Does athletics seem to be a major hook for the ivy schools?

Parents Forum
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<p>Xiggi, I am not making any assertions or arguments. Thus, I am not sure what you are "flatly rejecting."
I was just wondering what others have found in ED admissions at top schools?
I am also NOT presuming that selective colleges take AVERAGE high schools kids merely because of athletics. I have wondered, however,whether having an athletic EC gives a boost to those already qualified candidates and make them stand out over a number of other types of "normal" ECs?</p>

<p>Moreover, I am not looking at those on Rosters at IVY schools or who are specifically recruited students because of the exceptional athletic prowess.</p>

<p>Xiggi objects to my unverified "anedoctes, " although I guess he means unverified anecdotes. The original reason for my starting this thread is to see if these "anecdotes" can be verified at other schools. Does having athletic ECs, whether in varsity or intermural, give a bigger boost to those candidates in some way? Also, I am NOT talking about the super athletes who are specifically recurited as such.</p>

<p>For some reason, this thread seems to have taken a life of its own beyond what I originally asked or intended.</p>

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<p>Xiggi said:
"I'd like to think that students who reach the level of being recruited do indeed receive special treatments. Again, it depends of the level the students reached in the first place."</p>

<p>The Ivies do NOT recruit for the other activities. IF you apply, and IF you excel it will help. But there really isn't a debate or chess coach or drama or dance coach or faculty member who has the job of recruiting. Indeed, at most of the top schools, the debate and chess teams are entirely student run. At at least some, dance and drama are as well.</p>

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<p>"Both Harvard and NEC believe the initiative will enhance their academic communities. According to Thomas Forrest Kelly, chairman of the Harvard Music Department, the program "will attract extremely talented musicians, capable of a major career in music, and capable of being recruited to Harvard, who do not go to Harvard because of their desire to retain close connections with the professional world of music." Such students "would enrich the Harvard community by their presence and the musical world by the quality of their education."</p>

<p><a href="http://music.fas.harvard.edu/deptnewsandpublications.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://music.fas.harvard.edu/deptnewsandpublications.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Taxguy, as I stated earlier, I did not play a sport and got into Stanford. Sports are only beneficial if one is recruited. Further, I know many people who did not play sports and were accepted by HYPSM.</p>

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<p>I have absolutely no idea if being an athlete assists students who are qualified for the elites and who excel in other extracurricular activities in their quest for admission. At my D's school, all of the students except one (the only boy who was also the biggest athlete, but not a recruited one) in the top 10% of the class were accepted to their EA/ED elite schools. One was a recruited athlete to Princeton. One does NO athletics and was accepted to Princeton. All the others are on some team (none good enough to be recruited), but have other activities to which they devote their time and passion. I have absolutely no idea what all this means.</p>

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<p>xiggi posted "You should know that for many sports and for many regions that may not be the case at all. For instance -and this vary by geographical regions- for a sport such as soccer, high school participation means close to nothing. The recruiting AND recognition takes place at the club level. A soccer player could be a 4 year varsity starter at many schools without meaning ANYTHING for college recruiting. The recognition comes from playing at high club levels or from ODP participation at regional and national levels."</p>

<p>xiggi - well said. this is true, not only for soccer, but for other sports as well. it's expected that the athlete will participate in club/travel team for sport which includes travel to regional and national events. these events are where the college coaches evaluate them. you have to consider that some of these athletes are practicing with the club team and also practicing with their high school (but perhaps in a different sport). there is a great deal of time involved for these athletes who may even travel an hour or more to their club team practices.</p>

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<p>I intentionally left out music because it's faculty driven and does recruit. It's also a SUBJECT. You can MAJOR or CONCENTRATE in it. The initiative your post cites is a double degree program between Harvard and the New England Conservatory. </p>

<p>You can't major or concentrate in debate or chess at least in the Ivies. Faculty advisors are rare or non-existent in the Ivies . Only a few of the Ivies offer courses in speech and, as far as I know, none offers a speech major. There are no courses in chess and most teams are student run. So are many Ivy dance programs and some Ivy drama programs.</p>

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<p>Rather than dwell on anectdotal evidence, I'd like to focus on recruited athletes as a group. The Ivy school athletes on roster must be within one standard deviation of the Academic Index of the overall student body. To put this in perspective, one standard deviation on a normal distribution equates to the 15.7 percentile! Furthermore, that percentile includes the athletes themselves, which is a significant number. Compared to the non-athletes, the AI for an athlete drops to the bottom 10% of the admitted class.</p>

<p>I'm not against admitting students with a special talent, sports or otherwise, but I do object to magnitude of the preference given to athletes and to the size of the group as whole. I don't think you'll find any other group with a special talent that has an AI that low.</p>

