<p>curmudgeon are you a student or a parent? Don’t you find some irony in a poster claiming that the ivies are not competitive in running sports the week after Princeton finished 12th in the NCAA. Or another poster claiming that the ivies are not competitive in lacrosse when Cornell made it to the final four this year.</p>
<p>trojanchick99 I fully agree with your post. It’s probably not worth reading all the posts but competing for the national title was never the standard. Various posters made the statements that the ivies are not competitive with the scholarship D1 schools in most sports. Most schools that play D1 sports even very well known names rarely compete for the NCAA titles and the ivies are fully competitive in most sports with most D1 schools. Here is the list for squash which admittedly is a minor sport but played by many D1. The interesting thing here is that even some D3 are competitive. </p>
<p>[2010-2011</a> Men?s College Squash Team Rankings (11/23/2010) | College Squash Association](<a href=“http://collegesquashassociation.com/2010/11/26/2010-2011-men’s-college-squash-team-rankings-11232010/]2010-2011”>http://collegesquashassociation.com/2010/11/26/2010-2011-men’s-college-squash-team-rankings-11232010/)</p>
<p>Why, exactly, would a top athlete want to go to an Ivy League school, where there are no athletic scholarships? The only reason I can think of is that they want the Ivy League education.</p>
<p>trojanchick99 I do not follow water polo but here is the current top 20 on the men’s side and it includes two ivies. </p>
<p>[NCAA.com</a> ? The Official Website of NCAA Championships - Men’s Water Polo](<a href=“http://www.ncaa.com/sports/m-wpolo/division_i1.html]NCAA.com”>http://www.ncaa.com/sports/m-wpolo/division_i1.html)</p>
<p>In wrestling Cornell is ranked #1 in the nation. </p>
<p>[NCAA.com</a> ? The Official Website of NCAA Championships - Wrestling](<a href=“http://www.ncaa.com/sports/m-wrestl/division_i1.html]NCAA.com”>http://www.ncaa.com/sports/m-wrestl/division_i1.html)</p>
<p>Hunt the system for scholarships varies tremendously by sport. In revenue sports(men’s football and basketball) amost all the players get full rides. But in say men’s soccer each team is limited by NCAA rules to 9.9 scholarships per team. Each team carries say 25-30 players so you can see that 9.9 scholarships don’t go very far. So most of the “scholarships” you hear parents brag about are partials split between 2-4 players. Here is the list:</p>
<p>[The</a> New York Times > Sports > Image > Scholarsphips: Slicing the Pie](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/03/10/sports/20080310_SCHOLAR_GRAPHIC2.html]The”>Scholarsphips: Slicing the Pie - NYTimes.com)</p>
<p>Most people don’t realize this and assume it’s mostly full rides. But the ivies are rich and give generous FA so that if the athletes family makes less than 180k they can do better often going to the ivy. If the family makes under 100k it’s basically a full ride.</p>
<p>The thing with water polo is the top teams in the East aren’t competitive with the top teams in California.<br>
The sport at it’s highest levels is dominated by the big 4 schools as the last time a team other than those 4 won a title was 1997 and NO team outside of California has won a national title. In that sport the truly elite athletes go to the big 4.<br>
So in this case a top ranked water polo recruit, even if they are Ivy material will likely choose another school although that school would still be a Top 25 academic school.</p>
<p>EDIT- You are right about those scholies, most kids in sports that are not Football and Basketball do not get full rides. Most scholarships are partial. Baseball gets 11.7, when there are 9 starting position players and a baseball rotation. Football gets 85 for 22 starting position players. It’s ridiculous and arbitrary.</p>
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<p>I had one parent insist via PM that she knew better than me what it took to get a kid into Harvard (this while my daughter was actually attending Harvard, unlike her kids) and that a hook was required. Since I kept promising her that we had no hooks, only good academics and decent ECs, she finally tried to assert that being from southern California must be geographic hook. HYPS don’t get many applicants or enroll many students from SoCal - yeah, right.</p>
<p>Non-hooked students certainly do get admitted but the spots those students compete for at the very top schools is greatly reduced by the various hooked students. Our S’s long standing school friend got into Princeton without a hook but had 4.5+ w GPA/2300ish SAT and had a huge list of EC carefully directed by the mother since the 8th grade. I’m sure your child was very accomplished in many things to gain admission.</p>
<p>^^OK. I am just going to say it. Would it be as ridiculous if I say good stats plus decent ECs would mostly likely be not enough for boys, and especially not for the “mainstream” or over-represented groups?</p>
<p>Big shout out to the Princeton Women’s X-Country team for its 15 place finish at this year’s NCAA Championships, and a special shout out to my D’s hs friend who runs for them and ran well enough to make All-american.</p>
