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But it is more than the IVYies are weak at these sports compared to other D1 schools … it’s a systematic reason … these are full scholarship sports … which put the IVYies at a big disadvantage and it shows in the results. In the sports where scholarships can be (and typically are) partial scholarships the FA strength of the IVYies can get them in the hunt with the other D1 schools.</p>
<p>3togo makes the key point but more importantly so does the NCAA. Ivy football/basketball is D1-AA which is massively different from D1-A. In D1-A all the scholarships must be full rides with no exceptions. So mixing the results with D1-A schools in these two sports is comparing apples and oranges. However no one can argue that the strength of some ivy D1 sports can be weak at the national level but my statement that the ivies are competitive against the the majority of D1 schools in most sports is accurate. I think it is far more accurate to go look at the national rankings in all of the other sports and in almost every case more than one ivy team is in the top 20-25. In previous posts I have done so for men’s lacrosse, waterpolo, wrestling, soccer, squash, and cross country. Now here are some others: m fencing-four teams in top ten, w field hockey-four in top 45 including 4th, w lacrosse-four in top twenty,w rowing -four in top twenty.</p>
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<p>Whether the reason is “systematic” or not is beside the point. Football and basketball still should be included when assessing the strength of Ivy sports. They are key sports. In college they are THE key sports. And the Ivy schools take them very seriously. When Harvard students or alums talk about The Game against Yale, they are not talking about lacrosse or water polo. </p>
<p>If you say the Ivy League is strong in athletics just so long as you consider only minor sports, then what you really saying is that the Ivy League is weak. But if you slice the baloney just right you can make it look strong.</p>
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<p>Nope. Div 1-AA applies to football only. Not basketball. The Ivy League plays plain old Div 1 in basketball. The Ivy League champion gets an automatic berth in the regular Div 1 NCAA Basketball Tournament (where it usually loses on the first round - Cornell advancing past the first round this past tournament was a rare exception).</p>
<p>Ivy League athletes are volunteers; all other Division I athletes are essentially compensated to varying degrees via scholarship contract. Can they even be compared apples-to-apples? I don’t think so: the Ivy athletes have nothing riding on their performance nor any material incentive to do well; they perform at a highly competitive level literally for fun and love of the game. For that reason, I think they deserve extra credit on the Directors Cup scale.</p>
<p>Of course that right. But from the first post I have always excluded F/B but you are quite right that’s all anyone cares about. Even the NCAA soccer final is often poorly attended.</p>
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This is like when Marion Barry said the crime rate in DC wasn’t that bad, except for the murders.</p>
<p>So this thread has become a debate on whether Ivy League is strong in atheletics? I guess the logic is that if it is strong, then it means the universities aggressively recruite athelete students by giving them substantial preferential treatment; but if it is not, then it follows that they haven’t been recruiting the best atheletes out there, in which case they’d have to lower the SAT requirement by 200 instead of 100 as they do now? I am lost in all the game talks.</p>
<p>For me, the point is simply that the Ivy’s are recruiting student-athletes, not athletes.</p>
<p>But, I also wanted to make the point, fwiw (which might not be much, to be honest), that the group of student-athletes who do choose Ivies are self-selecting, to some extent, and really are motivated primarily by academic concerns.</p>
<p>Whether this has any bearing on your feelings about “preferential” treatment of athletes during admiissions is probably relative to your feelings of your child being impacted by this practice. OTOH, I would say to those who are saddened that their child may not attend an Ivy due to a lack of athletic ability, that there are those of us out there who have children who will not attend an Ivy due to lack of standardized test taking skills. (It is arguable whether this is the best measure of future academic success, either)</p>
<p>Anyway, reasonable people can disagree on these issues, easily, I think.</p>
<p>Trojanchick wrote:</p>
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<p>California is dominant in Water polo. If a student wants to play at a top school for polo and have even a better than average chance of helping their school win a national title, for the women it’s going to be USC, UCLA, Stanford; for the men, it’s USC, UCLA, Stanford and Cal. These may not be Ivies, but they are exceptional schools. </p>
<p>For many of the student athletes that compete in this sport, they may also hold a spot on the National team which trains in southern California, hoping to make it to the Olympics. While there may be some that go to a school that’s not in California, logistically, it would be a challenge to make it to practices and tournaments if they are outside the state.</p>
