<p>Well, the internet is serious business.</p>
<p>You know, “nastynate,” it does say something about these kids’ strength of character that they can bust their asses working on a sport for years and years, often with the knowledge that they’ll never earn a cent for it in their lives. That’s worth something to these colleges.</p>
<p>Moreover, Harvard wants to beat Yale, Yale wants to beat Harvard, Columbia wants to beat both of them, etc. etc. Don’t you think they like the feeling of pounding their rivals in sport?</p>
<p>Wow, I just realized I was replying to a post from last November… sorry if that’s a faux pas. :P</p>
<p>first to reply to admissionsgeek:</p>
<p>1) you argue(d) that AA policies don’t necessarily hurt URMs, I can generally agree with this, because there is a lot that may cause a student of any race to fail. But I will say this: even a small proportion of URMs doing badly in college and law school placement is enough to say that AA hurts URM if those bad performers can be linked to lower high school achievement levels, because most minorities accepted to Columbia would have made it without the boost of AA, so we’d expect the worse URM applicants to be the ones who got in only because of the AA boost.</p>
<p>2) Let’s assume we cannot tell whether AA hurts or helps URMs. You have only provided conventional wisdom, and what your professors at Columbia have assumed through your 4 years there to substantiate that it helps. The real question is should URMs be given an advantage in the admissions process independent of income. I say yes to the extent that it creates more diversity at Columbia, but not to the extent that you are trying to reverse general national trends of URMs being poorer. By the diversity argument, you must also support the position that white, asian and hispanic student be granted advantages to enter a college that is mostly black (for example).</p>
<p>3) if your reasoning is that we need to do our bit to reverse national averages of URMs being poorer, then help poorer students. If most URMs are poor and you help poor people, you are helping most URMs (the ones who need the help). You also help the child of the poor asian immigrant who’s parents don’t speak english and who is culturally disconnected, you cannot disagree that this child is more disadvantaged. You do not help Colin Powell’s kids, as you shouldn’t.</p>
<p>4) I don’t disagree that many people are prejudicial, but the opposite of prejudice and discrimination is not reverse discrimination, the opposite of discrimination is to not discriminate. The grounds to discriminate positively should be to help those who have are disadvantaged growing up. This is most times URMs, but also Asians and poor white people. There is no comparison in the opportunity seen by an African American teen growing up in Scarsdale vs. a Chinese teen growing up on Canal street. There’s where I see the injustice.</p>
<p>5) Finally, colleges have every incentive to help people based on race and not income, and Lee Bollinger will come up with fantastic sounding arguments for AA. But as we stand, 50% of Columbia Undergrad (and HYP etc) comes from the top 6-7% of the population income wise. Compared to national averages, we have proportional numbers of Blacks and Hispanics. If our income brackets represented were also proportional to the national average, I’ve done the calculation, Financial aid would double. Universities are simply not willing to pay to have socio-economic diversity, so racial diversity and racial disadvantages are played up. it’s a cheap way to gloss over the issue unequal opportunity.</p>
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<p>Again you polarize my position, creating a straw man. I never said discount athletic achievement. I said treat exceptional athletic achievement on par with exceptional musical and community service achievement. Caltech is a school solely focused on academics, so you misrepresent what I say. I said don’t actively recruit athletes, because a commitment to sports is not more special than a commitment to an instrument or a personal business or debate team. </p>
<p>This doesn’t create cookie cutters, people will still be chosen based on the depth and breadth of their after school activities. But it does weed out the few great athletes who aren’t up to par academically and don’t have other amazing talents, who get in because Columbia needs to create a full competitive team. We’ll still have teams (some won’t be as good), but I say ■■■ it, we already lose 90-95% of our conference football games, the fencers and other sports we are good at will still attract top talent. But I advocate that we stop spending hundreds of thousands of dollars each year trying to get a competitive football team when it is well neigh impossible and treat sports on an equal footing to other extra-curricular pursuits. We don’t lose sleep if one year our parliamentary debate team doesn’t have enough kids to be competitive, I’m saying this special treatment towards sports is ridiculous.</p>
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<p>If you cannot yet think in shades of gray, then stop posting and get back to school. I promise you, within “hard work” there is a huge variance in how much effort people put in. The application process is also multi faceted, so taking risks, developing a strategy and working efficiently are all part of it. there is enough scope to create a bar and systematically evaluate whether people meet it or not.</p>
