Hopkins is even more direct - they go straight into it.
Tell us about an aspect of your identity (e.g. race, gender, sexuality, religion, community, etc.) or a life experience that has shaped you as an individual and how that influenced what you’d like to pursue in college at Hopkins.?
That’s pretty direct. As I mentioned in another thread, S24 struggled with that essay since he’s a typical suburban kid with a pretty ordinary upbringing.
Interesting. Are these work around questions optional (1 choice among others) or mandatory?
At the schools S24 has applied to so far, when that question is present it is mandatory. At UVA it is the ONLY question (apart from the optional one for those who have a pre-existing relationship with UVA - i.e. legacy, faculty kid or descendant of the slaves who built the school).
It really comes down to what is the reason for colleges to exist, which pretty obviously is academic education, not sports. It’s time to stop admitting students in a separated out preferential pipeline process because the school wants them for high-level competitive sports teams.
I don’t necessarily agree, but I think I understand your viewpoint on this for Ivy League/highly selective schools.
Genuinely curious - do you feel the same toward less selective schools? SEC type conferences? Athletic scholarships?
Because what your suggesting can probably be accomplished at a place like Columbia - albeit with some difficulty and push back. But it would represent a wholesale revolution if adopted nationally.
I don’t agree. Schools have a lot of ways to meet goals. They decide who to educate and what form that education takes.
This year at CU everything has flipped because of football, but it isn’t just football that is benefiting. Each home football game is bringing in $18M to the area (mostly Boulder, but some other communities too). The school has $100M in ‘free’ advertising from ESPN and Fox Sports. OOS applications are up 40%. Academic applications.
No one seems to have a problem with athletic recruiting at Stanford or Duke or Michigan.
I get it but the relationship between athletics and education is age old. Kids that get recruited from highly selective schools, D1 and D3, are vetted to make sure they can withstand the academic rigor. This is particularly true in the private highly selective schools, maybe less so in the public schools. It’s not like they aren’t getting educated. They are. That’s generally the point of being recruited at these private highly selective schools. Your point boils down to fairness. Well, there isn’t, or very little, fairness in this equation. It sucks but that’s just life. Moreover, athletics brings in money from various sources. It’s not going away.
College sports aren’t going anywhere, of course. It’s too ingrained - not to mention the financial aspect. I think this issue generates the most controversy at elite schools where seats are limited and many excellent students are rejected. At places like Alabama it doesn’t matter if athletes are getting in because great students aren’t limited in access the way they are at a place like Harvard. And to add to that, many of the sports at Harvard are niche and favor the wealthy and the white. The student body might miss football or hockey, but I don’t think the average student would bat an eyelash if squash or fencing disappeared.
At less selective schools, it’s not as much of an issue, because most people who have the academic qualifications do get accepted, whereas at the highly selective schools, there are probably >20 highly qualified students applying for every seat.
Are you saying the popular schools (because popularity is what drives applications which results in low acceptance rates) should then do away with athletics?
We all know you aren’t a fan of college sports based on your posting history, but we have several recent examples of highly rejective schools (Stanford, Dartmouth, Brown) that tried to eliminate some sports which didn’t go well…students and alum were unhappy, to say the least.
Eliminating college sports in a wholesale, or even targeted manner, isn’t on the table at the vast majority of highly rejective schools. And if they have college sports, they have to recruit. That part is simple.
I agree that the category of sports doesn’t fit under the term of academic education.
Do you consider other extracurricular activities such as visual arts, performing arts, community service, and political engagement as part of an academic education? Should they be eliminated as well?
What does academic education actually mean?
Selecting only the brightest (most academically qualified) was never part of their mission statement. It seems to me that the overall theme of these mission statements is educating the leaders of tomorrow, who usually aren’t the best and brightest.
Harvard- “educate the citizens and citizen-leaders for our society. We do this through our commitment to the transformative power of a liberal arts and sciences education.”
Yale- “educates aspiring leaders worldwide who serve all sectors of society.”
Princeton- “advances learning …with a pervasive commitment to serve the nation and the world.”
