That means that a college 1/4 the size with a similar set of sports teams may have 40% recruited athletes. Could this describe some popular (around here) northeastern LACs?
On the other hand, a huge state flagship with 5 times the enrollment would have only about 2% recruited athletes.
Yes, % athletes at highly selective colleges is usually well correlated with student body size. Most such colleges have several hundred athletes, regardless of size. So a few hundred / tens of thousands at big flagship might = 2% athletes, while several hundred / a LAC with 2000 students could = 30% athletes. Also relevant is how many low revenue sports like fencing the college have. A college like Harvard with 40+ teams could have 1000 athletes, while a college that has few low revenue sports could have <300 athletes. Some specific numbers are below, using federal reporting from a few years ago. I realize portion of students who are varsity athletes is not the same as portion who are recruited athletes, and degree of admission boost varies for different athletes and different schools.
UCLA – 2% of students are varsity athletes
Chicago – 6%
Cornell – 7%
Duke – 10%
Stanford – 11%
Harvard – 15.5%
Caltech – 22%
Swarthmore – 25%
Williams – 35%
Bates – 35%
Bowdoin – 36%
The portion who are White and wealthy also varies. As noted in earlier in the thread, there is a strong correlation with sport. There also large differences between different colleges. Harvard was mentioned above. Some specific numbers for Harvard are below, from the freshman survey. % White is most recent year, % income is 3 years ago (before the added the “prefer not to say option” in survey). It’s a similar trend as Amherst mentioned above, but not quite as extreme. Colleges that have a larger portion of total athletic roster in revenue sports, would likely show a different pattern.
Harvard Freshman Survey
White – 83% athlete, 49% non-athlete
<$40k Income – 4% athletes, 16% non-athletes
$40-$80k Income – 9% athletes, 16% non-athletes
…
$500k income – 26% athlete, 16% non-athlete
In the lawsuit sample, White admits also had a high rate of numerous other hooks. Specific numbers are below. Note that all non-White races had approximately the same portion of non-ALDC hooked admits.
White Admits – 16% athletes, 27% LDC hooked, 56% non-ALDC hooked
Black Admits – 9% athletes, 6% LDC hooked, 85% non-ALDC hooked
Asian Admits – 4% athletes, 11% LDC hooked, 85% non-ALDC hooked
Hispanic Admits – 4% athletes, 9.5% LDC hooked, 86% non-ALDC hooked
I was curious, so I generated a table of % of undergrads that are varsity athletes for all colleges, using the federal database download. Among colleges that play in NCAA conferences and have a football team, the median and average % varsity athletes were 12% and 17% respectively.
The colleges with lowest % varsity athletes were all larger publics.
Lowest Percent Varsity Athletes
1 . UCF – 1.05%
2. Texas State – 1.26%
3. Texas A&M – 1.26%
4. University of Boulder – 1.35%
5. North Texas – 1.36%
The highest listed percent varsity athletes occurred at smaller colleges that I am not familiar with. I did not list Erskine (89%) because they report abnormally large rosters, which makes me believe their reporting is incorrect. An example is 97/492 male students on baseball roster.
Highest Percent Varsity Athletes
1 . McKendree – 67%
2. Bethany – 66%
3. Defiance – 64%
4. Lake Erie – 63%
5. Aldersun Broaddus – 60%
Limiting to colleges that I am more familiar with, the highest percent varsity athletes were USMMA + NESCAC LACs, as listed below.
1 . US Merchant Marine – 43%
2. Bates – 37%
3. Bowdoin – 36%
4. Williams – 36%
5. Colby – 33%
The sports with the largest median roster size were as follows. Had I combined indoor T&F, outdoor T&F, and X country into a single grouping, it would have been 2nd largest after football.
Largest Median Roster Size
1 . Men’s Football – 111
2. Women’s Rowing – 52
3. Men’s Lacrosse – 41
4. Men’s Baseball – 37
5. Men’s Indoor T&F – 36
5. Men’s Rowing – 36
…
Men’s Fencing – 17
Women’s Fencing – 15
Those are the percentage of athletes in the entire student body. Schools aren’t admitting 67% of students as athletic recruits. It doesn’t show how many are recruited, or how many got an admissions advantage because of being a recruited athlete, thus ‘fenc(ing) your way past low admissions rates.’
Some schools, including the ivies, do give admissions weight to athletes in general, even if they aren’t recruited and won’t play for a college team. They like what sports has taught the students, from teamwork to leadership to physical fitness. But all applicants have those opportunities, and it is not that helpful in getting past the low admission rate.
