<p>I've got to believe that if these recruits truly can't handle the academics at Harvard, they'll flunk out. I wouldn't think the professors would mark them up just because they're athletes, who I wouldn't think have that much of an increased status at Harvard anyway. What baffles me is how apparantely these kids are going to pay $50,000 a year at Harvard when they could have gotten full rides else where</p>
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Life isn't fair. If someone is not academically qualified, they should not be admitted to a college.
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<p>Given the millions of dollars of increased revenues, national exposure and brand-name recognition, and excitement that translates into increased applications to a school, the pros of a strong sports program vastly outweigh the cons of athletes whose SAT scores may not be as high as the average student, but who create benefits that are innumerable to the school and all who attend it.</p>
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What baffles me is how apparantely these kids are going to pay $50,000 a year at Harvard when they could have gotten full rides else where
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<p>Harvard will provide a full ride based on need if their family income is below some fairly high figure, maybe $60K, or maybe up to $100K. I can't recall precisely.</p>
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Given the millions of dollars of increased revenues, national exposure and brand-name recognition, and excitement that translates into increased applications to a school, the pros of a strong sports program vastly outweigh the cons of athletes whose SAT scores may not be as high as the average student, but who create benefits that are innumerable to the school and all who attend it.
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<p>The familiar old argument. Are you seriously suggesting that Harvard needs any of those things? Brown, maybe....:D</p>
<p>Amaker did recruit a 6-10 player named Frank Ben-Eze, who had immigrated from Nigeria in high school. Ben-Eze gave a verbal commitment to Harvard, choosing them over U.Va. and Marquette, and was heralded as perhaps the top recruit ever signed by an Ivy League school. His recruitment was the one that raised red flags and began an investigation, but when he couldn't make an acceptable SAT score, he was notified that he wouldn't be offered admission and ultimately wound up at Davidson. The investigation into his recruitment did not reveal any violations.</p>
<p>An error in my terminology ^^^ - not "signed" by an Ivy League school - his commitment was a verbal one, predicated upon making acceptable test scores.</p>
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I've got to believe that if these recruits truly can't handle the academics at Harvard, they'll flunk out.
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<p>How common is flunking at Harvard? Obviously we wouldn't expect top-notch kids to struggle, but that notwithstanding I thought there have been questions about the leniency of the grading system. I wonder how less-qualified students at Harvard typically fare.</p>
<p>^^I don't know about athletes, but in general flunking out is pretty rare at Harvard. But mental dullards are pretty rare there too. Some schools sort and select students once they get there. Harvard and other highly selective schools tend to sort and select them before they get in.</p>
<p>I have friends who are athletes here. Most have an academic advisor through the team they are on, who helps them find tutors for their classes and other extra help. They also routinely take them to meeting at the bureau for study counsel. I get the impression that people don't flunk out here and that while it might be very hard to get an A, no one gets D's.</p>
<p>There are a lot of alum of the ivies who were there when athletics meant much more. I really believe it is these alum, and their money, that are pushing a return to serious athletics. These guys are getting older, have time on their hands, have kids and grandkids at these schools and want to make a sport of going to games with their college buddies and having their team win. And the schools know that winning team makes happy alum who donate big bucks. </p>
<p>That Dartmouth Dir of Admission disappeared pretty quickly after alum got wind of his letter to Swat's pres telling him how much bending for athletes hurt a school's quality. Now we see Dartmouth's ED stats under the new director, with SAT scores considerably below the school's median in the ED round, the round in which most athletes come in. </p>
<p>This is all ushering in a new era in sports at the ivies IMO. In my office the ivy grads are jealous of the Stanford and Duke guys who rush back for the big games! And the ivies are jealous of the money these sporting wins bring to those schools.</p>
<p>The ivies continue to look for balance. In the last 50 years they have gone from taking the majority of students from feeder prep schools and excluding jews to reaching out to the poor and middle class and welcoming Asians.</p>