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<p>mpicz, you’re still in high school where everyone’s a winner and you have no sense of inadequacy. The bar is very high to get into a top school, and sadly most “amazing” people are still inadequate, whether those reasons be for achievement or fit. I am entitled to study at Columbia because I beat the competition to get in. Yes many kids with great stats were rejected, but the application process however subjective, is not bingo. You are never entitled to win a game of roulette, but getting into college is not roulette. Most people who are at Columbia (or any top school) are entitled to be there because of their hard work and strategy. To say it is luck is to abase my achievements, which I worked hard for, yes worked harder and worked smarter than those kids who got rejected. This is competition, this is sparta, when you work towards something, you’ll feel the same way.</p>
<p>i agree with you but colleges are also businesses and need to make money. great sports teams at a college can bring in money? i dont know ive never attending a game or anything but if they do then you want to keep sports teams at your schools. this is because if they dont bring in money either you will have to pay more or society will pay more with their taxes</p>
<p>also i am a speedcuber, i solve rubiks cubes, 4x4 cube 5x5 cube very fast and i blindfold solve the rubiks cube. will these make my application stronger, probably not much because it wouldnt bring in money or recognition like a sports play would</p>
<p>^^yes for a state school or for Duke basketball, that’s why those schools have athlete scholarships, and that makes good business sense. But Columbia gets no money for it’s sports teams, or if it does, it’s still a massive loss. There are definitely many teams which bring in no revenue at all. Correct argument, wrongly applied.</p>
<p>Don’t give me that high school **** please. I don’t know your accomplishments, but I know mine and they are stellar…so I don’t need the “you’re in highschool” comment. YOU obviously don’t get the point confidentialcoll</p>
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<p>Hahaha I think you need to re-read IBfootballers original post, because you obviously can’t comprehend what he was referring to.</p>
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<p>Who said it was luck? I don’t think you get the point. To say that you’re entitled to a top university because you were admitted (you didn’t “beat the competition”), directly infers that the people who weren’t admitted are not “entitled”. So pretty much if you get wait listed at let say tufts because they felt you were over qualified and wanted to protect their yield you were not entitled to a tufts education? (by your logic). I obviously don’t believe anyone’s entitled to anything, it is a privilege to attend these schools. </p>
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<p>Oh my! Thanks for informing me! You know, my Father, Mother, and 2 siblings who all attended Ivy league schools (with the exception of a Dukie who turned down 2 Ivys) never told me about that. Man I thought it was easy to get in.</p>
<p>Fact of the matter is no ones entitled to any university, no ones demeaning the work you’ve put in, because almost everyone on here has put in the same or even more work. But I can’t stop you from feeling like you’re above others. I would ask what else you now feel you’re entitled to, but that would be a waste of time to read. I can probably guess.</p>
<p>And I also don’t understand how your main argument for being “entitled” to Columbia was simple admittance. Then when I go back in this thread I see your countless arguments about athletes. They were admitted! Most “beat out the competition” way before you did. </p>
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<p>Your past arugments are basically putting down the accomplishments of the athletes (despite your fluffy way of putting it). You obviously don’t know how hard it is to be a student athlete, just as I supposedly don’t know the work you’ve put in to land you an admittance to columbia (which is BS). </p>
<p>I don’t know how it feels to work towards something? I don’t know about competition? How about 2 work outs a day (along with school work and studying for the SATs; 2100 on first take as sophomore), up until the day I won a state championship as a sophomore. Please think a little before you belittle a little highschooler who has “no sense of inadequacy”
Good talking to you though, Ill see you at Columbia in a couple years…maybe.</p>
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<p>I said most people are entitled to be at Columbia, some schools practice yield protection more than others, but most do it to a small extent and columbia is definitely on the smaller end of the spectrum (low acceptance rate and low(ish) yeild). That’s why given that you are admitted it’s most likely you were good enough even without the yeild protection. And here, you are entitled to your education.</p>
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<p>And herein lies the problem, you believe you aren’t entitled to anything, how about security if you are a law abiding, tax paying citizen? how about a wage if you work hard?</p>
<p>I’m entitled to a lot of other things for the effort I put in, which i will not mention because engaging in a dck measuring contest as you have done, only makes you look like a dck.</p>
<p>But hard work in college entitles you to a better grad school or job, working hard in that job entitles you to a higher pay than others around you, etc etc. I called you a high-schooler, not because you are one, but because you haven’t stopped thinking like one. The world isn’t equal, everyone is not a winner, I am entitled to rewards when I do better than others. College admissions is still a meritocracy when you remove children of donors and a few other distorting factors like athletics and AA. Under the constraint of limited information, top universities still pick the smartest and most hard working applicants. It is most likely that if you made it to Columbia, you deserve to be at the university. I applied with no special arbitrary status like most attendees, we are all entitled to be at Columbia.</p>
