Interesting that you mention Dartmouth. I read in an article about colleges profiles that Dartmouth seeks athletes, and that almost all of its admitted students did varsity sports in HS.
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In the Harvard lawsuit, it was revealed that Harvard initially scores applicants in several categories, including academic, extracurricular, athletic, and personal. With athletic being its own category (instead of part of extracurricular), that suggests that athletic extracurriculars are seen as more important than other specific extracurriculars in Harvard admission.
Perhaps it is not surprising that this may be the case at smaller schools with many sports teams, since having a pool of potential walk-on athletes helps fill the sports teams.
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If you say that varsity sports are integral to the university, even to its actual social and financial well-being, then recruiting athletes who can help bring team success should be an important priority for every school- including top academic ones. One can make the argument that the recruited athlete provides much more of a tangible benefit to the university than any other matriculating student. So if academic standards need to be lowered to attract suitable recruits, doesn’t the end justify the means?
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There are surprisingly few walk-on positions in NESCAC. The main motivation for giving sports its own admissions category is sheer demand. Nearly half the male students participate in a varsity sport even at a relatively “artsy” college like Wesleyan.
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Schools like U Chicago, WUSTL, Emory, and Tulane may have made a long-term strategic mistake by not emphasizing their sports programs
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I think it is focused mostly on the tippy top schools, particularly those with small class sizes. I don’t hear much grumbling when it comes to UCLA/Berkeley/Michigan and perhaps even Duke/Northwestern.
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I would argue that there is no lowering of standards for athletes. I would also argue that standards based on test scores and gpa are not only a failure, but have done much more harm than good. Ambiguity is ok. Obsessions with testing and standards are not. But that is another topic that has already been addressed in this forum. Athletes bring as much to the table as anyone else, aside from any financial or publicity benefits they bring.
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And I assume there will no be OT debate on this oft-discussed subject.
Throw Stanford and Notre Dame in there, too. I have no doubt that while the athletes they recruit are high-achievers, the exceptions made for athletes in relation to a typical student are substantially larger than what happens at an Ivy or NESCAC school
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Tulane was a founding member of the SEC and left the conference in 1965- right before the start of the modern college sports era.
Would it have followed the trajectory of schools like Duke and Northwestern if it had stayed?
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I don’t hear the same Grumblings about other types of students that may be getting in with lower stats.
What students may this be? Students that are accepted by an Audition.
A Violinist, Artist, Ballerina, Orchestra etc…
You mention Stanford here is a fun fact on their Athletes
Stanford sent 57 former , current or affiliated athletes to Tokyo to compete on the world stage at the 2020 Olympic Games. … 8, Stanford captured 26 medals — more than any university in the country and just one shy of the school-record 27 earned by Cardinal athletes at the 2016 Rio Games.
Keep in mind that US News rankings are based almost entirely on brand recognition, so that pattern is going to mostly favor D1 schools, because those schools use big sports to reinforce their brand name. See the pattern here? In other words, US News is really just a rearranged list of pet schools where everyone knows their name. Nothing more.
Unlikely schools are going to drop sports in favor of academics. It’s too powerful of a recruiting tool. It’s what gives these schools an identity. Univ of Chicago is the exception. Schools who drop athletics often lose big in student registration. After a few years, high school students forget or never hear of the school and never apply.
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I don’t have strong opinions except these:
Sports that mostly are only done by wealthy kids at elite private high schools - I’m ambivalent.
All other sports - bring 'em on! Men and women!
I know not everyone is interested in going, but dang there is nothing like a great football or hockey game that brings together all kinds of different students, family, and alumni in one place. It’s great fun, in my opinion.
Also, revenue sports help support non revenue sports and lots of womens sports which is also fantastic in my opinion.
I have a close family member who was a Division 1 athlete – it’s hard!! People talk about the practice and forget the toll that travel takes on these kids. They basically have a full time job in season and also attend college. The ones I knew worked really hard at both and were great ambassadors for their schools.
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I don’t disagree with what you say. I used the USNWR rankings as a starting point for the discussion. Interestingly, 18 of the top 20 schools on their list have small undergraduate enrollments < 10,000 students. Most are within the 4000-6000 range. One would think that small schools with their handicap competing against larger schools would be less likely to pursue D1 athletics. That’s why most small-sized schools participate in D3 athletics instead.
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I’m going to put in a plug for a related group of students - the college bands that play at these games. So fun and funny and AMAZING school spirit. Love the pep bands!!
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I am going to go out on a stereotyping limb and guess that not a lot of the pianists, dancers, etc are 200–400+ points off the average class at an Ivy or NESCAC.
That is an impressive showing by Stanford, and I don’t begrudge Stanford or Duke or Vanderbilt their athletics programs and the way they have leveraged them to gain greater prominence. The point is that a squash recruit at Harvard who might have “only” a 1480 and 2 B-pluses on her transcript is being held up as everything that is wrong and unfair about America today, while the Stanford left tackle or Vandy shortstop with a 1200 and a 3.5 is just hunky-dory.
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Stanford University is an athletics juggernaut. It probably has the strongest athletics program in the country. It’s already incredibly difficult to find and recruit top athletes. I’d say it’s impossible for them to find enough top athletes with impeccable academic credentials just to fill the roster of its many teams. So the university probably does what it needs to do to get sufficient top recruited athletes to enroll.
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Nearly half of the squash players on the Harvard University team are international students. So US squash recruits have to contend with that, too.
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That’s probably because it’s squash. At least in my area, no public high schools have squash. So perhaps the issue some have is that it is just another admissions advantage for wealthy private school kids over everyone else? Not really about athletics so much. Just a guess. I personally am ambivalent about squash and think it’s only just one more thing at some of these schools that has nothing to do with smarts or ability or strong students or work ethic. Like so much else in top 20 admissions. Which is why I don’t care at all about “top 20” for my kid or anyone I would work with one way or the other.
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Let’s look at the top rated Public University in This Years US News.
UCLA has approximately 820 Athletes out of a population of 45900 undergrad/Grad. Less than 2%
From a 2008 study
- UCLA, which has won more NCAA championships in all sports than any other school, had the biggest gap between the average SAT scores of athletes in all sports and its overall student body, at 247 points.
So the real question is it worth it ?
I say Yes
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