Colleges changing their criteria for admissions decisions

<p>Amherst like the other NESCAC schools have a complicated recruiting process and it’s true that they only have a limited number spots for top players with weaker scores. But they also give help to a much larger number of players with scores good enough for admission. These players have no guarantee of admission but the coaches support usually gets them in ahead of another equally qualified applicant. I know this is true from personal experience. My son was offered various levels of admission help at the top schools. The Amherst coach offered him a position on the team but no admission help. Vassar offered near guaranteed admission. Weslyan offered no guarantee but some help. As I recall the NESCAC coaches told us they had two picks reserved for impact players with weak scores and could help another 3-5 players depending on scores. Our son sent all his paperwork directly to these coaches who then take the application to the admissions committee for a preliminary review. Then the coach calls and tells you where you stand. Big time recruit-in, good player good scores-good chance, weaker player(non-starter) good scores- a position on the team but no admission help. This account for far more than 80 applicant at Williams do the math because they field like 30 teams. 5/team equals 150 7 per/team 210 in a class of 500. Now do the math at the smaller schools like Haverford with a class size under 300 and Bowdoin/Amherst with 400/class. At my son’s school over half of the students are varsity athletes and almost all had contact with the respective coach.</p>

<p>Hunt. It depends on what you mean by top schools. At Harvard/Yale absolutely yes. At Duke/NU a lower number but remember they are big time D1. The very high hook number only really applies to the very top schools. I’m not making this up it’s all in the books in great detail. Read the books. Bowen was the President of Princeton and the other book author is by a WSJ reporter. When I read the books I finally understood how the game works. Both my older children had well over 4.0 weighted and 2200 SAT’s but they chose ED to increase the odds of admission.</p>

<p>Are there any LACs that don’t recruit athletes? --by which I mean, give athletes preference in the admissions process.</p>

<p>LAC’s I’m not sure but you get no help from sports at MIT, Caltech, Wash U, and only a little from U of Chicago. The coaches themselves said this.</p>

<p>“I don’t believe that a majority of students at top schools are “hooked,””</p>

<p>From an [url=<a href=“http://www.reed.edu/apply/news_and_articles/admission_messages.html]article[/url”>http://www.reed.edu/apply/news_and_articles/admission_messages.html]article[/url</a>] on the subject:

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<p>Note that the book is about Wesleyan, but the article is general (regarding the author’s stints as an administrator at Bennington, Vassar, Duke, Boston College, Oberlin, and Reed).</p>

<p>This article is from 2004, and although the numbers of the student body and freshman class have changed, the percentage of spots “reserved” for recruited athletes remains about the same, 15%. </p>

<p>[Online</a> NewsHour: A Look at Amherst College’s Admissions Process – June 22, 2004](<a href=“http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/jan-june04/merrow_6-22.html]Online”>http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/jan-june04/merrow_6-22.html)</p>

<p>Here are the stats stating that only 32% of Amherst students play varsity sports.</p>

<p><a href=“https://www.amherst.edu/athletics/quickfacts[/url]”>https://www.amherst.edu/athletics/quickfacts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Still nowhere near 60%. Assuming the 15% that Tom Parker, Dean of Admissions stated in the pbs piece is still accurate, that leaves 17% of the student body that might have got a tip for athletics. I don’t see how that is any different from any other tip, music, theatre, or any other slot that Amherst needed to fill that year for a well rounded class.</p>

<p>Please stop being hung up on exact statistics at exact schools. I was obviously generalizing and clear gave a broad but broad range. So it’s 32% at Amherst and while not every athlete was given major help with admission virtually all the athletes had contact with the coach which still helps. Please read the books before arguing any more.</p>

<p>I am not hung up on exact statistics, but 32% vs. 60% is huge. (or really 15% vs. 60%)</p>

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<p>Of course, because everything written in books is accurate. :rolleyes:</p>

<p>“It depends on what you mean by top schools.”</p>

<p>I find it mostly irrelevant when Ivies are mentioned in this context; about zero percent of students attend them. Of course, they do set a high bar in terms of popularity/selectivity!</p>

<p>Forgive me for not reading every post, but I have a question I’m hoping someone can answer–</p>

<p>How/where can I find colleges that weight HS grades something like this:
B+ = 3.75
B = 3.5
B- = 3.25</p>

<p>I’m asking because S’s (highly respected public) HS does not weight this way. Both a B+ and B- are equal to 3.0, and that is how one’s GPA is calculated. S’s GPA is suffering a bit because he has at least 2 classes in which he missed the next highest letter grade (eg, B+ vs A-) by literally tenths of a point. And the HS doesn’t round up, so an 89.9 is a B which is a 3.0. :(</p>

<p>Thanks for any wisdom.</p>

<p>^ Some/many/most colleges recalculate the HS GPA anyway, according to their own formula, to try to level the field. But if the HS reports B- and B+ as B, he would be out of luck.</p>

<p>Very sorry, my bad! I meant to say that HS reports B- as B- and B+ as B+ (etc.) but the grade point is still 3.0 in either case.</p>

<p>Does anyone know how the GPA would be recalculated?</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

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<p>From the Haverford College website:</p>

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<p>Now Haverford’s student body is exceptionally small even for LACs, just over 1,100. On the other hand, Haverford doesn’t even have a varsity football team; football is by far the largest varsity sport at most schools, since it’s 11 per side on the field at all times and it’s necessary for injury reasons to go at least 2-deep at every offensive and defensive position, plus special teams. </p>

<p>I’ve heard admissions officers at other LACs quote similar figures for student-athlete varsity participation. That’s not to say all varsity athletes get “help” in admissions. It is to say that recruited athletes are a significant factor in the admissions game.</p>

