I think this is a big point. Sure, an athlete might do fine academically at any Ivy, at any NESCAC, in any of the New England leagues, but sometimes the coach makes a big difference. You could take all the hockey players and put their names in a hat and assign them to a college like they assigned teams in the Rec leagues for 8 year olds, but by college the players have developed preferred positions, like a certain coaching style, want to live in Maine or Ohio or NYC.
And in the long run have you changed the make up or the gpa of the college? Probably not. The college is still accepting a kid from the same prep school or even the same public school, but that student might not be very good at hockey.
I would venture to say that my kid that was a recruited athlete, received a LL and went to a top Ivy, also met or exceeded, the academic criteria of most all other non-athlete accepted students. And I feel that they were not the only athlete that was like this.
If would have been difficult to have a higher academic standing coming out of their HS. That said, if they were not a recruited athlete, they might have gotten accepted, though they very well may not have been admitted as there are 1000s of strong students like them applying every year.
I haven’t read all the posts on this thread, but I do know of other admitted Ivy non-athletes that were not as strong academically, though the admissions office saw something that they liked with those applicants that set them apart outside of the pure academic criteria.
What they saw was most likely a highly coveted athlete. While some Ivy recruits from our school are high performers most are not (SATs around 1200/B+ UW). Those who are not academic superstars are exceptional athletes - one ranked in top 3 nationally for their sport. As getting into an Ivy is much more difficult than being successful once there, I’m sure those kids have done just fine.
Schools the comprise the NCAA, NAIA and NJCAA want athletes on their campuses. Most, if not all, don’t care what parents think about it either, at least behind closed doors.
If a school decides they don’t want another 4.0/1600 kid because they need someone to kick an oblong ball through yellow vertical poles, the kicker gets the nod.
Yup. I agree. I do have to note, though, that only about 1,000 kids get a 1600. They aren’t as thick on the ground as is implied on CC. Ivies aren’t rejecting them by the thousands because there aren’t actually that many.
I understand fully about highly coveted athletes.
I wrote and was referring to non-athletes that were not as strong academically. Just in my small circle, I know of a few non-athletes that got into an Ivy, some a top Ivy, with academics a fair amount below others that did not get in. So in those cases, admissions was not seeing a highly coveted athlete as they were not an athlete, but the AO saw something else that they liked or set them apart.
I would assume the SATs around 1200 are more often for the “helmet” sports, which do have a wider range of acceptance and typically have more LLs than other sports.
Our local suburban high school produces at least 50 of these kids a year (maybe 75?) Basically what are called “average excellent” here on CC. The admit rate to HYP for non-recruited athletes like this is vanishingly low.
ETA: But our school does send the occasional recruited athlete to HYP with these stats, sometimes significantly lower
When it comes to the “unfairness” debate between recruited athlete vs unhooked admissions, I agree that recruited athletes do have an unfair advantage, but the unfairness isn’t what posters in this thread think it is. The advantage those who travel the recruited athlete path have is that they are told (or can tell) long before applications are due whether or not they make the cut. If they do, they apply. While painful to hear before their contemporaries that a child doesn’t make the cut for X or Y school, it gives them the advantage of redirecting to schools where they can make the cut.
Schools could fix this “unfairness” by having a similar process for unhooked applicants. Let them talk to a math/english/gender studies specialist who can tell them how many slots are available and whether they are competitive or not before applications are due. But, it isn’t in the schools’ best interests to do that. Schools want low admissions rates for rankings purposes (thanks US News), application fees, bragging rights and other purposes.
While I don’t have any hard facts to back this up, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the admissions rate for “recruited athletes”, compared to all the athletes that contact a school about recruiting, is much closer to the general admissions rate. And, in the interest of throwing out random stats, in my child’s sport, less than 2% of high school male students that participate in this sport become D1 athletes.
In fairness, the hardest part by far is getting admitted. Once admitted, almost nobody fails out. At some schools, a majority of the graduating class earn final GPAs that would be the envy of graduates elsewhere. That is why getting accepted to Harvard and its peers is comparable to winning a lottery.
I suspect that if Harvard decided to spend as much time focusing on maintaining the same degree of academic rigor for its existing students as the unhooked applicants hoping to get in, there wouldn’t be as many people applying or complaining they are disadvantaged in the admissions process.