<p>I'd like to see the Ivy League adjust the AI Index preference for athletes to a 0.6 standard deviation. Athletes as a group should at least be at the 25th percentile of the overall student body. If that makes it too difficult for Ivies to find D-I calibre athletes, they should switch to D-III and compete against other schools that don't offer scholarships.</p>

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<p>I agree with Xiggi. In soccer, playing on a club is definitely one of the major requirements for college recruiting. My 13-year-old son plays on FC Delco, which is one of the top boys programs in the country. NCAA soccer rules limit men’s soccer teams to a total of 9.9 scholarships (can be split between players). Since there are 11 players on the field at a time, then there are zero teams with even all STARTING players on full scholarship. Furthermore, the top teams have 25 to 30 players, so it is very rare for a soccer player to receive a guaranteed full scholarship for all four years. </p>

<p>How is this relevant to sports in the Ivy League? Although soccer teams do not generally provide full athletic scholarships, there are financial benefits in other ways. In our state of Pennsylvania, Penn State costs an in-state student about $18,000 to $20,000 per year, including tuition, room, board, etc. Plus, Penn State has one of the WORST histories of providing need-based financial aid. Using the information from USNews, percentage of need met at Penn State is something like 67 percent. At the Ivies and other top colleges, it is typically 100 percent. Furthermore, at the better schools (with large endowments), the financial aid package may include more grants and fewer loans. What that means is that for essentially all family income levels of about $120,000 per year or less, the Ivy Leagues cost LESS than Penn State for an in-state resident! Hence, although playing soccer at an elite level does not typically lead to a full-tuition athletic scholarship to a great school, it does have financial benefits for some players. It allows them to get accepted at colleges that offer better need-based financial aid.</p>

<p>FC Delco is a club that emphasizes not only excellence on the soccer field but also academically. They also post their players GPA’s and SAT scores on-line (optionally, and editable by each player, for college coaches to be able to review). Here are some of the scores and colleges to which the U-18 players have already committed (the team’s web page is <a href="http://www.fcdelco.org/Teams/Crunch/index_E.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.fcdelco.org/Teams/Crunch/index_E.html&lt;/a>, if you want to see the whole list). Obviously, some of these reported scores are only for math & verbal, and some are for all three sections.</p>

<p>1310 Princeton
1230 Duke
2150 Yale
1980 Northwestern
1970 Penn
1130 (PSAT) Duke
1160 Duke
1230 Swarthmore</p>

<p>Probably all of these players are at least on the ODP state team, many regional and / or national pool. The team was state champions six straight years and is ranked about 18th nationally. They were formerly an even higher-ranked team, but their leading scorer is in the residency program in Bradenton, Florida where he is a starting forward for the U-17 U.S. National Team.</p>

<p>FC Delco has a number of other players who choose lesser academic schools but have stronger college soccer teams. For example, three players on University of Maryland’s 2005 national championship team were from FC Delco, and one of the starters, who is a sophomore, turned down admission to Harvard because he wanted to pursue high-level soccer at Maryland. </p>

<p>When I read some responses that Ivy League schools should not make exceptions for athletes, I tend to agree with Xiggi and others that you do not realize the number of hours and sacrifice these kids make, while still maintaining relatively strong academic accomplishments. These players have practices hundreds of hours each year with their teams, travel around the nation (and sometimes internationally) to many tournaments, and practice a lot on their own. Do you know how many hours it takes playing with a soccer ball in the back yard until you can juggle a ball more than ten thousand times without it hitting the ground? My 13-year-old son can tell you. He loves soccer, and plays with a soccer ball all the time. He also manages to play piano 2 ½ hours per day, and works hard at his academics. I do not see any reason why, if in 4 years his test scores are comparable to those of other Ivy-bound FC Delco players, that he should not be admitted to Princeton, Harvard, etc. before someone with comparable SAT scores who volunteers 500 hours per year in a soup kitchen or spends a comparable amount of time in Model UN.</p>

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<p>1310 Princeton
1230 Duke
2150 Yale
1980 Northwestern
1970 Penn
1130 (PSAT) Duke
1160 Duke
1230 Swarthmore</p>

<p>And I bet there are virtually no dropouts. While it would be nice for my community to send at least one non-athlete to an Ivy every once in a while, I can't honestly see why it should be considered a problem.</p>

<p>As for H's music arrangements, we were singularly unimpressed upon our visit (which caused my d. not to apply), and lots of H. music students are to be seen in John Harbison's introductory class at MIT.</p>