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<p>Yes I’m sure your brilliant and accomplished Mpicz, but you’ve missed my point. if you haven’t cheated, then you are entitled to all that you have achieved. It surprising that even with a 2100 you don’t understand this concept</p>
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<p>I do not imply that sporting achievement is less worthy than other achievement. It’s frankly annoying that you continue to mischaracterize my argument. I said 15 hours a week on your sport is as worthy as 15 hours on a piano trying to perfect a performance. If it takes 30 hours a week to kick a$$ at a sport then compare it to 30hours of X Y or Z. It’s arbitrary to say otherwise. The burden of proof is on you if you say that sporting achievement trumps all other extra-curricular achievement. Many people get passionate about what they spend their lives doing.</p>
<p>When did I say sports achievement trumps all other extra-curricular achievement? Also who said my sport is the only extra curricular I’m passionate about? I don’t want to start comparing stats, but for 2 years of high school I’ve achieved a lot. </p>
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<p>I laugh at this. Get your head out of your ass and stop back tracking on your previous statements. You can reply if you want, you know…so you can feel special and get the last word in. Build up your ego that you probably feel you’re entitled to…since you’re an Ivy leaguer and everything.</p>
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<p>I never said that was your argument, you mischaracterised my argument as belittling sporting achievement and you were wrong. i reiterated my argument that sports should not be treated as superior extra-curricular involvement. You were never asked how involved you were sports, thanks for sharing, I hope you feel better.</p>
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<p>sure, but this doesn’t in any way change the crux of my argument about entitlement.</p>
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<p>typical of posters who have nothing of value left to add, blame the other for their ego, and pretend to leave with grace. Newsflash kid, you were the one dug up a fcking 6 week old thread.</p>
<p>Im sorry if I don’t want to read and analyze every aspect of your post then start making quotes and replying to every single one. No need to argue on and on, I made my points and I stick to them. I love your whole little “kid” thing. That’s typical of the skinny little 5’7 dude who comes on here trying to act big and bad when in reality…hmm. Physical stature doesn’t really matter, but if you tried all that **** talking anywhere but over the computer, you would be having some problems. Especially where I live, but I know you wouldn’t…because posers don’t test their luck like that.</p>
<p>Go ahead an dissect that post. I bumped this for more information, I like to gain knowledge. But you’ve provided me with nothing, thanks.</p>
<p>Although I generally oppose the emphasis on sports at the Ivies, I will say, in support, that they do a great job of graduating their athletes. So the people they take, even those with low grades, make it through. The three Ivies for which I am familiar with the undergrad environment do not have courses to carry an unqualified student through. So is someone with 1600 SATs likely to excel academically at Columbia? It seems unlikely. But I bet you this guy will get a real Columbia education, and have the kind of subsequent career that is typical of graduates of elite colleges.</p>
<p>Athletes who graduate from the Ivies tend to have higher incomes, overall, than do the rest of the students. This is in spite of their significantly lower average grades. </p>
<p>This is the Ivies, whose academic admissions standards are ridiculous. I agree that it is an entirely different issue than at the serious D1 schools, where, as others have noted, the education of the athletes is not really a goal.</p>
<p>I have a colleague who was a scholarship football player at a CFA school. He was also a very good student. He ended up dropping off the team because he realized he was not going to maintain premed grades and keep up on the field. He is still a football fan, but he is now a doctor- and convinced it never would have happened if he had stayed on the team.</p>
<p>As a recruit, I find it very disheartening that athletes are thought to be subpar to the average student. I scored a 1910 on my SATs and have a GPA of a 3.9. These scores may not be as high as most of the other students that gain admission to Columbia but were achieved while participating in a very demanding sport that left me with little to no time to study for the SATs and barely any time to focus on school work. Everyday after school I would have practice for two hours and physical therapy afterwards. It wasn’t an option to go home after physical therapy to study all night because I needed at least 8 hours of sleep to be able to participate in my sport effectively the next day. My weekends were filled with athletics events as well so where would the time be to study? </p>
<p>On the Columbia team that I was recruited by, I would be considered average academically. The teams GPA is around a 3.5 so I find it interesting that with about half the people on the team with lower SAT scores and lower GPAs than me obviously were able to succeed at Columbia.</p>
<p>A 3.9 in HS? Weighted or unweighted? </p>
<p>I think my student (helmet) athlete would take exception to being considered stupid. He’d be on the table at any admissions committee.</p>