<p>poetgrl, not having won an NCAA championship does not equate to the teams being filled by students who are not serious athletes. My D has a friend, and former teammate, who was an All American at Princeton and reached the NCAA final four. She has played for the Canadian national team in the World Cup and at the Olympic level and is now playing professional soccer. Trust me, she’s a serious athlete, and she’s not unique. I could relate similar stories about kids we know who played hockey and tennis for Ivy League schools. My point is that you made a broad statement that is not universally true.</p>
<p>I said, in a later post, “with rare exceptions.” </p>
<p>I would consider this a “rare exception.”</p>
<p>If you look at the US national pool for women’s soccer, you will not find Ivy league schools in the college list. ACC, Stanford, ND, Santa Clara… It’s a lot to do with the weather, frankly. It’s cold up there to play year round, and turf and indoor fields are murder on the ACL.</p>
<p>Yes, poetgirl, I already or am always ready to agree to disagree. :)</p>
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“Normally”, this should be good enough, but in the admission game of these highly highly selective colleges, any sort of preferential treatment would make a difference. The schools of course are free to make their judgement on who would be the best fit and add most to their community, but I think people do have noticed and complained that sports seem to be playing too big of a role in college lives, which affects the admission decisions significantly.</p>
<p>poetgrl, never mind rankings, there were two Ivy League teams, out of 16, in the 2010 NCAA men’s ice hockey championship tournament. And four Ivy League players made first or second team All-American.</p>
<p>That’s not serious? </p>
<p>In any event, you should look at players, not teams. The most recent list I could find showed 10 Ivy Leaguers in the NHL.</p>
<p>The Montreal Canadiens’ number 1 draft pick last year started at Harvard last fall, and played for a year before signing to play in the NHL.</p>
<p>And in women’s ice hockey, there were 12 Ivy Leaguers out of the 44 players in this year’s under-22 US vs. Canada series:</p>
<p>[Twelve</a> Ivy Leaguers To Faceoff In Women’s Hockey Under-22 Series : The Ivy League](<a href=“http://www.ivyleaguesports.com/sports/wice/2010-11/releases/Twelve_Ivy_Leaguers_To_Faceoff]Twelve”>http://www.ivyleaguesports.com/sports/wice/2010-11/releases/Twelve_Ivy_Leaguers_To_Faceoff)</p>
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<p>[more at link]</p>
<p>It is wildly inaccurate to characterize the presence of serious hockey players at Ivy League schools as a rare exception.</p>
<p>There are even a half-dozen Ivy Leaguers in the NFL. None from Yale, for better or for worse. (I don’t think football at Yale is nearly as successful as it was around the time I was there; there were 17 Yale players drafted by the NFL between 1969 and 1982. Yes, I used to go to the games and watch players like Dick Jauron and Gary Fencik, Calvin Hill being a little before my time, but it wouldn’t have bothered me in the least if they’d had no football team at all.)</p>
<p>" They are kids who succeeded in academics and athletics or other because that is the type of person they are, not because they were grooming themselves for the Ivies. I think that is the type of student the Ivies are looking for, anyway"</p>
<p>Agreed.</p>
<p>“I think what gets people’s goat is they believe it is not fair because you can’t just ‘work hard’ to get into the URM category, the ‘rich parent’ category or the ‘top athlete’ category. However, that is true for bright kids as well. Hard work will only take you so far along the SAT/GPA continuum. The reality is our kids’ school performance has a lot to do with luck of the draw”</p>
<p>Agreed</p>
<p>"This thread does make me despair for my son, with his 4.0/Val./36/2360/10AP resume. "</p>
<p>I think he’ll be fine.</p>
<p>Here’s a link to a similar discussion in October.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1014683-d-3-athletes-get-major-admissions-boost.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1014683-d-3-athletes-get-major-admissions-boost.html</a></p>
<p>A link to the “College Sports Project”, which includes some actual numbers.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.collegesportsproject.org/[/url]”>http://www.collegesportsproject.org/</a></p>
<p>From my post #43
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<p>From my post #120
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<p>From your post #125 :
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<p>Do you have any idea how many professional hockey players there are? Or how many hockey players are in the IVy league? 10 would be a “rare exception,” in my opinion, given that they did not all graduate the same year.</p>
<p>But, you define rare the way you want to. </p>
<p>Carry on.</p>
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<p>This is the kind of thinking I was arguing against back in post #103. There are no “leftover” slots for unhooked kids. My unhooked daughters went two for two - both went to Ivy League schools. Some athletes get early likely letters from Ivys, but for the most part the unhooked kids, legacies, URMs, etc. are all competing for the same slots. Hooks are a boost, but they are only one part of the story. Top stats can carry you a long way in this game.</p>
<p>Unless he has weak ECs or essays, I predict your son will get into several VERY selective colleges. My unhooked daughter, with slightly weaker stats than your son got into Harvard, Stanford, and MIT. This supposed impossibility of unhooked, high-stat kids getting into selective colleges is overblown. </p>
<p>I have to laugh when I read posts asserting that it is impossible for my daughters to get into schools that they have already been accepted to. I have had CC parents accuse me of hiding or lying about some hook, because “everybody knows” it’s just impossible for an unhooked white kid to get into top schools. Nonsense.</p>
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<p>If your definition of serious players is that of those who eventually play professionally in their sport, then say so. That isn’t everyone’s definition, nor should it be.</p>
<p>always a mom–</p>
<p>I don’t really know what it is you are arguing about.</p>
<p>The vast majority of elite athletes in this country do not go to the ivies. </p>
