<p>jonri, it's interesting but most of that list of Yale players don't list a school, just a last team. :)</p>
<p>It seems that we're talking about two different things in this thread: kids who are athletes but not recruited athletes who are accepted to selective schools, and/or recruited athletes who are accepted to selective schools. Anecdotally, it seems that it may be the case with the kids that taxguy knows that they all had sports as an e/c but weren't recruited athletes. I don't know if that's the case everywhere or if it's an anomoly which exists in his school district for just this year.</p>
<p>The two kids that we know well who were recruited at selective schools were both very good students but probably would not have been admitted without their athletic abilities taken into consideration. One was for tennis and one for soccer. One has graduated, near the top of her class, and is now applying to law schools. The other is still as student at Princeton and is doing very well both academically and athletically. Both are from upper middle class families and both had their educations paid for with very generous financial aid. </p>
<p>The amount of time these two girls have devoted to their sports is far above anything which any of my girls have done with their e/c's, including my 'drama' kid who went to an arts h/s and spent most of the school year with a schedule of 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. at school. Their sports are year round commitments and, for the tennis kid, several hours of practice daily and I mean 365 days a year since she was a very young girl. Both of these kids went to public schools all the way through, as did every other kid we know who is a recruited athlete. The others are at UCLA, U of Louisiana, UNC, Ball State, Ohio State, and UMich.</p>
<p>These are obviously also anecdotal reports and I have no way of knowing if the other tennis players or soccer players at Princeton were on similar schedules but I'm guessing that they probably were. This doesn't make it right that these girls had an advantage over someone with superior academic stats but I think the entire issue of college athletics has to be included in that discussion, and that is for another day. :)</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."</p>
<p>Since the prestige colleges won't dare to reveal the true admissions odds at the various income levels (except to note that when it comes to actual enrollment, those from the broad middle ($40k-$92k) are very substantially underrepresented), I doubt that they will be forthcoming in telling us anything about the characteristics of those in this category who do actually get in - and those who don't.</p>
<p>"How did these upper middle class students get financial aid? Especially from Princeton?"</p>
<p>It's the new "merit aid" policy masquerading as "no loans" in an attempt to stave off competition from other merit-aid schools who may offer more.</p>
<p>dstark, that's a good question. They're both Canadians so whether that had any influence since they wouldn't have qualified for federal aid, I don't know.</p>
<p>I believe that Canadians have access to financial aid that is very similar to what is available to US citizens. This may explain why there are virtually hundreds of Canadians playing soccer at US universities, including a good number of Canadian national team players such a MVP Sinclair of Portland or the Princeton's very own Diana Matheson. </p>
<p>xiggi, Diana is the friend of my D who is playing at Princeton. :) They started playing together when they were 5. Another friend is at UCLA - Kara Lang, but she's younger.</p>
<p>Wow, looking at that link was fun. I know 14 of those girls, all from our club. We've been away from the area for a few years so I didn't realize where they'd all ended up. I knew we were one of the top clubs in North America but that's interesting to see how many pursued it into college.</p>
<p>"xiggi, Diana is the friend of my D who is playing at Princeton. They started playing together when they were 5. Another friend is at UCLA - Kara Lang, but she's younger."</p>
<p>I 'kinda" figured that. Kara Lang is obviously a very well known player as she was the youngest player ever to play for the Canadian National team. The last NCAA final was almost a Canadian slugfest. :)</p>
<p>We have no fewer than 5 Canadian soccer players at our local school:</p>
<p>Abraham, Melissa Ottawa, Ontario *(Colonel By Secondary/U. of Ottawa)<br>
Kleinfelder, Angie Kelowna, B.C. *(Mount Boucherie Secondary)<br>
Nordin, Cara Kamloops, B.C. *(Brocklehurst Secondary HS)<br>
Popoff, Brittany Westbank, B.C. *(Mount Boucherie Secondary)
Roche, Mandy Dartmouth, Nova Scotia *(Dartmouth HS)</p>
<p>Kara really matured as a player when she was about 16. Diana was a dominant player from the time she was 6, and that's no exaggeration. She's always been a very 'smart' player with an incredible feel for the game. She's a very quiet, shy girl but put on her a soccer field and she dominates, even though she is very tiny. Seeing her stand next to Kara is amusing. :) Thanks for providing that link, I enjoyed looking at it!</p>
<p>Part of the resentment against students who are athletic recruits at Ivies and Little Ivies are that there are so many athletic recruits. There are a lot of teams, and no kid that is recruited actually has to play when they get there. Therefore, they recruit more athletes than they need because so many quit after a year or never even play at all. The Bowen book talks about this. Schools like Duke and Michigan actually recruit fewer athletes than small schools like Williams because Duke and Michigan give athletic scholarships - they know the kids will play. We have kids at our hs every year who get recruited to Ivies for sports and who don't ever play or drop out after a year. They enjoyed it in high school but very clearly used it as a hook for an Ivy.