Would a small school with lots of sports teams (e.g. NESCAC LACs) privilege athletic ECs over other ECs (among the non-recruited applicants) in order to provide a better pool of generally athletic students as potential walk-on athletes?
Yes, the first sentence of the post said “% of undergrads that are varsity athletes”, and the preceding post said, " I realize portion of students who are varsity athletes is not the same as portion who are recruited athletes."
That said, I don’t think it would be possible to for all athletes to get a meaningful recruiting benefit at the listed 67% school – McKendree. In the most recent available year, McKendree had a 78% admit rate. They admit the vast majority of applicants, so a big admissions boost is not going to change the decision for typical applicants. They give $5.8 million in athletic scholarships (DII), which works out to an average of $8k per athlete. I’m not sure of what portion of athletes receive athletic scholarships, but it is obviously not 100%.
It may be more meaningful to focus on the more selective colleges with high % athletes. The previously linked Amherst reports suggests ~1/3 of Amherst students are athletes. Of that group, the report mentions that ~88% of varsity athletes were flagged by coaches during admissions and received a potential admissions advantage. ~42% of athletes were “athletic factor” with stats below typical admits, and ~45% were “coded” with similar stats to typical admits but higher admit rate.
The Harvard lawsuit analysis suggests a different pattern at Harvard – near negligible benefit unless can potentially play on varsity team. Roughly 35% of Harvard applicants listed athletics as their “primary” EC (I believe they mean first EC listed). However, only 9.5% of applicants received a high 1-2 athletic rating by readers, suggesting that the vast majority of students whose “primary” EC was athletics received a mediocre 3 rating in athletics. The regression analysis suggests a 3 rating offers a near negligible admissions benefit over no athletics participation. It suggests for most applicants, high school sports offer no admission advantage over corresponding degree of achievements in non-athletic ECs. However, if the applicant receives a 2 rating for which the reader guidelines state “possible walk-on to a varsity team, has an IRF of a 4 from a Harvard coach”, that’s a different story. Specific numbers are below.
Regression Analysis in Harvard Lawsuit
1 Athletic Rating (recruited athlete) – ~3000x increased chance of admission*
2 Athletic Rating (potential walk on) – 3.9x increased chance of admission
3 Athletic Rating (most applicants whose primary EC was athletics) – 1.04x increased chance of admission
4 Athletic Rating (no/little athletics participation) – Reference comparison
5 Athletic Rating (family obligations or work prevent athletics) – 2.0x increased chance of admission
*Does not consider that recruited athletes are often pre-screened prior to application
It can be pretty close to 100%, but of course not all are getting full scholarships. My daughter went to a D2 school (and actually played McKendree once), and almost everyone (if not everyone) got an athletic scholarship on her team. The coach had a reason for it (some kind of accounting for meals or travel if everyone had a scholarship?) but some were $500 and some were $20k, so not even across the board–and believe me, they all knew how much the others were getting.
People interested in this topic amay be interested in this (older) Newsweek article:
As noted in my post above, this seems to be the case at Amherst, with nearly 90% of athletes flagged by coaches during admissions and few in the category called “walk-ons.” Other NESCAC colleges with comparably successful programs probably also favor more athletes than just the ~2 per team “athletic factor” admits specified under NESCAC conference rules.
However, there are also small colleges with different degrees of preference for athletes. For example Caltech basketball once went on a 26-year losing streak in conference games. The movie Quantum Hoops discusses the losing streak and unique challenges the team faced, such as having several players on team who did not have any high school basketball experience. Caltech basketball and other sports have had more success over the past few years, so they may have changed things, Last year, they won 6/15 conference games.
This reminds me of my sister who played for a semester on University College of London’s basketball team when she was doing a study abroad. She did have 2 years of high school basketball experience though, so wasn’t a raw beginner. She got plenty of playing time, and the team won a few games. She remembers it as a great experience, and made friends with players from across the league. A shared cigarette after the game was a common occurrence.
But anyway, athletes at elite British universities get no admissions bump. How these universities manage to admit so many students with skills in teamwork and leadership without favoring athletes remains a mystery to Americans…
Totally agree!! Is absolutely ridiculous the lengths some parents will go to help their kids- seems very inauthentic and unrealistic.
Just think about how good the college symphony would be if musicians got “likely” letters, rather than hoping they’d join as a walk-on!
Marching bands give scholarships. But these top programs aren’t affiliated with the most rejective schools so aren’t followed here on CC the same way!
Stanford is still recruiting for sailing.