<p>“Ivy League athletes are volunteers; all other Division I athletes are essentially compensated to varying degrees via scholarship contract.”</p>
<p>While there are some lovely scholarships at D1 schools, not all D1 athletes (all sports, all athletes) are on scholarship. Many D1 schools can’t even offer the full amount of scholarships they’re allowed to offer for each sport.</p>
<p>Have been to a couple of workshops on athletic recruiting that were excellent. One speaker drew a pie with a bunch of slices (slices included athletic, legacy, development, academic prize-winning superstar, instrument, URM, etc. ) that represented different “hooks” (or whatever word you want to use.) The point being made was that about 1/2 to 2/3 of all admissions slots, at all schools, are for “hooked” students. But…less than 1/2 to 2/3 of the applicants have a hook. So…to increase chances of admission…find a way to place yourself into 1 or more of the hooked slices. </p>
<p>For the students who can use an athletic hook to get into a better school than they would have without the hook – I’m all for it! (Unfortunately, don’t have any kids with this skill set!)</p>
<p>I’m with you, Bay. Healthy mind in a healthy body.</p>
<p>A recent 4-part series in the Daily Princetonian on this issue…interesting reader comments:
[Day</a> in the life: A rough playing field - The Daily Princetonian](<a href=“http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/11/30/27039/]Day”>http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/11/30/27039/)
[Getting</a> in: Athletes? road to admission - The Daily Princetonian](<a href=“http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/12/01/27054/]Getting”>http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/12/01/27054/)
[Making</a> plays, making grades - The Daily Princetonian](<a href=“http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/12/02/27074/]Making”>http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/12/02/27074/)
[Why</a> Princeton? - The Daily Princetonian](<a href=“http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/12/03/27089/]Why”>http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/12/03/27089/)</p>
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<p>I would like to have ONE substantiated example of a musician being “recruited” to a top school. I have never heard of one. Certainly, if a kid sends an artistic supplement–something that they are discouraged from doing at most top schools–the admissions committee may get an opinion back stating that the kid is good and would be an asset to the orchestra/band/whatever. That is a far cry from being a recruited athlete. It is also a far cry from being “hooked.” The musician’s application doesn’t go into a different pile. It’s just another EC.</p>
<p>I have never heard of a conductor who has a certain number of tips to use to fill the orchestra, not even when it comes to essential but harder to find instruments. Does the conductor have a budget to travel about to musical venues like youth symphony performances, summer festivals and camps, and all-state performances to “recruit” musicians? The idea is laughable. Yet that is the NORM in athletics.</p>
<p>I have yet to see any evidence that the idea that musicians are also “recruited” is anything more than the usual nonsense meant to justify the admissions break given to athletes.</p>
<p>Consolation,</p>
<p>Two words: Yo-yo Ma. lol</p>
<p>I haven’t seen any claims that being a musician is a “hook.” </p>
<p>The Ivies have decided that they want to be members of NCAA’s Division I. In order to do that, they are required to field a certain number of teams (I think it is 10 for men and 10 for women). If they can’t do that, then they cannot play in Division I. That is why they need some way to snag certain athletes other than just crossing their fingers that they get the right ones when the admissions offers go out and come back.</p>
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<p>Well, isn’t that pretty much exactly what 2boysima said in post #192, the post Consolation was responding to, which listed “instrument” among the “hooks” in college admissions? It ain’t happening. Legacy, development, recruited athlete, URM—those are the standard “hooks” as far as I’m aware. Not musician.</p>
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<p>Well, I’m not so sure about that. For football players, at least, the Ivies seem to waive any semblance of meaningful academic standards. Here’s an excerpt from the series in the Daily Princetonian:</p>
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<p>So, in other words, 22 of the 30 recruited football players can be in roughly the bottom 2 or 3% of the entering class (two standard deviations below the average= approximately the bottom 2.3%), and still be in perfect compliance with Ivy League rules. And even the “top band” of 8 football recruits, the stellar academic performers of the group, need not come anywhere near the 25th percentile of the entering class; “one standard deviation below the average” works out to, what, about the bottom 16%? To my mind if they’re sending out “likely letters” to kids in this academic range (Princeton’s standard practice for athletic recruits, according to the Daily Princetonian), these kids are coming in as athletes pure and simple, not “student-athletes” in any meaningful sense of the word.</p>