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Post of the Day!!</p>
<p>Say- Yes, Princeton has a good program and had a good year. 12th is, well, 12th. They are lacking a few scholarship Kenyans. They get excellent student athletes. Princeton does NOT have the running program or the talented recruits of Texas, Michigan, Oregon etc. As my son said, “Any place that would pay him to come and run would likely not be a school he would want to attend.” (referring to his own level of talent)</p>
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<p>It is more likely that nearly every Ivy League athlete either was or could easily have been (if they had put themselves out there) recruited by other scholarship schools. There are over 300 Division I scholarship schools (and I don’t know how many D II), many of them lower tier. Those schools would probably kill for players with the academic credentials these kids bring, in order to bump up their team GPAs. Of course, like your son, it is unlikely that they would have wanted to go, but some do, like academic star runner Jordan Hasay, who was courted by Stanford and Harvard, but chose Oregon for its highly-ranked team.</p>
<p>MOM please read the posts sandwiched around your post. Not one of my posts ever talked about winning the NCAA title or even the top five programs. Trojanchick99 for instance made her points and it added to the useful content on the thread. I did not know that only four teams had won the title since 1997.</p>
<p>Instead of arguing over impressions and exceptions, let’s look at the overall athletic strength of the Ivy League as determined by data, not opinions. And the ideal tool to do that is the Directors Cup which measures and ranks the overall strength of schools’ athletic programs across all sports, not just the money sports (Stanford wins nearly every year). [NACDA</a> OFFICIAL ATHLETIC SITE - Directors Cup](<a href=“http://www.nacda.com/directorscup/nacda-directorscup-previous-scoring.html]NACDA”>http://www.nacda.com/directorscup/nacda-directorscup-previous-scoring.html)</p>
<p>For the most recent complete year (2009-2010) the Ivy league looks like this:
Highest ranked Ivy school = #32
Lowest ranked = #151
Average for the entire conference = #84 </p>
<p>For 2008-2009:
Highest ranked school = #40
Lowest ranked = #139
Average for the entire conference = #83</p>
<p>For 2007 - 2008:
Highest ranked school = #60
Lowest ranked = #135
Average for the entire conference = #92</p>
<p>In all three cases the highest ranked Ivy was Princeton and the lowest was Columbia, although various other Ivys came close to claiming both the top and bottom spots.</p>
<p>You can look further back at more and more years yourself if you like. But based on the three most recent years I’d say the Ivy League looks surprisingly strong given that they don’t give athletic scholarships, but overall they are mediocre at best. They probably score better than might be expected due to their academic glitter - they are able to attract good athletes that typically aren’t pro or Olympic caliber but who want a top flight (or at least prestigious) education. We all can think of the exceptions - Ivy athletes who managed to hit it big on the pro or world stage. But those tend to be more memorable because they are the exceptions and not the rule.</p>
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What do you mean by “good” and “decent?” If you mean “top,” then what you say is true only to the extent that admission to any particular top Ivy is “likely not enough” for a lot of applicants. Even with the hooked applicants included, admission rates are in the single digits. A lot of hooked students don’t get in, either–most legacies are rejected, for example.</p>
<p>coureur I’m not sure this is the most accurate measure since it includes football and basketball but even so it makes my point. The Ivies aren’t likely to win any national titles but they are fully competitive with the typical D1 schools. If you looked at Northwestern you would see that the Ivies are comparable and sometimes like Cornell or Princeton the teams are fully competitive at the highest level in some sports. ND Football shows what happens when the schools set more rigorous admission standards.</p>
<p>Hunt, my post was in response to post#169. “Decent” was not my word, and my point was that good stats are likely not enough.</p>
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<p>Basketball and football should be included. They are part of the program’s strength (or weakness). Pretty much any school can be made to look relatively strong if you exclude all the programs in which they are weak.</p>
<p>And I’m not sure I’d consider being the 80th or 90th strongest (the Ivy average) Div. I program to be “fully competitive.” I’d say a better description would be that Ivy schools are on average back in the mediocre middle of Div I.</p>
<p>Just for fun, let’s not forget squash, fencing, and rowing! Ivies are extraordinary (and do recruit).</p>