I would say that the admit rate to any Ivy for any school is vanishingly low, recruited athlete or not. Perhaps not out of some EC prep schools, but we are not coming from that . Our school sends 1-3 kids to HYP ivies every year; sometimes an average- excellent athlete, sometimes a person with very high stats who is “spiky” in science or math or debate. But rarely the student body President / 4.0/ varsity high school soccer player “average excellent” . They almost always have a spike of some sort … YMMV
If we are talking about the Ivy League conference, the conference is structured such that athletes are expected to have ~1 SD lower average stats than non-athletes. Athletics is more than just one of many possible ECs to distinguish between the many different “average excellent” applicants. Instead it is structured such that the average athlete stats will be substantially lower than non-athletes, and the lowest stat students in the class will generally be athletes. This does not mean that there won’t be any athletes with top academic qualifications. However, it implies that athletes will be underrepresented in this group, compared to non-athletes.
Some specific numbers from the Harvard lawsuit are below. The vast majority of athletes are academic 3 admits. The vast majority of LDC hooked kids are academic 2 admits.
Academic 5 Admits (“Modest grades and 500 scores on SAT”) – 100% are athletes
Academic 4 Admits (“Respectable grades and low-to mid-600 scores”) – 91% are athletes
Academic 3 Admits (“Excellent grades, mid-600 through low-700 scores”) – 28% are athletes
Academic 2 Admits (“Top grades and mid 700 scores and up”) – 4% are athletes
Academic 1 Admits (“Near perfect scores and grades”) – 0.2% are athletes
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This is really interesting - I wonder, can you put actual numbers on this? How many athletes does Harvard recruit in an average year? How many students are we really talking about here? 50? 100? 200? Just curious.
I do agree with you that the recruiting process at the Ivies favors wealthy non-URM students; simply because there are no athletic scholarships available. I know several donut-hole students who could have been Ivy/ NESCAC recruits, but wouldn’t consider it because of the cost. Many Ivy athletes come from college prep, boarding, or top public high schools, which tend to not skew URM. They have had the support at home and school to achieve both academically and athletically, which is a huge advantage. However, unfortunately I think that this can be argued about any “spiky” student who gains admission to an Ivy; luckily, the schools are trying to commit to holistic admissions and look at kids who are high-achieving in the context of their school and opportunities available to them. There are, however, a limited number of admissions for these students and all others.
Perhaps I am misreading this, but I disagree that they can sit back and relax and be done by October. S24 has to send in quarter & semester grades to admissions, and it was made very clear that if his GPA drops, his offer can be rescinded. I think he will be putting more work in than D24, honestly.
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Is this the Ivy Academic Index/ Bands ? I know this was in play before TO, then after covid it was questionable ?? I don’t know anything about previous academic recruiting years, as S24 is my oldest kid. I do know, as I have said in other posts, that his school suddenly either changed or re-implemented testing/ AI halfway through his recruiting process.
Exactly. AI is not being calculated in the same way as it was, if it is at all. No school can calculate an overall class AI because of the number of TO matriculants they have. I don’t believe any Ivy requires all matriculants to submit score upon enrollment.
During the lawsuit sample above, 11% of admits were athletes, which was an average of slightly under 200 admits per year.
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The Ivy League conference’s 1 standard deviation rule referenced above is based on AI. I am not familiar with how this rule has changed with test optional.
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Allowed, not expected, correct?
I’d be hesitant to generalize much from Harvard (especially from what seems to be not so clean data from the lawsuit) to the rest of the conference.
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Harvard looks to build a class that is excellent across multiple dimensions. They recruit students through multiple pathways. One pathway brings them an Amanda Gorman and another brings them Gabby Thomas. They seem happy with the result.
It takes just the slightest familiarity with Harvard to realize that the recruiting practices that attract either one of those students do not conflict with their stated goals.
As others have stated, it’d be pretty much impossible to run their athletic programs without recruiting. They are competing against other schools and their timelines.
The fact that athletes have an extra early indication of decision doesn’t mean they are any less qualified. (Although it does mean, in some cases, that they are testing earlier and usually only once, probably with far less prep than a typical applicant. Why? Because Harvard knows they shouldn’t care about small and meaningless differences in test scores).
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I mean, isn’t that up to them?
I go back to my original analogy to religion. To me, it would not be important that a private college hold regular Catholic masses, since I am not Catholic. But if a private college wants to hold regular Catholic masses, then I view that as their business.
As it happens, hockey was my favorite sport to watch at the time I went to college, and was my favorite sport to attend at my private college. But I didn’t expect everyone else to share that interest.
Still, if a private college wants to field a D1 hockey team . . . isn’t that just as much their business? It may not be important to you, which is fine, but then why does Harvard have to agree with you about what is important to them or not?
Well, personally it is because I don’t believe what you are describing counts as discrimination. It is basically impossible that every important factor they consider have no disparate impact by race. They can, and I personally believe should, do their best to put together diverse classes as a result of the sum total of their admissions policies. But they can’t possibly have each individual factor work like that on its own.
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I expect colleges/coaches to take advantage of conference athletic recruiting rules, in an effort to increase chance of conference athletic success. Harvard appears to have done this in the lawsuit sample, with athletes averaging ~1 SD lower academic index. Informal publications suggest other Ivy League colleges have done so as well.
When the AI calculations were in full effect, the 1SD deviation limited how much below the college mean the athletic recruits could be. It served as a lower guardrail, and because athletic talent is not particularly correlated with academic talent, most colleges would be flirting with that lower boundary throughout the admissions cycle.
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Have you never seen Love Story? The hockey team is very important.
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I’m not getting dragged into the details here, but is this substantially different than a bunch of @parentologist threads, with slight changes in the nuance but calling for elimination of college athletics? Because that is what it is if you eliminate athletic preferences. Harvard basketball or Cornell Hockey will get schooled by a mediocre D3 team who actually recruits if there are no preferences.
Why are we still having this same repetitive thread over and over, started by the same poster with an axe to grind?
BTW, I’m not answering whatever attack comes back at me, nor am I likely even opening this repetitive thread again. Just posting my 2 cents. This seems like a prime candidate to get shut down because it’s nothing more than a poster trying yet again to stir the same pot and start the same debate. @skieurope
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I’m fairly new on these boards. It was starting to dawn on me that this was the case. Thanks for pointing this out. No reason to turn the dead horse into glue.
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While I have a lot to say on this subject, the bitterness and narrow-mindedness of a few of the posters makes me reluctant to spend the time to write a thoughtful position piece.
Varsity athletics, and all it comes with, are part of the tradition and history of elite private colleges. Why try to change part of what has made these schools so renowned?
I wonder if those who are so against athletic recruitment due to perceived lower academic accomplishment are also against admissions advantages for URM and First Gen applicants, many/most of whom also have less impressive academic records?
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I don’t think the OP is bitter - from what I recall their child is a student at Harvard so it isn’t sour grapes. The whole thread is based on article from the Harvard Crimson which questions athletic recruiting because it favors wealthy, white applicants (especially true when considering ultra white sports like squash, tennis, skiing, sailing). It isn’t surprising, to me, that athletic recruiting at elite schools would be scrutinized after the recent SC decision.
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for clarity, I am the OP
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