<p>Alexandre:</p>
<p>In addition to all of your valid points, I would also caution against reading too much into ACT reporting at a school like Brown where only 27% even take the ACT.</p>
<p>27% is not insignificant interesteddad. That represents 400 Freshmen in a class of 1,500. And of those 400 students, 100 had a score under 28 on the ACT. Again, that number is hardly insignificant considering the size of Brown. Same goes for Cornell. 650 Freshman submitted their ACTs and over 150 of them scored had ACT scores under 28. Again, that's not insignificant. </p>
<p>Please understand that I am not reading into it or judging. Like I said, I do not believe the ACT/SAT are indicative or intelligence or potential. My only point is that one should not assume that simply because a student scores less than 28 on the ACT, she/he is "weak". Afterall, 25% of students enrolling into those Ivy League institutions who submit their ACt have ACT scores below 28.</p>
<p>alex,
The 25th percentile threshold does not mean that 25% of the class scored below that level. It is possible that students scored at that level as well, eg, 28 at Brown or Cornell. </p>
<p>As for the way that you are counting, it looks like you are counting each as a discrete incidence and that there is no overlap between those who posted lower ACTs, lower SAT CRs, or lower SAT Maths. If you count them all like this, then the results are as follows:</p>
<p>Brown
100 at ACT level of 28 or lower
124 at SAT CR level of less than 600
83 at SAT Math level of less than 600
307 Total students
21% of the incoming class</p>
<p>Cornell
158 at ACT level of 28 or lower
350 at SAT CR level of less than 600
204 at SAT Math level of less than 600
713 Total students
24% of the incoming class</p>
<p>I think that this is an inaccurate way to count and likely overstates the numbers of lower scoring students on these campuses.</p>
<p>Just to provide some comparison, here is how U Michigan compares using the same approach:</p>
<p>U Michigan
1109 at ACT level of 27 or lower (Note that this is a lower threshold than either Brown or Cornell)
730 at SAT CR level of less than 600
381 at SAT Math level of less than 600
2220 Total students
37% of the incoming class</p>
<p>Using this approach and given the lower ACT threshhold at U Michigan, on an apples to apples comparison (ie, a 28 ACT), it is likely that 40-50% of the class scored at the lower levels. I don't think that is the case at U Michigan (and I would apply the same conclusion to Brown, Cornell et al).</p>
<p>Hawkette, you are missing the point. I am saying that a score of 1200 on the SAT and 27 on the ACT does not necessarily point to a weak student. </p>
<p>I repeat, you cannot compare SAT stats at Cornell or Brown to SAT scores at Michigan. They measure the SAT and report them differently. the ACT is the only common frame of reference we can use to compare students at Michigan to students at Cornell or Brown. By and large, the same percentage of students at those schools score under a 27 on the ACT. Yes, the scores are slightly higher at Cornell and Brown, but there is still a significant percentage of students who, having SUBMITTED THE ACT and enrolled at those two universities who scored less than a 28 on the ACT.</p>
<p>Hawkette,
I don't think the problem of low-achieving student-athletes is quite as simple is you make out at a school like Michigan. Yes, they could simply set the admissions bar higher for athletes and lose a lot of the best athletes to Ohio State, Penn State, and other competitors. Yes, they'd lose a lot more games. The collateral damage is that football revenues which currently support the entire athletic department would shrink dramatically, recruiting of even highly academically qualified student-athletes would be damaged, and Michigan football would cease to be the pipeline to the NFL that it is now. Presumably most of those gifted athletes would still find their way to the pros through other schools---though most of those schools actually do much worse than Michigan at getting their student-athletes to graduation. So you're not really solving a problem, you're just off-loading it onto someone else and possibly making it worse. And for what? For the sake of boosting overall graduation rates a few percentage points by eliminating what amounts to a small specialized vocational education (football) track in favor of purely academic admits?</p>