Of course colleges need good teams and sports are important to a college. But I can see where last year a B student student athlete from our school went to a top Ivy and a straight A student with all 800s and a sciebce prize was rejected from the same school. Colleges should just be more open about the athletic recruiting process and then I think people wouldn't resent it.</p>
<p>Catherine, I wasn't aware that there were huge numbers recruited. The kids we know who have been recruited have definitely played every year they've been at their schools. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of kids who do this if it is indeed so prevalent. </p>
<p>Frankly, I don't resent the athletic recruits. The kids we know who have been athletic recruits deserved to get in, in my opinion. They work harder than most college students while there and have done an excellent job of promoting their schools within the world of college sports. I have no personal stake in it because none of my Ds went that route but I admire the kids who did and what they've accomplished.</p>
<p>Why should a well trained body not be as important as a well trained mind? Having complimentary athletic skill and mental skill is a real bonus to a school. With the athletic skill more difficult than mental skills. </p>
<p>What I really want to say is that a selective school must also give the appearance and reality in giving opportunity to lower scoring, socially and economically disadvantage but "success oriented" students. There must be HOPE for the masses. And such there cannot be to much transparency in the selection process. If the top tier schools stuck to an absolute selection criteria and revealed that criteria, one can imagine the monotony of the ensuing student body. Likewise, there must be students who fail and succeed, who becomes injured or excels, else how will we know where the bottom and top is?</p>
<p>The issue of recruited athletes has absolutely nothing to do with the original post, as a few have noted. The OP's question, about the value of (NON RECRUITED) athletic involvement to the students' chance for admission is an interesting one.<br>
I have a friend who's kids both attend a HYP school, and neither had the remotest involvement with sports; rather, both were top flight musicians and editors-in-chief of their very highly regarded school paper. By contrast, my own kids, also at ivies, did have involvement with sports among many other strong ec's. For example, my son, currently at Harvard, was a serious, sectionally ranked tennis player and Varsity captain, but not good enough to be recruited. But he was also a top nationally ranked debater, a published (first-author) - Intel finalist, and an Area All-state (read county) musician. I think that while he is currently playing on Harvard's "club tennis team", his sports involvement per se was not the issue; it simply contributed to the picture of a kid who had multiple, serious commitments to to a variety of interests.</p>
<p>Mini:
Not to veer off track, but wanted to follow up on your reference to a 200 point bump re: high income family benefit per College Board. Could you elaborate or provide a reference? Much appreciated.</p>
<ul>
<li>The SAT is a measure of resources more than of reasoning. Year after year, the College Board's own statistics depict a virtually linear correlation between SAT scores and family income. Each rise in earnings (measured in $10,000 increments) brings a commensurate rise in scores. Other research, meanwhile, has found that more than half the difference among students' scores can be explained purely on the basis of parents' level of education. </li>
</ul>
<p>I am also interested in that as well as I have been told by some parents and alum interviewers on CC that financially challenged applicants were going to be held to the same standards of those coming from high income families. Although NOT impossible, it is very difficult to be an accomplished musician and/or athlete because those things require a lot of money and time. Even if a student works (like me) to pay for those activities, it is even more difficult to maintain a close to perfect GPA and achieve super high SAT scores. There is only so much money a student can make part-time and if he/she used that money for SAT prep courses and private tutors then he/she wouldn't have the funds to pay for their sport or music lessons. I realize there are other ECs a student can participate in that require little money; however, if being an non-recruited athlete seems to aid in Ivy admissions; this puts many low income students at a disadvantage.</p>
<p>But perhaps not as good as devoting the same amount of time to a sport? Just asking, I don't know the correct answer. I am just referring to the original post on this thread.</p>
<p>There is a lot of time involved with sports--that's a given.</p>
<p>I play varsity lacrosse. We started practicing in september, twice a week, and a saturday game every week. Not that bad, Right?</p>
<p>Add that to marching band which fell on the days that I didn't have lacrosse. Now I have a schedule where I have a 3-4 hours of activity every single day of the week. That doesn't include time spent working out... Or the hours that I spend practicing bass guitar for jazz band.</p>
<p>That's the off-season. We start our regular practice schedule once we get back from break. That means 2:30-5 every day after school, and three 5:30 am workout sessions a week. That still does not include my own work out routine, which takes up an hour a day at least. When the season starts, we have games 2-3 times a week, and we have to travel as far as 3 hours away for a game, and this year we'll probably have a few overnight stays.</p>
<p>That schedule wouldn't be that bad... but second semester means a lot of papers for IB, and the season goes right up until IB and AP exams.</p>
<p>I'll admit that I'm quite a bit different than most. The kids on the lacrosse team aren't the brightest bunch, and most of them just want to graduate. </p>
<p>I have been told by a few pros and the 4 time national champion DII men's lacrosse coach that I will be recruited at all seven of the ivies that offer lacrosse because I am well into the normal applicant statistics.</p>
<p>I think that athletes deserve the extra little push into the admission pile every once in a while. I really hope it helps me get into the schools that I love. </p>
<p>And don't get me started on music or art kids. Like I said, I play bass in jazz band and it takes up a lot of time. I know about practicing for hours a day. But that is nothing like coming home bruised and battered and utterly devoid of energy... then having to write a 2,000 word paper on the effectiveness of concrete imagery versus abstract imagery.</p>
<p>Worldshopper, I agree that being a non-recruited athlete puts low income students at a disadvantage. My D plays varsity tennis. Unlike other members of her tennis team, she has never taken private tennis lessons, never belonged to any exclusive tennis clubs nor attended any tennis summer camps. Though she managed to make the varsity team despite these odds, she is struggling to keep up with the girls on her team who have the advantage of taking tennis year-round from their private coaches at exclusive clubs. Unfortunately, many of the sports the IVYs seem to like require a LOT of money to maintain. Unwittingly, by favoring certain athletes, the IVYs are in fact favoring students in the upper-income brackets who can afford these sports or who can afford to attend private school that maintain these sports.</p>