Additionally, he does not get any extra tutoring or academic advising as an athlete from the HYP school he is attending.
Yes, but athletes get access to the same extensive tutoring and academic advising that all students in an Ivy get. That is one of the things that families are paying for.
This is exactly what we found w D22. Hearing the different school’s assessments of her rigor and achievements (academic and athletic) really helped her see where she fit in the grand scheme of the applicant pool. So she had a really good picture of what her choices were. By October she had visited and met with students at each of the schools and made her decision … and then she was done. And free to enjoy senior year. The timing and insight offered by athletic recruiting can’t be beat!
I should add … being part of a team allowed her to build community before she started as a freshman and to continue to build community while there. In terms of transition to college, it was huge to have that built in community, particularly to have seniors looking out for her.
No one is saying that anyone is dumb. But when students ask for “chance me” for highly selective schools, they get told that even valedictorians with perfect SATs get rejected, often (but not, of course, if they’re recruited athletes). All I’m saying is that the alternative admissions pathway for recruited athletes is NOT “separate but equal”. I’m saying that in order to get rid of the preferential pathways which largely benefit wealthy, non-URM applicants, it’s time to get rid of the separate athletic recruitment pathway which evaluates academic criteria differently than the standard admissions pathways. Let extraordinary athletic achievement be considered as is extraordinary achievement in any other EC - at the time of standard committee evaluation in the standard admissions process.
I can kind of understand the argument for a recruited athlete path for football and basketball, which are big audience sports with huge fan bases, which generate a lot of money for colleges, which benefit URM applicants at least equally, if not even more than non-URM applicants. But for most of the other sports? Really? It’s really that important for Harvard to have a D1 ice hockey team? Highly selective schools really need to recruit for the myriad sports that most inner city kids or even suburban public school kids never heard of, let alone got an opportunity to try?
For the extremely highly qualified students (we’re talking first in class, perfect SATs) who are not recruited athletes, it’s still a crap shoot. None of them can be sure of getting into any highly selective schools. But for recruited athletes with lesser academic records, they can relax and be done by October of senior year, even though no one’s academic criteria puts them in that position.
Even if the process didn’t highly favor wealthy non-URM students overall, I’d still argue that it should not exist, since it favors athletic achievement over academic achievement. But the reality is that it DOES favor wealthy, non-URM students, as does legacy and wealthy donor. How can we possibly justify continuing these policies that essentially discriminate against URMs and those who aren’t coming from wealth? Especially when the SC just banned affirmative action!
What would be so terrible about eliminating the recruited athlete pathway for, say, everything except football, basketball, and maybe track and field? Volleyball players and field hockey players could still get noticed in the admissions process, just not to the degree that the recruited athlete pipeline does currently.
The schools wouldn’t be able to field teams if they don’t recruit. This just seems so simple.
To stick with your volleyball example, the school would need to get an app from two setters and two liberos at least every 4 years. Every year they would need to get apps from multiple middle and outside hitters. That would not happen without some quid, you can’t leave it to chance if athletics are a priority (which we know they are). Coaches are paid/bonused and keep their jobs by fielding competitive teams. You are proposing that coaches have zero control over the athletes they get.
The bottom line is that athletics are an important priority for many schools. We know this because the schools directly tell us this in many ways, including preferencing strong athletes in the admissions process (athletes selected via an often painful and extremely rigorous years long vetting process that includes coaches, players, admissions and other admin.)
Just so they can add a few more “average excellent applicants” to their class every year, Harvard would be throwing away 150 years of its storied tradition. When it comes to athletics, I think they are perfectly happy with the status quo.
My point is that every kid at an Ivy you would expect to have this, right ? AT minimum “average excellent” . So- what do you do to get the extra kick into the ivies ? An amazing research project ? Nationally recognized cellist? AMC medalist ? My kid has sports as what puts his “average excellent” academic record over the top (he also has music and academic achievements as well). Sports involves its own kind of intelligence . It involves body- mind connectivity, knowledge of physics, math, biology - and how to put it all together and use it. It involves studying, practice, reps, time management , etc. Different than winning a science fair ? Yes. But a totally valid hook, imo, for an “average excellent” student.