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<p>pafather, your son must be one hell of a player if he can juggle 10,000 times in a row without the ball hitting the ground.</p>

<p>My son's team was ranked 11th once in the country and there will be 1 kid that can go to any college he wants (and he should). A couple of other kids are super talented, but I think with their grades, it's community college.</p>

<p>Looking at the money spent to play club soccer, even with scholarships, very few players end up ahead financially.</p>

<p>Your son reminds me of my wife's cousin.... who ended up playing for Columbia.</p>

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<p>In response to why non-recruited or intermural athletes might get a slight boost in admissions, it could be because of what commitment to a team entails. Even if one is not the most amazing athlete, in order to be a good teammate one must be reliable, responsible, able to interact well with others, and many other qualities. When on a team, other people rely on your actions, you can't just decide "I'm tired, I dont want to go to practice today." So, though other activities might foster these qualities, team sports definitely foster important character traits that colleges would want in their students.</p>

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<p>"Looking at the money spent to play club soccer, even with scholarships, very few players end up ahead financially."</p>

<p>That is absolutely true, but the lessons learned and the memories are priceless. </p>

<p>/end of hackneyed clich</p>

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<p>I don't mean to be rude to Pafather,but his post illustrates the fact that the parents of athletes just don't quite "get" that there are kids in other ECs who spend a LOT more than 500 hours a year on ECs other than sports. </p>

<p>We aren't comparing kids who play club soccer with kids who spend 500 hours a year working in a soup kitchen. We are talking about the kinds of kids who are top debaters on the "national circuit" or are chess masters or who spend 2,000-3,000 hours a year doing community service and created community service organizations that will continue after they finish high school or who danced in semi-professional companies while taking 3-4 lessons a week or who run highly successive small businesses in things like Junior Achievement while achieving national leadership positions in the organization. They spend just as much time on their activities as any athlete. In many cases, they travel just as much. The Ivies accept these students, but they don't go out and recruit them the same way they recruit athletes.</p>

<p>Moreover, most of the kids who do such things and get into top Ivies also have SATs one heck of a lot higher than those listed for the soccer team.</p>

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<p>dstark,</p>

<p>If you have any interest in seeing some UNBELIEVEABLE soccer juggling, you should look at the following web site (<a href="http://www.ebaumsworld.com/mrwoo.html)%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.ebaumsworld.com/mrwoo.html)&lt;/a>. This guy's control of the soccer ball with his head, shoulders, toes, heels, etc. is amazing.</p>

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<p>That guy is amazing to say the least. Any school should take him and I am not kidding. :)</p>

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<p>I still don't really get it. Why is a student with 1250 SAT scores, unaided by the family benefit of higher income (worth 200 points according to the CollegeBoard) but who nonetheless gets top grades, and for years has honed his or her skills to become a topflight athlete, with focus, grit, determination, and talent, somehow less qualified that a student with the same grades, but with higher income, went to prep school, took the SATs three or four times to get his or her "combined 1500" on a test which, each time, represents a total of 5 hours out of his/her life? Especially since it has been amply demonstrated that the the first student can do the work?</p>

<p>The schools COULD choose otherwise. But I hardly can find a reason why they should feel like they have to.</p>

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<p>..why do you think the athletes at Ivies are less affluent than other students? That may be true in a couple of sports, but across the board it definitely isn't. Example: one year of the 14 students on the women's squash team at one Ivy, 12 were grads of an "ancient 8" boarding school; the other two were internationals. There are a few, but only a few, kids who went to public schools on Ivy squash, sailing,ice dancing,diving, fencing, polo, water polo, equestrian, field hockey, ski,golf and lacrosse teams. The majority of the few who went to public schools did so in very affluent communities. (Yes, there are exceptions, but they are exceptions.) Even on the ice hockey, football, basketball, baseball,softball, swimming and soccer teams, there are LOTS of kids who went to prep schools. Most of the kids playing on club soccer teams are from affluent families. If anything, the recruited athlete at an Ivy is MORE likely to have attended a private school than the non-athlete. There also FAR more likely to have attended a 5th year at a boarding school to raise their AI enough to get into an Ivy than non-athletes are. </p>

<p>Here's a link to the roster of the ice hockey team at Yale. See a lot of US public school grads on it?</p>

<p><a href="http://yalebulldogs.collegesports.com/sports/m-hockey/mtt/yale-m-hockey-mtt.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://yalebulldogs.collegesports.com/sports/m-hockey/mtt/yale-m-hockey-mtt.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>And why on earth do you think that the athletes haven't taken SAT prep courses? Or that a smaller percentage of them take them than of non-athletes? Where are you getting your data?</p>