<p>When I look at these numbers, it suddenly makes sense to me why Michigan football can recruit as well as it does. If the Michigan coaches can come into the home of an athletically gifted but not academically gifted, likely economically disadvantaged kid coming out of a lousy school in inner-city Detroit, and legitimately say to that kid and his family, "Look, come to Michigan and if you make it through this program, there's nearly a 50-50 chance you'll get a shot at the NFL, and a 50-50 chance you'll come out of it with a college degree from a top-name university---or, by the numbers, a 1-in-4 chance you'll get BOTH a Michigan degree and a shot at the NFL, a 1-in-2 chance you'll get one of the two, and only a 1-in-4 chance that you'll get neither. All expenses paid, and as far as we're concerned it's a program that pays for itself because it generates more than enough revenue to support you, all your coaches and staff, training facilities, and a whole lot more." That sounds like a pretty nice proposition. Sure, it would be nice if the graduation rate were 100%. And yes, it does seem pretty far from the core mission of a great university. But if you view Michigan football as a small, specialized vocational training/educational program for 20 or so gifted athletes per year of varying degrees of academic talent, it isn't entirely crazy.</p>
<p>And the fact that white football players at Michigan graduate at a marginally higher rate than the student body at large says football is not wholly incompatible with academic success. I think maybe a better answer to the racial disparity is more aggressive use of academic redshirting, telling kinds who come in academically underprepared that they're going to need to hit the books first and get their academic skills up to par before they get to play football. Many won't want to hear it and may go elsewhere, but if it gets Michigan's black athlete graduation rate up it only makes Michigan a more attractive choice to the families of the next cohorts of athletic recruits.</p>
<p>
[quote]
If it is in the State of Michigan's interest to have young black males graduate from the University of Michigan (and I would argue that it is), then a good place to start would be to recruit young black males for their academic potential instead of their 40 yard dash times and then ask them to focus on school instead of professional football with a little bit of classwork on the side.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Not to hi jack, but you can't fill a 110,000 seat stadium with HYPSM type student athletes. Your idea is commendable but not realistic in the least. Suffice it to say that any of the SA that are fotunate to successfully navigate a degree from one of these types of D1 programs is worth the risk to extend the opportunity. Notre Dame comes to mind when the results on the field weren't up to par. Willingham had great students, great character people, graduated his players, etc, but didn't win. It's not realistic to have those expectations in revenue generating student athletes. Hasn't happened, won't happen. Not pessimistic, realistic. A small representative sample of the student cohort, and unfortunately, too much comparative emphasis placed.</p>
<p>from what i've seen, black/hispanic students are just not as well prepared. In social sciences/humanities, it's not as transparent, but when you get into the math, physics and engineering fields, it's pretty clear that as a group, black/hispanic students never had the academic preparation necessary to become successful in elite colleges. </p>
<p>which is part of why i think affirmative action is a huge problem for elite Universities. I bet if you do an analysis of engineering graduation rate at those schools, the disparity is uniformly bigger. Meaning all those schools will probably have the same gap.</p>
<p>students that should have gone to less competitive schools got into more competitive schools, and as a result, their confidence suffer, and they could have succeeded at an easier school.</p>
<p>Bclinton,
I don’t begin to know the answer to this question for U Michigan or other colleges that struggle with this balancing act. It’s a dilemma and I guess each institution has to judge what is the right choice for them. </p>
<p>Below are the facts from the NCAA database. Most impressive to me was Wake Forest which has achieved quite highly in its recent football program and yet still graduates its players, black and white. </p>
<p>Grad Rate All Students , Grad Rate Football , Grad Rate Black Football , College</p>
<p>95% , 93% , 91% , Stanford
94% , 93% , 88% , Duke
93% , 94% , 90% , Northwestern
93% , 85% , 75% , Rice
89% , 91% , 81% , Vanderbilt
96% , 93% , 86% , Notre Dame
84% , 57% , 53% , USC
88% , 90% , 89% , Wake Forest</p>
<p>89% , 52% , 49% , UC Berkeley
92% , 68% , 62% , U Virginia
89% , 56% , 43% , UCLA
87% , 73% , 56% , U Michigan
84% , 79% , 75% , U North Carolina</p>
<p>keefer; you said "from what i've seen, black/hispanic students are just not as well prepared. In social sciences/humanities, it's not as transparent, but when you get into the math, physics and engineering fields, it's pretty clear that as a group, black/hispanic students never had the academic preparation necessary to become successful in elite colleges. "</p>
<p>Could you share your vantage? IOW, HOW ( parent, student, teacher, educator, researcher, admissions official...) have you seen this?</p>
<p>Potentially a little more controversial would be to compare the URM graduation performance across different regions. The South often gets painted as a less friendly place for URMs, but the graduation data does not support this stereotype for the national universities. </p>
