Well, not to further migrate the thread, but, be careful what you wish for. That was the system before World War Two. Every wealthy family knew pretty much which prep schools had Ivy pipelines; there were some attempts at instituting entrance exams (a lot of which were designed to keep out non-WASPs) and, if you completed all the right rituals, you pretty much had a 100% chance of getting into any college your family could afford. It was a very tidy system: the colleges needed the rich in order to run the school and the rich needed the tribal recognition. Come to think of it, that much hasnât changed.
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Not specifically trying to wish for anything. But I guess your analogy to an admissions pipeline for recruited athletes is apt.
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The total numbers during the multi-year lawsuit period are below. A 3 is in the bottom 9% of admits for unhooked kids, yet 76% of athletes receive a 3 or worse.
Recruited Athletes â 1179 admits, 76% received a 3 or worse = 891 admits
Non-ALDC, Non-URM students â 4886 admits, 9% received a 3 = 440 admits
There is a difference between having relaxed standards and having the lowest stats of anyone on campus. Athletes can have relaxed standards, even if even a large portion of athletes have stats good enough to be on par with the bottom 9% of unhooked kids.
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Since Harvard accepts fewer than is not even looking at non-hooked applicants with academic 4s, but are accepting almost 80% of athletes who have 4s, I cannot call it anything else but a relaxation of their academic standards.
I donât actually care what considerations Harvard has in admitting students. I just get annoyed by the fact that people keep on insisting on things that simply are not so. Academic standards are lowered for all kids with an ALDC hook. Harvard wants those kids for other reasons than their academics, so their academics do not need to be as good as those of the unhooked kids who are being accepted for their academics + their other accomplishments.
That is why Harvard gets very few of the best athletes, except in sports which are primarily played by the wealthy, like squash and crew. But that is part of the point - they are not recruiting athletes primarily to win games, but to get wealthy and White kids. The majority of Harvard Athletes are White and Wealthy, even more so than the rest of Harvard.
BTW, I think that many of the families whose kids are attending Harvard who look to be in the âdonutâ salary range, are actually not really in that category, because they have a lot of inherited wealth. If you are making $130,000 a year, but are also receiving $100,000 from a trust, AND have been gifted a house, you are not the same as a family who is making $130,000 a year, is paying mortgage, and has a month salary in savings.
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There are many contributing factors relating to why Harvard generally doesnât get the best players in the nation. A key one is the best HS players often favor other schools over Harvard. For example, if a top football recruit hopes to go pro, Harvard is unlikely to help his chances of achieving that goal. This relates to why the top rated HS football recruits tend to choose colleges that are historically top ranked in football, such as Alabama or Ohio State. Among highly selective colleges, Notre Dame often gets a few, on rare occasions Stanford⊠but never Harvard. Among sports where going pro is not an option, top HS recruits still often want to compete at the highest possible level in their sport. For example, I knew a swimmer at Stanford who grew up in Boston ,was accepted (likely letter equivalent) to Harvard, and mentioned that he preferred to stay close to family in Boston; yet he still choose Stanford over Harvard. His reasoning was he wanted to see how far he could go in swimming, and Stanford was more likely to help him do so, which was ranked #1 in the nation at the time and well represented at the Olympics.
Another factor is a large portion of top HS players not being eligible for Harvard admission. While admission standards are relaxed for athletes, itâs not open admission. Most of nationâs top HS players are not eligible for Harvard admission, and even if they were eligible, would recognize that the school isnât a good academic match. Many other colleges can also offer things that Harvard canât, such as full ride athletic scholarships. A wealthy enough to be full-pay top recruit might have a choice of paying $80k per year at Harvard vs paying ~$0 at another great school. That can influence decisions.
Itâs true that athletes in many sports are more likely to be White and wealthy than the average Harvard student. However, this is not consistent across all teams. It is a more of an indirect effect of the above, which leads to wide variation from one sport to the next. Some specific numbers are below for Ivy League conference in a previous year (database is down at the moment, so I canât look up current year). The ski team is extremely White because the best skiing recruits Ivy League colleges can get tend to be White⊠not because the colleges/coaches are specifically targeting White students. Similarly golf is primarily non-White because the best golfers the colleges/coaches can get tend to be non-White races (Asian students are often overrpresented in golf).