<p>GA212mom-My son did look at Haverford and was told is was just under 50% which is on their website. In one of the books they do mention that at some of the small liberal arts schools over 50% play varsity sports. Let’s just accept that athletic recruiting is a huge hook that fills up a large part(15-50%) of the class in every elite school except the big full D1’s. </p>

<p>vossron- I agree with you that there are many great schools out of the to 15-20 schools but this site really focuses on the top schools if you read the posts over the years. As I said before no one is worrying about admission to U of Mich(55%) even though it’s a very good school with superb grad schools. As for no one getting in that is also not true. Of my son’s closest long term friends two are at Harvard(both sports), one at Princeton, one at Middlebury(sports), and the other at Claremont Mckenna(sports). My son was recruited for his sport at Harvard/Brown/Cornell but offered nothing in the end. He ended up at a top ten LAC as a top two recruit. While never stated explicitly he was told he would be accepted if the went ED. </p>

<p>Many parents are well aware of the sports advantage which is what’s fueling the club sport explosion. But overall it’s still pretty hard to be good enough to gain admission for a boy but a bit easier for girls at the LACs.</p>

<p>GA212mom</p>

<p>[Haverford</a> College Athletics: Varsity Athletics](<a href=“http://www.haverford.edu/athletics/varsity/index.php]Haverford”>http://www.haverford.edu/athletics/varsity/index.php)</p>

<p>GA212mom. Please read the books and do your own research before shooting arrows at the messenger. Prior to my own experiences over the past three-four years I was totally unaware about how much things had changed from 30 years ago. These books are very well sourced and completely accurate. The one author was the President of Princeton after all. Go and look up the children of famous people like actors, singers, CEO’s, and politicians. Go look at where their children are going/went to college. People like John Kerry,Rudy G, Al Gore, James Tayor, and John Edwards just to name a few. Their children all went to very elite schools. For fun go look up any well known person and you can just about be sure their children are in elite colleges. Does this matter? Well they take up space in a very limited pool just like the althletes, then there are the URM and donors. Are you aware that around 40% of the blacks in ivy schools aren’t Americans. This stuff just goes on and on. Read the books.</p>

<p>BfloGal,
Both my kids’ high schools counted an 89.4 and a 79.9 the same way – a B, 3.0. Can’t tell you how many 88.9-89.4 grades S2 had in HS, esp. in Math and Spanish! Not many colleges fess up to specifically how they recalc transcript grades (if they even do so) any more. If you can get a copy of the high school’s profile that they send to colleges, they may explain the grading system there so you can see what colleges are told.</p>

<p>I finally let it go. Not in my control – neither the grades themselves nor how colleges would view them. S got into the schools he really wanted, was waitlisted/rejected at others. </p>

<p>I will say that good scores on the SATs/APs/SAT-IIs probably helps to put the grades in perspective – i.e., a 750 Math SAT/SAT-II, or a 4-5 on AP Calc may indicate that the Bs in math class are indicative of tough standards, esp. at a well-regarded HS. Some colleges might wonder if there’s a study skills/time management problem – but I don’t think anyone would have looked at S’s transcript and exclaimed, “SLACKER!” Probably more like, “He must have fallen asleep doing an exam because he was pulling all-nighters,” though that would not have been the truth, either. The reality was that he values balance in his life, and he was not going to exert every last ounce of energy on the <em>chance</em> of scoring 1-2 points better on an exam, and did not want to attend a college where the students were that grade-obsessed, either. He has been at peace with Bs for a long time. :)</p>

<p>To get back on thread, this is where the rigor of the curriculum and the willingness to take academic risks presents its own message to colleges.</p>

<p>SAY, why the heck do you keep refering to my name along with Haverford? I only have a kid at Amherst and that is the only school I have given stats for. As far as the kids of celebrities, really??? How many spots in the totality in the grand scheme of “elite” schools do they take up? And do you have a source to back up how many URM’s, donor kids or athletes don’t have stat’s at the 75th% or above? No, of course you don’t. You would prefer to think all of the above groups have lesser than that. I can assure you there are MANY kids here on CC that are hooked in one way or another and fall at the 75th or above. Mine is one. I just find it truly offensive when somebody assumes you can’t be smart/athletic or smart/URM or smart/rich, etc.</p>

<p>The question I have to ask is, what is this value that sports recruitment is assumed to offer, that colleges that purport to offer an elite education spend so much of their available student body on it? Lord knows, there’s enough professional sports already, if you want to watch it; I don’t understand the highly developed team sport aspect of supposedly educational institutions. Yes, mens sana in corpore sano, and all that, but there’s a huge gap between fostering a healthy student body and offering highly desirable places in the freshman class to athletes, in order for the rest of the student body to feel “pride” and “spirit” in their teams. It’s nonsensical, and a waste of the resources that ought to be spent on the students’ educations.</p>

<p>GA212MOM. I linked you to the Haverford site because you stated that no where near 50% of students at select schools are varsity athletes. As shown a very large number of students at the top LAC are varsity athletes-32% at Amherst near 50% at Haverford. Yes a few of the athletic recruits will have scores at the 75% but mostly the girls. Most of the boys playing football, basketball, and hockey would stand little chance of admission without the sports hook. This is a fact well known to everyone that is documented on one of the books. As for the celeb children yes a few probably are at the 75% percentile but the best documented case is JFK Jr. We have a very wealthy friend and the top schools actually came to their house to recruit the oldest child. He had good scores but well below the 75% level and he was actively recruited just like JFK Jr. He ended up at one of HPYS. He was recruited because the schools believed the family likely to give a donation in the future. You may not like it but this how it works today at elite colleges.</p>