<p>Here is the full set of data by region:</p>
<p>Difference , Grad Rate for All Students , Grad Rate for All URMs , Region , College</p>
<p>1% , 89% , 90% , MA , Johns Hopkins
-5% , 93% , 88% , MA , Georgetown</p>
<p>-3% , 88% , 85% , MW , U Chicago
-3% , 91% , 88% , MW , Wash U
-6% , 95% , 89% , MW , Notre Dame
-7% , 93% , 86% , MW , Northwestern
-11% , 86% , 75% , MW , U Michigan
-12% , 85% , 73% , MW , Carnegie Mellon</p>
<p>-1% , 97% , 96% , NE , Yale
-2% , 95% , 93% , NE , Brown
-3% , 94% , 91% , NE , U Penn
-4% , 98% , 94% , NE , Harvard
-5% , 97% , 92% , NE , Princeton
-6% , 92% , 86% , NE , Columbia
-6% , 93% , 87% , NE , Cornell
-7% , 94% , 87% , NE , Dartmouth
-7% , 93% , 86% , NE , MIT
-11% , 91% , 80% , NE , Tufts</p>
<p>4% , 87% , 91% , S , Vanderbilt
4% , 87% , 91% , S , Emory
0% , 87% , 87% , S , Wake Forest
-5% , 93% , 88% , S , Duke
-6% , 92% , 86% , S , U Virginia
-7% , 91% , 84% , S , Rice
-7% , 83% , 76% , S , U North Carolina</p>
<p>-3% , 82% , 79% , W , USC
-6% , 95% , 89% , W , Stanford
-9% , 88% , 79% , W , UCLA
-13% , 87% , 74% , W , UC Berkeley
na , na , na , W , Caltech</p>
<p>-9% , 88% , 79% , MW , Grinnell
-20% , 90% , 70% , MW , Carleton</p>
<p>5% , 92% , 97% , NE , Wellesley
5% , 85% , 90% , NE , Smith
3% , 87% , 90% , NE , Hamilton
2% , 89% , 91% , NE , Vassar
0% , 91% , 91% , NE , Haverford
-1% , 92% , 91% , NE , Swarthmore
-3% , 96% , 93% , NE , Amherst
-3% , 92% , 89% , NE , Middlebury
-4% , 96% , 92% , NE , Williams
-5% , 91% , 86% , NE , Wesleyan
-5% , 90% , 85% , NE , Colgate
-14% , 91% , 77% , NE , Bowdoin</p>
<p>-12% , 90% , 78% , S , Davidson
-18% , 88% , 70% , S , W&L</p>
<p>7% , 85% , 92% , W , Pomona-Pitzer
-5% , 84% , 79% , W , Claremont McK-Harvey Mudd</p>
<p>or it could be that southern schools don't have as much engineering/science students...</p>
<p>Most of the southern universities have lots of engineering/science students. I think it may be more related to income levels and the number of Pell grantees.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Not to hi jack, but you can't fill a 110,000 seat stadium with HYPSM type student athletes.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You fill the stadium with the university's professional football team, just like the Lions fill the dome in Detroit. Just drop the charade of the professional athletes being students. That way you have the best of both worlds: a sports franchise and admissions slots for students who actually go to class and graduate and stuff.</p>
<p>My family considered a "stint" in the south, as far away from California as that is (and in spite of the expense vs. Cal, where my D was also admitted) because that's where we saw the most "diversity". </p>
<p>Keefer; how about sharing your vantage point.</p>
<p>haha.. why do you want to know my "vantage point"(that movie sucked)?</p>
<p>I majored in engineering in college, and went to a very low performing high school in new york city, where 50%+ of students were black, and another 20% latino. I've been working professionally for 4+ years.</p>
<p>
[quote]
This is the stupidest goddam.n post I've seen on this forum.</p>
<p>What's the point of this?</p>
<p>Trying to show us something that we don't know?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I disagree. Many people don't consider such facts. Comparisons of graduation rates of AA to the general student population was key in my guiding my DS when considering elite schools. Knowing the huge disparities of AA attaining a degree at all or the high remedial participation, I think it very important to know where AA kids matriculate and thrive, or at the very least hold their own. In comparing this information, it represents to me institutions that provide great academic support, an environment that is conducive to academic achievement, screening of applicants that would be most likely to graduate, and providing financial resources that wouldn't be a deterrent to obtaining a degree. The numbers may not tell the whole story, but it's obvious that some schools are more successful than others.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Just drop the charade of the professional athletes being students.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The overwhelming number of student athletes are hardly compensated or considered as "professional." Let's also not forget that SA grad rates as a whole are usually better than the student population at most colleges and universities.</p>
<p>"haha.. why do you want to know my "vantage point""</p>
<p>Source makes all the difference on a forum like this one...don't you think?</p>
<p>
[quote]
The overwhelming number of student athletes are hardly compensated or considered as "professional."
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I know. That's what makes the NCAA system so indefensible. They hire these young men as professional football players and then don't even pay them.</p>
<p>they get scholarship for college.</p>