<p>The few who do are student athletes and go because of their ambitions as students not their ambitions as athletes. (I dont know a thing about tennis, though)</p>
<p>My point is that the kids who go to the Ivies to play sports do so as qualified students. The rest of the elite athletes (which is the majority of elite athletes) go to other schools.</p>
<p>That’s all I’ve got to say on the subject. You may disagree.</p>
<p>If someone is not going to graduate college and have a continuing career in athletics, either as a player or a coach or trainer, I consider them to be students first. You may consider them to be athletes first. People make a lot of assumptions about athletes which aren’t true. The ones who go to the Ivies are fully academically qualified to be there, IMO.</p>
<p>But, as Benley and others have pointed out, there are those who feel they are given an unfair advantage in the admissions process. Maybe this is your point? I can’t really tell from your posts.</p>
<p>This may be off topic, but there are firms (especially investment banks) that have special recruiting program for athletes at top tier schools. The reason is they feel athletes have special qualities which would make them successful in career, and those firms feel they could benefit from those qualities. It is not just college admission where athletes get a tip.</p>
<p>I concur with coureur. There is no need to despair for a student with a 4.0/36/2360, and 10 APs. He doesn’t need a traditional hook to have an array of great choices in April. “X” factors are ECs, essays, recs, and interviews. At some schools those stats may make up for even lackluster ECs and essays. Unless a recommender torpedoes his application or he comes across as the next Unabomber in an interview, I predict several Top 20 acceptances. HYPSM (or any particular school)? Not predictable. Some Top 20s? Almost certainly.</p>
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<p>UT, what do you think your son’s academics stats would have looked like if he’d participated in 2-3 varsity level competitive sports at the same time?</p>
<p>^I don’t think this is a battle you want to wage. Serious musicians, debaters, etc. devote just as much time to their extracurricular pursuits as serious athletes do.</p>
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<p>I would agree with this since I have both a serious performing artist and a serious athlete and have seen the level of commttment these things really do take. </p>
<p>Debate, however, is the only activity I think impacts academic performance as much as athletics since debaters, like nationally ranked club athletes, do occaisonally have to miss school in order to be able to compete in the tournaments. Club athletes, of course, do not have the benefit of school support for their absences, however, and are frequently in the position of having to explain to their teachers “why” they missed two days of school and “why” this is important to them, which can be a massive pain.</p>
<p>Anyone who can do that and maintain an Ivy competitve GPA and SAT record is a really gifted student-athlete, IMO.</p>
<p>
While I don’t recall anybody directly accusing me of lying or hiding a hook here on CC or IRL, I do specifically remember being told IRL by parents of similarly profile-d students that my un-hooked white kid with college educated parents had no chance at elite UG’s. (On CC, we had lots of folks encouraging her apps to top schools.)</p>
<p>Once acceptances were in, the conversations IRL changed. Heck, in many instances the conversations just stopped. My family seemed to have changed from an “us” to a “them”. Hmmm.</p>
<p>Quote:</p>
<p>UT, what do you think your son’s academics stats would have looked like if he’d participated in 2-3 varsity level competitive sports at the same time?</p>
<p>I don’t think there would ever be a way to know. Sport just wasn’t an option for him. Our family motto is “We may be small, but we’re slow.”</p>
<p>But he did fill his life with lots of other stuff–debate, theater, piano–so his life is much broader than a set of academic stats. I guess part of my thinking is what do I tell him if/when he is not admitted, and he asks me “what more could I have done?” Tell him he should have been 6’ 2", 240# and run a 6 second 40?</p>
<p>I do admire athletes and college sports in general. But there are some larger questions about whether sport is kept in proper proportion.</p>
<p>Most sports do not require height in order to succeed at an Ivy/LAC recruitable level. Look at the Ivy football rosters: you will find quite a few 5’10" players.</p>
<p>Short people can do very well in soccer, running, tennis, golf, swimming, gymnastics, skiing, squash, sailing, wrestling, equestrian and even the libero position in volleyball. About the only sports they may be shut out of are basketball and non-libero volleyball.</p>
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<p>I think I ran a six-second forty in high school and my coach said his grandma would beat me in a footrace. :)</p>
<p>See, I told you we were slow.</p>
<p>By now you posters should realize that some posters have little first hand knowledge with the quality of most D1 sports at the ivies. I’ve already been through this with them showing that on the men’s side that there are big time D1 in very sport but football and basketball where the quality players just can’t do the school work(this is also the reason ND no longer is competitive in football). If you look at lacrosse Cornell in national semifnal or soccer 4-5 teams in top 30 or even water polo two in top 20. The response was well no one from the ivies makes the top ten or goes pro. Now I see the claim is about the women’s national team. If the poster was knowledgable about college soccer they would know that a very large percentage of players come from just a few college teams and a significant number from just one college program. Clearly what the poster doesn’t understand is that there is no future past college in women’s soccer and the higher IQ girls know this and make different choices. Ali Hawkins is the best example. She is quitting soccer to go to grad school. Why? Because pro women’s soccer is really a media creation and doesn’t exist as a legitimate career. They are paid next to nothing and not enough for many to pay their own expenses. For the last time ivy league sports is big time D1 in almost every sport for boys and girls though they rarely compete for the NCAA titles(but few do).</p>