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<p>"Even on the ice hockey, football, basketball, baseball,softball, swimming and soccer teams, there are LOTS of kids who went to prep schools.."</p>

<p>My suggestion was confined to that very small segment of the Ivy student bodies from the broad middle class $40k-$90k - and who gets accepted and who doesn't (which is what I thought the subject was.) As I already reported, in my community (which is highly educated, good schools, etc. state capital) only athletes get in. Doesn't matter that the student has 1600 SATs (old) or is valedictorian - if they aren't athletes, they don't get in. Those who do get in are highly qualified students, but on measures like SATs (especially) and GPAs, they don't measure up to the non-athletes who are rejected. And I have no problem with that - it's just the way it is.</p>

<p>So what I'm saying is - if you are in that very broad segment of American students economically, competing for a statistically small portion of Ivy admits, an athletic hook is extraordinarily important, and, I'd be willing to bet make up a significant portion of sports team. But, having said that, using P. as an example, if every single student attending from that income category was an athlete, P. still wouldn't have filled up all the places on the sports teams. There are really that few of them. (In the P. class of 2009, there was a total of 254 students in the $40k-$80k range.)</p>

<p>(P.S. My town, the state capital, doesn't even have an outlet for SAT prep.)</p>

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<p>First, mini says:
"My suggestion was confined to that very small segment of the Ivy student bodies from the broad middle class $40k-$90k - and who gets accepted and who doesn't (which is what I thought the subject was.)"</p>

<p>Uh, no, that was not the subject. Nobody but you said anything about income brackets. The OP is from Rockville, Maryland, and unless I'm very mistaken very few families in the $40-90K income bracket live in Rockville, Maryland. It's more affluent than that. </p>

<p>Second, you seem to be saying because most of the people in your community fall in that income bracket and most of the people who get in from your community are athletes, that proves that most of the people who get in from that income bracket are athletes. If I've misunderstood you, feel free to correct me. But if that's what you are saying, it's wholly illogical.</p>

<p>Because of supply and demand, it's easier to get into the Ivies with an athletic hook; on that we agree. But there's no evidence for your assertion that the effect of an athletic hook matters more for kids in the middle class or for kids on financial aid than it does for kids from more affluent families. If a kid is the best soccer goalie who is applying and the coach needs a soccer goalie, neither he nor admissions is going to take a peek to see if the kid applied for financial aid. </p>

<p>Based on my own experience, I could easily come to the opposite conclusion using your logic. My kids went to a NYC public magnet. LOTS of kids go to Ivies --the Ivies, MIT and Stanford generally take about one-third of each class. VERY few are recruited athletes. The wealthier suburban school districts in Westchester send a much smaller % of kids to Ivies and the vast majority of those that go are athletes. Thus, if I tried to figure out the impact of income on athletic recruiting based on this data alone, I'd come to the exact opposite conclusion---in higher income brackets, being an athlete helps more. </p>

<p>Indeed, as I said before, it's my impression that Princeton varsity athletes are WEALTHIER than the average Princeton student. I don't see any proof whatsoever that the middle income kids attending Princeton you are focusing upon are more likely than any other Princeton students to be athletes.</p>

<p>I would suggest that part of the reason for the situation in your community may be that it doesn't offer many other ECs at the most competitive level. I mean do your high schools have chess, debate, mock trial and Fed Reserve Challenge teams that compete at a national level? Do you have a Junior Achievement or FBA -type program? Do you have strong performing arts programs? Does it have good visual arts programs? Are kids who excel in these fields encouraged to submit their work to national competitions? Do your schools all offer the AMC and other math competitions? Have a faculty member who helps kids who want to compete in Intel or other science contests? </p>

<p>If your community has strong sports programs and does NOT have strong programs in other ECs, then of course the kids who excel in sports will be the ones who have the "beyond the school" recognition usually needed to get into the Ivies. It's easier to get in with sports anyway. The public magnets in NYC have weak sports programs, so it's rare that the kids get in as recruited athletes. Kids who excel in OTHER areas often get in because they are actually better able to get "beyond the school" recognition than the excellent basketball player who is on a terrible team. My kids' old high school does NOT have football, golf, ice hockey or field hockey teams, so it's next to impossible to attend it and be a recruited athlete in one of those sports. </p>

<p>So, while agreeing that it's easier to get into the Ivies as athletes, I disagree that this has anything whatsoever to do with income. Maybe the community that doesn't have a SAT prep course doesn't have a good programs in intellectual activities either. ...or maybe it does...I don't know. But if a kid with a 4.0 unweighted gpa and 1600 SAT score also gets national recognition in an EC, he'll get into an Ivy too.</p>