Largest Portion White Students
1 . Skiing â 93%
2. Lacrosse â 88%
3. Baseball â 85%
4. Field Hockey â 83%
5. Sailing â 82%
Smallest Portion White Students
1 . Golf â 42%
2. Tennis â 47%
3. Rugby â 48%
4. Fencing â 52%
5. Basketball â 58%
It is theoretically possible that the main reason Harvard chooses to offer sports like skiing, lacrosse, and baseball because they want to increase White and/or wealthy enrollment, but I very much doubt that this is a primary goal. If the primary goal was to increase White and/or wealthy enrollment, there are far easier and more effective ways to do so. Itâs also inconsistent with offering both non-revenue sports that tend to be White/wealthy as well and sports that do not tend to be especially White/wealthy (compared to overall student body). The distribution of sports offered at Harvard is more consistent with Harvard wanting to offer nearly every Div I sport that is practical, regardless of racial and wealth distribution of that sport.
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The key word being âincreaseâ. I think a better word would be maintain. And, it doesnât even mean that race or a white majority is necessarily the goal. The âHarvard typeâ like many other tropes is pretty transferable across race (see, âHamiltonâ, âBridgertonâ, etcâŠ)
There was a time not that long ago where all those Harvard numbers would have been close to 100% white. Maybe Harvard is using sport to increase racial diversity?
My daughter, who is Chinese, was in the state All Star tournament when she was in 5th grade (yeah, real prestigious, right?). There were 60 girls chosen, and she was the only minority. Heck, 50 of them were blond so even having dark hair made her stand out. It takes a lot of years to change the composition of the sport from the ground up.
Things hadnât changed much when she was looking at colleges and most teams she looked at were still 100% white.
For Harvard to have moved 12% is a big deal IMO. Look at how much it has moved in tennis.
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There was a time many decades ago when HYP⊠did not allow women, had few non-White men, and physical characteristics ad a notable influence on which men they did admit. For example, Yale interviewers had a checklist of physical characteristics, and had a goal that a certain percentage of the class more than 6ft tall. Some reports mentioned being particularly impressed with âmanlinessâ or even having tests of manliness. They seemed to want a specific physical type of student to represent their school.
I suspect that Harvardâs athletic rating system has roots to this era. Rather than just flag applicants as recruited athlete or not recruited athlete, Harvard gives all applicants a rating on a scale of 1 to 6 in category called athletic. Only the first 2 ratings seem to have an influence in admission. For example, it seems to make no difference whether an applicant is rated 3 = âactive participationâ vs 4 = âno participationâ, yet this degree of granularity was created and presumably meaningfully used at some point.
However, things are quite different today. There is not a big emphasis on being a traditional tall, manly, White, wealthy Harvard man. And Harvard is favoring recruited athletes who will presumably improve varsity competition with other schools, rather than just favoring applicants for generally being athletic ,without potential to make a difference in varsity athletic competition.
Instead Harvard has taken steps to increase diversity since this era â admitting similar numbers of men and women, favoring URMs over White applicants (when rest of application is equivalent), giving a boost in chance of admission for being flagged as SES disadvantaged, $0 cost to parents for typical families making less than ~median US income, less preference to kids from prep schools with historical relationships than in the past, etc.
There are certainly many things more Harvard could do and many things that continue to favor wealthy/White students over other groups. For example, legacy preference strongly favors White and wealthy applicants, as one would expect since their parents graduated before many of the changes listed above. REA also favors wealthy/White. And athletics preference as a whole also favors wealthy/White, even though this is not true across all individual sports.
Recruited athletes as a whole do not increase racial or SES diversity at Harvard or at nearly any school with a large portion of athletes in non-revenue sports. However, this does not mean that athletics are primarily a means to increase White and/or wealthy enrollment. There are many other reasons why colleges choose to offer athletics.
I added to the table I listed earlier to show how Ivy League demographics in the sport compare to all Div I colleges in the same sport and same year. The Ivy League percentage White by sport is reasonably similar to the national average in most sports. The two outliers among the ones listed are golf (Ivies are less white) and basketball (Ivies are more White).
I suspect the basketball relates to differences in pool of applicants who excel enough academically to be admitted and who are interested in the college. The pool of HS basketball recruits Harvard could admit and would choose Harvard over other colleges that are better at basketball than Harvard and often can offer them financial scholarships is very different from the overall pool. The overrpresentation of Asian students at Ivys probably plays a role in golf. ~20% of Div I golfers are Asian compared to ~8% of 4-year college students. Ivies have more than double the portion Asian students as the national average for 4-year colleges, so it follows that their golf teams would be expected to have a much large portion Asian students than the national average, substantially reducing the portion of White students below national average.
Largest Portion White Students
1 . Skiing â 93% Ivy vs NA (small sample)
2. Lacrosse â 88% Ivy vs 85% All
3. Baseball â 85% Ivy vs 79% All
4. Field Hockey â 83% Ivy vs 77% All
5. Sailing â 82% Ivy vs NA (not listed in database)
Smallest Portion White Students
1 . Golf â 42% Ivy vs 64% All
2. Tennis â 47% Ivy vs 44% All
3. Rugby â 48% Ivy vs 59% All
4. Fencing â 52% Ivy vs 54% All
5. Basketball â 58% Ivy vs 27% All
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Schools may try to increase racial diversity among niche sports where the preponderance of athletes are white. However, I donât think that actually extends to increasing the number of ORM athletes on those teams.
