<p>I recently found out that a student in my school who is a state-ranked (nationally ranked?) football player committed to Harvard in December. Mind you, this is the same kid who, from 9th to 11th grade, took 2 AP classes (stats, comp. politics) and maybe 1 honors classes (in my HS, 11th grade English is split between regular, middle, hard - he took the middle).
I do not know his senior class schedule, although i doubt it would be much of an impact this far down the road.</p>
<p>Note: I did not apply to Harvard. I'm just slightly enraged that someone who has not worked academically as hard as someone else nor has the competence of someone smarter than him is more likely to get accepted to the #1 school in the country.</p>
<p>What are your thoughts?</p>
<p>i will post his sophomore schedule (from facebook if demanded by enough people)</p>
<p>It’s true that i didnt apply to Harvard, but I did apply to an Ivy and other top schools. its a bummer to see others with much better academic stats than him get rejected. hell, i guess i cant blame him. i guess i wouldve done the same if i knew Harvard accepted average students</p>
<p>You do not have the slightest clue what Harvard is looking for in applicants. I can assure you, test scores and grade points are hardly a factor after determining that a student can do the work. </p>
<p>Based on the speculation you implied, I bet his schedule is equally as rigorous as yours, and he as a similar grade point. You have not seen his teacher recommendations, or his essays. Finally, of the 200 or so athletes recruited to Harvard, only 5-20 or so of them have academics that would be questioned (NOT rejected) in a normal applicant. If that normal applicant had what the committee is looking for in their essays, short answer, recs, etc. to an equal extent of the athlete in sports, they would be accepted.</p>
<p>One other note: if you post his schedule, it will be deleted by the CC moderators. Be aware that you’re setting yourself up for a lawsuit if you do that (libel and privacy). Don’t think proud Harvard parents won’t defend their son.</p>
<p>Lambda, the Ivy League is the only place where scholar athletes must be within a statistical score range (GPA and SAT) of the rest of the student body to even be considered for admission. He met the standard. Get over it.</p>
<p>Have you ever played a sport at the level this person is? If you did, you would know the large amount of time it takes out of your day. Time that if they did not do the sport could be spent studying. Also when you playing a sport big time and doing well academically you usually have very good time management skills.</p>
<p>I speak from personally experience. I play sports at a national level year around. I leave for school before 6 in the morning and get home about 6 in the evening (unless we have a game which is usually twice a week) in which case I get home even later.</p>
<p>So with that schedule you can see there is not much time left for study and sleep.</p>
<p>i will not put up his schedule but my AP schedule vs his:
Him: ap stats, ap comp politics, honors english
mine: ap us history, ap physics, ap chem, ap comp. politics, ap micro, ap stats, and testing out of ap govt.</p>
<p>i also do activities outside of school. yes i know that it takes a large portion of the day out, but so do mine</p>
<p>I don’t understand what Lamda’s problem is. Harvard is for the gifted, and this athlete has both the football skills and enough brains to pass the GPA and SAT score standard. Get over it</p>
<p>Yeah, honestly, just cuz all ya’ll pencil pushers couldn’t score to save your lives (either on the field or off) doesn’t mean that you have to be hating on those of us who have hand-eye coordination and also skillz in the classroom. Somethings, like honor, loyalty, and strength, are things that can only be learned outside of academia, but are really valuable to creating a good Freshman class. So please, get off the soap box, stop preachin about all ur AP credits or whatever, and just suck it up, because life’s not always cookie-cutter fair, and I’m sure that you’ll be very happy protesting some other random crap with all your socialist roommates at Brown. At least, until that football player who got accepted to Harvard one day, after you have been living for 8 years with your parents because you’re too much of “a ponderer” to get a real job, becomes your boss and steals away whatever piece of tail you’ve been able to wrangle up by reading pseudo-intellectual poetry.</p>
<p>Lamda: you say you didn’t appy to Harvard – fine. But you did apply to some other Ivies. Unless you have a perfect GPA and test scores, guess what? If you get admitted, that very school will also reject perfect test scorers and perfect GPA. According to your logic, they would say YOU took away their deserved spot.</p>
<p>What? A star football player got admitted to a college with lower academic stats? I’m shocked, shocked to discover that athletic recruitment has been going on in here.</p>
<p>You may also be shocked to find out that Harvard has the most varsity teams, the most althletic recruits among its Ivy peers :-). It is part of the Harvard tradition :-).</p>
<p>I had this same attitude until I spent a few weeks this summer with a boy who was recruited by 50 different schools. He explained that he was very smart, but chose to apply his smarts and energy on the field whereas I applied mine in the classroom. He got good grades, but he really spent all of his spare time working on becoming a better player. So now I cringe when I hear people say “didn’t try hard enough” because I know recruited athletes try as hard on the field as great intellectuals do in the classroom. It’s just a different arena. And as Harvard tells us, they like to have a well-rounded class made of well-lopsided individuals. Consider athletics as a specific lop they seek!</p>
<p>A former Dean of Harvard College, Harry Lewis (married to Marlyn McGrath-Lewis–yes, that person…) did a study a few years back looking at a variety of measures of success post graduation from Harvard. Other than becoming a professor, GPA had very little correlation statistically with any measure-- what had the highest? Being on a varsity team. Now these are Harvard athletes not UT but still quite an interesting finding. </p>
<p>I am pleased that Harvard understands the value of sports-- as a parent of a non athlete at Harvard (and a recruited athlete at Williams)-- I know that having athletes rounds out a class. My alma mater, Yale, does not – and Levin has cut back on the spots for athletes in the class-- no evidence that Yale is better for it in any measure (and indeed, they get smoked at The Game and elsewhere). </p>
<p>Give me a break! There are still plenty of recruited athletes at Yale. You think it was a bunch of walk-ons who finally defeated Trinity’s men in squash after 252 straight wins? Or who are undefeated in women’s squash? Or who were ranked #1 in men’s hockey at the end of the regular season last year? (Experience teaches that relying on GPA and SATs is a lousy way to pick hockey players.)</p>
<p>Levin is adjusting screws a quarter-turn, not jettisoning 150 years (at least) of educational philosophy.</p>