Harvard Admission Rating System

I am starting to miss the point of all of this. Yes Harvard wants the best 250 athletes or so it can find for its teams. And academics comes secondary for these athletes. So what? Virtually every other school does the same thing.

“said their primary EC was playing a sport. 22% said their primary EC was playing a sport at the varsity level”
Sorry, but where do applicants “say” this? They are supposed to rank activities in order of importance. But we know they don’t always. Imo, this is another stretchy overinterpretation. Do you really think H ie looking for kids who have sports as their “primary” activity?

What about kids who put that internship at the top of their EC list, then a few others, before sports?

@lookingforward There is a section for EC where there are ten entries, each having a max of 150 letter space of description and number of hours per week attached to it. Typically, an applicant puts the most important ECs which take most amount time at the top of the entries.

@lookinforward: FWIW: I’ve known quite a few high school varsity athletes who are NOT good enough to play on a Division 1 team, but who ARE good enough to play competitively at a Division 3 school or on a JV/club sport team at a Division 1 school like Harvard, Yale or Princeton.

As part of their common application package, those students have submitted a link to a 2-4 minute highlight reel of them playing their sport, along with a third letter of recommendation from their HS coach. That kind of student is showing both a demonstrated interest in a sport and providing documentation of their ability. In addition, the coach’s LoR can confirm their sport is their #1 EC.

From observation, when a student provides such evidence in their application, it does seem to give them an edge in admissions to top colleges because Admissions Officers tend to see things this way: http://observer.com/2016/03/how-playing-sports-even-poorly-can-make-you-more-successful-in-business/

This “stretchy overinterpretation” is one that Harvard’s own expert uses in his analysis, which Harvard frequently references on their website, as well as in their summary judgement. He states, “A primary activity is defined as an activity the applicant lists in the first or second activity field of her application.” In any case, whether the sport is a “primary” activity or not has little to do with the point of my post. The point was that the portion of applicants who receive a “2” is small than the portion of applicants who play a HS varsity applicants, so one can conclude that applicants require more than just playing a varsity sport to receive a “2.”

Harvard is one of the Ivy schools where coaches will volunteer to submit a “support” letter if they are unable to offer the athlete a recruit spot. Some 2’s may fall in here.

@carlson2 I’m currently a two star maybe going on a three star. Ive contacted the coach and he pretty much said that the varsity team would not be a fit for me. Interestingly enough though, the Yale coach said I could potentially try-out and walk-on if I got admitted.

I know that I’m not at the level to be recruited but I am confident that I am significantly above the HS varsity level.

Would a two star be considered a 2 on the athletics rating?

Going back to my earlier post, nobody outside of admissions knows what a 2 rating is. Also, they use +/-. It might be a 2 or it might be a 2- or it might be a 3+. At the end of the day, it is what it is. Good luck.

I know how the activities section is supposed to work. It says, list in order of importance to you, but many do not list sports at the top. And I’d never suggest a kid should game chances by putting a sport up top. It wouldn’t necessarily make sense to the rest of his app.

I know plenty of kids who wound up on MaxPreps. never have seen a link to a sports video in an app.

So, Data, when you said the lawsuit says, I assumed you mean the suit part, not the defense. I’m not finding this independently, wonder f you can give the link.

See https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/diverse-education/files/expert_report_as_filed_d._mass._14-cv-14176_dckt_000419_033_filed_2018-06-15.pdf . “Primary” extracurricular activity was one of the controls Harvard’s expert used in his admission model (not used by Plantiff’s model). Harvard’s expert defined this “primary extracurricular activities” as listed first or second. He writes:

In any case, if some kids list their HS varsity sports on the bottom instead of among their first 2 ECs, it would increase the number of HS varsity athletes above the 22% of applicants reported in appendix D, furthering my point – the portion of applicants receiving a 2 is much smaller than the portion of applicants who are HS varsity athletes, so one can assume that getting a 2 requires more than just being a varsity athlete.

Okay, “Primary activities that applicants listed as either activity 1 or activity 2. Categories for activities can vary year to year.”

My question isn’t a critique of your valid point(s) about the impact. Rather asking for clarification. Kids are kids and do not always list ECs in a way that makes sense to adults reading the instructions. In general, while something silly up top (or sometimes, included at all,) can make one question thinking, there are a variety of solid, relevant ECs that can go up top without the reader making more of it than choice. Not necessarily the true “primary.” Many kids list what they feel is most impressive to the college first.

IOW, to assume 1 and 2 are truly the very most important to a kid is iffy. Or that they are te most potentially impactful to the college decisions.

Why doesn’t Harvard decline the federal funds it receives so that it can do as it pleases? (That wouldn’t solve the narrow of issue of what it did during years it received federal funds, but the person behind the current litigation is the same one behind the Fisher v. UT litigation, and his real goal is to dismantle the use of all racial preferences.) Does anyone know how much Harvard receives in federal funds annually?

Many research grants, portions of financial aid packages for some students generally come from the federal government.

As of now, it does not need to decline those funds.

Follow the history of these sorts of complaints and lawsuits and see how much the govt has so far approved.

@1NJParent — thanks. I wasn’t thinking about the research grant money. That would hurt most universities to give up that money. I was just curious because a lot of people brush off the lawsuit by saying that Harvard is private and can do whatever it wants. Even Harvard concedes that isn’t true (because it accept federal funds).

Thorny questions of social policy and constitutional law. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

@pappernich $550M a year came from federal govt. That’s half of the research budget and a lot more than fighting a lawsuit. Of course, it’s not just about money.

Yes, I just finished reading some of those figures for the amount of taxpayer dollars for grants, contracts, and student financial aid received by Harvard and the other Ivies (and Ivy equivalents).

The lawsuit will test the limits of deference given to institutional values and the methods actually employed to achieve the diversity Harvard states is critical to its educational mission (whilst it receives federal funds and distribute those dollars to help achieve its diversity goals). There are large questions here as well as questions that dive into the weeds to examine the details about how Harvard accomplishese it. The devil may be in the details. I’m not prepared to handicap this one just yet. After all, so much is redacted from public view.

@pappernich If you’re so inclined, go read the primary documents related to Fisher: the U stance, the SCOTUS response and interpretations from sites like ScotusBlog. (The lawsuit is what it is, the background info and discussion is what’s interesting andinformative.) Not hard to get through. Though UTAustin is a public, many of the core principles are valid. (You’ll see the holes, too.)

I don’t know what will happen. But I know how proactively alert the tippy tops have been to these issues, for a few decades. I don’t know if there’s a smoking gun. And again, they aren’t dealing with the specifics of app files, the actual small aspects that can make or break an app.

As a 2-star recruit, you are in the top 600 or so players nationwide, within your age group. I think the tennis coach was correct in that you would not be recruitable for them. At a D2 or D3 school, you’d have much more latitude. Good luck, wherever you go! It’s interesting that Yale told you that about being able to walk on – I’m familiar with one of the girls on Yale’s team - she was the state champ and a 5 star recruit. My sense from her is that this was the kind of athlete that they were looking for on their team.

If you are looking into the history of these issues, you will eventually come to the Bakke case, in which Justice Powerll’s decisive concurrence specifically referenced (and quoted) Harvard’s then-policy on affirmative action as a model of what was permissible. Obviously, the tectonic plates on the Supreme Court have been shifting some since then, but for decades Harvard could point to that case and say that what it was doing had been specifically blessed by the Supreme Court (and it had).