Based on our experience with D and S, the Ivy and selective D3 coaches have 0 interest in diversity, other than diversity in athletic/positional skills. Their job is to field winning teams. They are trying to find the best athletes that meet the academic thresholds required by the AO. I think a stronger case can be made that niche sports are currently effectively white/affluent affirmative action.
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That was not our experience. We had one NESCAC coach tell my son - point blank - that heâd love to have him on the team, but he was only able to support URM athletes in the admissions process. We were given the clear impression that this was university policy.
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I should have added that the coach didnât sound thrilled with the policy but he had to comply. So maybe your point still stands.
The NESCAC may be unique in that URMs may not count towards the coachâs coded athlete total (students who have admission reader ratings as high as typical admits, but are prioritized over unhooked such that they have a higher admit rate than unhooked). The Place of Athletics at Amherst report linked earlier states the following. The report also stated that 73% of athletes were White compared to 35% of non-athletes, so there still appeared to be a clear difference in racial distribution, in spite of the policy.
There are prospective students who are excellent athletes, but are priorities for admission to the college for other reasons such as students of color, first generation, legacies, those from low socioeconomic backgrounds, or those who have stellar academic qualifications. Coaches may bring these students to the Admission Office without having them count against their total.
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I have another theory he was not going to offer you support and it was easier to blame something else, its not me I would love to have him, and avoid any type of confrontation.
What school and sport was it?
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The Amherst menâs soccer coach is extremely focused on recruiting nonwhite players. He was prominently featured in a NY Times article on the issue. In considering my sonâs ethnicity, he asked âIs that considered Asian?â (No, it was not, but I got the impression that being counted as Asian would have helped my sonâs chances to get coach support).
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Thatâs possible. Our experience with coaches, however, was that they were all business. They did not seem to have the time to care about making excuses, as you suggest. The athlete either exceeded the recruiting and academic standards or not. In our case academics were never a concern. There were a few programs we explored where he was close but not quite there on the recruiting standards and he was just told to contact them again if/when he met the standard. No BS.
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The Amherst approach is interesting. Coaches are always going to recruit the best players within whatever incentive structure theyâre given, so making diversity part of the calculus at the ground level is an interesting approach. I know Brown had talked about exploring something similar but I donât know if that went anywhere.
As far as some of the niche sports at Ivies being affirmative action for white/affluent, as @BKSquared mentions, I donât necessarily disagree but to me itâs a pretty minor issue compared to the whole athletic department.
Weâre talking about a little over 200 supported athletes per year at these schools. (I think the cap now is 240? But some schools use fewer). On the menâs side, more than half of the slots are taken up by football, basketball, track, and wrestling. Those are diverse sports nationally and if coaches are recruiting hard theyâll attract kids who add diversity to the student body (wrestling in terms of geography and SES, not race). Sports like baseball, swimming, soccer may or may not promote diversity but theyâre hardly niche and are popular HS sports.
In the end, with sports like squash, fencing, sailing and the like weâre just not talking about a lot of athletic slots being used. And in terms of the academics, my impression is that those sports arenât using slots on the lower end of the distribution academically. It tends to be the helmet sports using those (and, from what I can tell based on discussions with coaches, those slots do typically promote diversity on campus although thatâs not a requirement).
Some of these sports existing at Ivies are just a function of where these schools are located, and the same goes for difficulty recruiting certain types of athletes.
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The Amherst link begs the question, what does it mean to have âthe coachâs supportâ, if youâre not a banded or slotted or even a tipped athlete? It seems to be an infinitely elastic term, subject to a lot of misunderstanding.
Definitely a hook, but the times athletes need to get recruited by Harvard or Stanford in track or swimming are very fast. Even if a kid has the off-the-chart talent to go that fast, they also have to be especially driven to put up those times. Kids that can keep their high school grades âgood enoughâ and perform at that level are truely special. Itâs a hard earned hook.
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@LurkerJoe while I will agree kids that put up Harvard swim times are very good, but they also are helped by their genetics. Most of them are quite tall and well above average. I totally understand that they still have to put in the work, but is it really something that is that special.
Look at it this way. Johnny and Mike both swim. Johnny ends up 6â4 and Mike is 5â7. Both are great students. Both spend the same amount of time swimming. Johnny goes much faster than Mike. Johnny gets into Harvard and Mike doesnât.
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