentage?â
Your claim commits the same logical fallacy as the claim of COVID deniers that âthe vaccine doesnât workâ, since, in countries with > 80% vaccination rates, as many vaccinated people have COVID as unvaccinated people.
So, wait. Is the question, whether or not athletics at top academic US unis is even a hook? This thread is migrating all over the place.
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I donât see the logical fallacy at all. I am saying that Harvard is not changing its standards for the majority of athletes. Their admission practices show that an academic rating of 3 fits well within the boundaries of what they consider admissible for large numbers of non athletes as well as athletes. That average or median ratings for the recruited athlete subgroup is lower along this one measure, though still within those boundaries, isnât evidence of relaxed standards but the opposite. Harvard canât be lowering their standards when they admit an athlete with a 32 ACT if they are also admitting more non athletes with the same score. Btw, plenty of athletes with national and international distinctions, URM, low income in the pool of recruits as well.
Looking at probabilities when comparing these groups makes no sense given that the athletic pool is narrowed well before the application is submitted. Coaches narrow based on athletic and personality factors, and admissions during the pre read process (during which admissions staff explicitly determine if applicants meet the standard expected by the school). At most Ivy schools these days, the admit rate for supported athletes is close to 100%. That the papers based on the lawsuit, as well as comments here on CC, still compare probability of admission between two such radically different data sets is pretty revealing.
Look, thereâs not a single Ivy recruited athlete who doesnât know that their chance of admission went from single to near triple digits when the coach decided to support their application. Thatâs a far cry from saying the school relaxed their standards.
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My position is that itâs a hook, and a strong one, but that the school isnât relaxing standards for most athletes. Both can be true.
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