Stanford-“prepare students to think broadly, deeply and critically, and to contribute to the world, and deploy Stanford’s strengths to benefit our region, country, and world”
Even the most academically rigorous universities like Cal Tech, MIT, U Chicago, and Swarthmore field NCAA varsity teams. They must feel that there is an institutional advantage in selecting athletes for their student body.
But I do understand where you are coming from.
So personally, I think private colleges should be pretty free to decide what is or is not important to their mission, and then we can choose among private colleges based on whether we share those values or not.
So to me, a private college which sees a lot of value in athletics is fundamentally no different from a private college which is religious. Some people want that. Others do not. And so some people might apply to Notre Dame (for both!), other might apply to a secular college like Vassar where athletics is present but more chill, and so on. And it is all fine with me.
Interestingly, though, it appears to me some people see the Ivy League colleges in particular as special in the sense they think they should play some specific role in our college ecosystem, which is not necessarily the role they currently play, and specifically that they should be focused on being our best colleges academically and not be so into sports.
I think there is a sort of obvious irony in that notion as applied to these particular colleges, given that the Ivy League quite literally is a sports league. And I also personally think that while those are certainly good colleges for some people, they are not necessarily the best colleges for all people, so it is no big deal if these particular colleges are in fact pretty into sports.
And finally, I am hesitant to insist these are truly divorceable factors anyway. Like, outside of being a sports league, the main common factor among the Ivy League is they are also very wealthy universities, and that is in no small part because they have been the recipients of a lot of gifts over time. And I am not so sure their sports programs have not played a profitable role in terms of maximizing those gifts.
And as a bit of indirect support, the closest analog to the sports-heavy Ivy League is the sports-heavy NESCAC. And while there are other common factors, those are also mostly quite wealthy colleges.
So . . . maybe even if you do not personally value sports, you might value the things gifts can buy, and gifts might be related to sports. And for that matter, some of those prominent religious colleges are also wealthy, as are the prominent women’s colleges, and so on. So non-academic things like this generally might be kinda related to extraordinary fundraising success.
Or not, but again my feeling is it is fine for these private colleges to make their own strategic decisions about things like that.
Stanford, Duke, Rice, Vandy?
Even if athletes are a much smaller percentage of the student body at Michigan, Wisconsin, UCLA, Washington, those athletes still take 800 spots, spots that rejected applicants think should have gone to them because they are smarter. Maybe more boring, clumsy, not leaders, but smarter.
College without athletics works in Canada, England, China (although many try to sneak it in with rowing) but that’s not the model chosen by the Ivy league or US colleges.
I think Harvard is going to use athletic recruiting to get a racially, ethnically diverse class. The lacrosse coaches may be told to recruit harder from low SES areas, to take a second look at an inner city team, to consider players on the Native teams. Golf coaches may try to find another Tiger.
I have a kid who never considered pursuing a college sport but ended up walking on at one of these schools. I was a completely unexpected turn of events, but I will say their college experience is much richer for it, both socially and academically. Primary friends are not on the team, but it exposed them to a broader group of students and many new ways to be involved with the community.
Here’s a list of our recent US Presidents and the sports they played in college. Only George Bush, Sr was a standout college athlete.
Ronald Reagan: varsity swimming, Eureka
George Bush: varsity soccer and baseball, Yale
Bill Clinton- none
George Bush: varsity baseball, Yale
Barack Obama: varsity basketball, Occidental
Donald Trump- varsity squash and tennis, Fordham
Joe Biden- varsity football, Delaware
So, non-athletes are boring and clumsy and athletes, even if not as smart, are “leaders”? That’s a new take. And good luck, diversifying through niche athletics. Considering most niche sports are overwhelmingly white, it’s going to be like finding a needle in the haystack. Greater diversity through squash and rowing is certainly a new way to do things.
Yeah, I was not an organized sports kid, but my S24 went to a private K-8 and then HS where sports was a big deal, and it has ended up a major positive in his life.
None of which is to insist this is the only right path. But I think thanks to his experience, I have a much better appreciation for what school sports can mean to some kids.
Why do these have to be mutually exclusive?
I definitely appreciate what it brings to the table and my kids are definitely more bookish than sporty. Even the one (especially the one) who competes at a national level.