According to Yury Gelman, the founder of the Manhattan Fencing Center: “Parents realize that fencing is one of the best sports to put your child in a good university, because each good school, especially Ivy League schools, have fencing”, explaining why some parents are willing to put up with the high costs associated with enrolling their children in fencing programs.
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Of course the head of a fencing center would say that fencing helps in admissions! (and it can, but for a small proportion of students). The opportunity is relatively small compared to many other sports, with only around 44 colleges fielding NCAA varsity fencing teams.
I thought this was a particularly rich quote from Harvard considering the lawsuit data, and the fact that athletes do go thru a separate admissions vetting process, including benefitting from academic and financial pre-reads:
“Harvard athletes are admitted through the same process, receive the same academic support, and are held to the same standards as every other Harvard student.”
Also, linking this thread, as it is one of the best fencing recruiting resources on the interwebs:
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What I learned from it: the magic number seems to be six-figures, no matter what.
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I know! That’s one of the highest spends I’ve ever heard, even more than some equestrians!
The opportunity is even smaller when backing out international recruits, then dividing by 3 for the different blades. And that’s before even considering time commitment (for parent as well considering drive time) and money.
I’m sure @SevenDad can provide a reality check.
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I seem to recall that some schools (Brown, Stanford?) are eliminating some of the more esoteric sports (fencing, sailing), or at least eliminating recruiting for these sports. Given the pressure for more diversity, it would seem that recruiting for sports that correlate with wealth would be increasingly more difficult to justify. It’s never really made sense to prefer fencers over say, violinists or painters or rap musicians, but I guess it’s all pretty arbitrary.
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Stanford reversed direction and the sports were not cut. Brown reversed direction on women’s fencing after the courts forced them to.
While some of these sports just scream privilege, any decision to cut is generally a financial one, not a philanthropic one.
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It’s not arbitrary. It’s institutional priorities.
Not so sure it’s financial. These schools are rolling in cash. Agree that it’s institutional priorities, and that sports are important for tradition, alums and fundraising. But in the bigger scheme of things, is a talent in fencing or sailing any different from a talent in painting or rap music? On this level, it does seem quite arbitrary. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the athletic recruiting status quo remain, given the institutional support. But I wouldn’t be surprised to see the number of recruits in wealth sports decline either, given the prevailing political sentiments.
I didn’t say it’s financial.
Athletic recruiting is an easy way for schools to help meet institutional priorities….not only full pay students, but also URMs.
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To be more explicit, sports like crew, lacrosse, fencing, and such, are dominated by kids from wealthy families. They are generally expensive, needing expensive equipment and expensive training locations, and are the sort of sport that you find in expensive private high schools.
They are, at the present, dominated by White kids, but that will change as the demographics of the upper class in the US changes. From the point of view of colleges, they do not care much about the ethnicity/race of these kids, just that they tend to be full pay, legacies, and donors.
The point of these sports is that they allow colleges to admit a larger proportion of wealthy students than they could, if they were admitting based on their present admissions policies.
Even MIT, with its vaunted “no-legacy” admissions policy, has 20%-25% of their students participating in varsity athletics.
Having wealthy kid sport, except in some cases, is not about accepting unqualified wealthy applicants. It’s about selecting the wealthier of the applicants who are in the range of “qualified”. It also pays to remember that, given two applicants with same innate academic talents and abilities, the wealthier of the two will generally have a higher GPA, higher test scores, and more impressive extracurricular activities. That means that varsity athletes for these “wealthy kid” sports usually have a double advantage - that of wealth and their sport.
Alumni who were athletes are also more likely to donate, so that both increases the financial incentive for colleges to have athletic admissions, as well as having further incentives for colleges to recruit athletes from families which are already affluent.
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I’ve heard that argument many times, how “sports” are a way for lower income students to get great education in this county.
But just this week I was having breakfast at the local cafe in an affluent suburb, where I had noticed a recent “regular” always working on his laptop. Turns out, he’s a Dad who chauffeurs his son to a private catholic Prep school every day that is nationally known for its football program. And because it’s a 90 minute freeway drive each way, it makes sense for him to just camp out near the high school each day.
I know of another family that spent many years since childhood driving their Hockey kids to league games all across the North East virtually very weekend, and spends summers in Canada in training camps - all with an eye on a good Prep-School and then College placement.
Being able to schedule your work and lives around creating these opportunities for their children in the first place, is already a privilege that doesn’t extend to many! Not to speak of having the financial means to afford the coaching, travelling,…
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Having been brought up in a different educational system (abroad), I tend to be much more cynical towards the arbitrary “bundling” in this country of sports, music, arts, or whatever other performance talent, to primary or secondary academic education?
If people want to further sports, music, artistic and other talents they can do so by donating to appropriate clubs and cultural organizations that offer youth programs, and regional/national advancement, to everyone.
There is no reason, that this money has to first be funneled/diluted through high schools and colleges and thus intertwining totally unrelated concerns - and along the way, create deeply unfair advantages in academic education under the guise of furthering arts, sports, etc.
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Somebody finally did the research and, unsurprisingly, the results are what you expect: far more kids in colleges varsity athletics come from affluent families than come from poor families:
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NCAA athletes seem to have more White students and fewer URMs than all college students, based on NCAA Demographics Database - NCAA.org and
Race and Ethnicity of U.S. Undergraduates - Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education :
| Race / Ethnicity | NCAA athletes 2021 | All US college students 2015-16 |
|---|---|---|
| White | 63% | 52.0% |
| Black | 16% | 15.2% |
| Hispanic / Latino | 6% | 19.8% |
| Two or More | 5% | 3.3% |
| International | 4% | 2.8% |
| Asian | 2% | 5.7% |
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No surprise – parental money purchases the opportunities to develop one’s talent and get it noticed for athletic recruiting.
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Or, schools could just DECIDE to meet those institutional priorities because it’s the right thing to do and they do have the financial means (or, imagine this: because this country catches up and makes education a fundamental right, based solely on meeting entry requirements) – instead of still relying on a variation of the Roman gladiator system to “raise up” the occasional plebeian?
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Let me clarify my point. I understand the data well and nothing I’m saying is inconsistent with the fact that recruited athletes skew affluent.
I’m saying that for schools where increasing the numbers of URMs is an institutional priority, athletic recruiting helps achieve that goal, similar to partnerships with Questbridge, Posse, etc.
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“Develop talent and get it noticed” THIS IS TRUE OF VIRTUALLY EVERY SOUGHT AFTER EC! Science/research achievements, musical talent, acting etc etc etc.
C’mon guys. Wealthy families are going to do what they can to help their children. The minute colleges stop prioritizing fencers, or whatever, is the minute families pivot to whatever the colleges have moved on to prioritizing!
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Regardless of the sport, it’s still a sport. Cut fencing or sailing or whatever, and the recruiting spots just move to another sport. Or disappear.
Whether athletic recruiting should be more valued than arts recruiting is a waaaaaassy bigger conversation.
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