<p>Hawkette seems to continually misunderstand ivy league athletics. She assumes that if a school brings in more "fake" student "athletic employees" that 50,000 people will come to the games and spectator sports will become the center of everyones lives like they are at USC etc. This is wrong for several reasons. </p>
<p>One, is that most ivy league students come in with a particular talent, sport, academic dream or research goal that gives them little time or desire to sucumb to the allure of big time spectater sports.</p>
<p>Most Ivy league students realize the big time sports (especially football) are just historic extensions of the roman empires "bread and circuses" especially the gladiator sports. These spectacles thrill the less introspective and aware folk that populate the big "sports schools" but don't fool the type of student admitted to the ivy league. It is widely known that even Stanford and Duke with sky high test scores harbor a different type of student than is found at Harvard or Columbia.</p>
<p>Many alumni like sports the way they are. When one goes to the Harvard Yale game it is filled with real alumni coming back on an annual pilgramage not just every football fan and sports yahoo in a 40 mile radius.</p>
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spectater sports
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<p>I love this. is the definition of spectater "bleacher potato"? :D</p>
<p>It will never be 'big time', but I think ivy sports are moving back to what they were 25 years ago when everyone did go to the Saturday football games.</p>
<p>Sherm --</p>
<p>It is true that high caliber students don't cotton much to sitting around watching others do the doin'.</p>
<p>Still, even attending a football game, if planned properly, can be a highly participatory event... cocktail party in the parking lot, reuniting with acquaintances, and intelligent conversations in the bleachers during the 65% of the game that is comprised of waiting between plays.</p>
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Still, even attending a football game, if planned properly, can be a highly participatory event... cocktail party in the parking lot, reuniting with acquaintances, and intelligent conversations in the bleachers during the 65% of the game that is comprised of waiting between plays.
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<p>Reminds me of the Miller High Life commercial.</p>
<p>I'll take a good old tailgate and big-time game experience over that any day, but everyone has their own preferences I guess. You can be a pretty crazy sports fan and still be intelligent.</p>
<p>Sherman,
I think I understand Ivy sports just fine. I have heard and read the arguments many times. I think that there is also a much greater breadth of opinion among Ivy Leaguers themselves on this topic as many want to experience better athletic life on their campus, but understandably worry about whether this will tarnish their school's academic reputation. Obviously the Ivy schools will decide for themselves, but I think that Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, and Notre Dame have shown that a college need not sell its soul to the devil in order to field these nationally competitive/relevant teams and my guess is that more Ivy colleges will decide that those schools shouldn’t have all of the fun. </p>
<p>In addition, I am afraid that you don’t understand sports at other top academic colleges like Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame and your comments come across as more than a little condescending when you describe their athletic programs and how that affects their college’s academic integrity. Please note that neither here nor anywhere else in my postings have I suggested that it’s appropriate for these academic treasures to transform themselves into athletic factories. Nor am I suggesting that the Ivies do this. Apply tough admissions standards, make the students take a real courseload of classes just like everybody else, track their grades, progress toward graduation and actual graduation, etc. </p>
<p>For your Cornell, probably the best example is men ice hockey. Many Cornell posters greatly enjoy the hockey and defend their players as student-athletes who can and do make a real contribution to the fiber and vitality of the school and its overall undergraduate experience. Perhaps you are not in favor of what Cornell is doing in ice hockey, but if you are a fan, then why would you think to denigrate other great colleges who do the same thing, albeit on a bigger and broader scale? </p>
<p>My key contention has always been that great academics and a great social/athletic life need not be mutually exclusive. They certainly are not at Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame. Each is nationally competitive in several major sports, including football, basketball (men and women), and baseball. The result is a great academic campus that regularly gets a positive jolt from the athletic environment and which is supplementary to the undergraduate social experience. This certainly will not have value for all students, but there is definitely a subset for whom a good athletic life would be a positive addition to what they experience as Ivy undergraduates.</p>
<p>"It will never be 'big time', but I think ivy sports are moving back to what they were 25 years ago when everyone did go to the Saturday football games."</p>
<p>Don't know about 25 years ago, but 32 years ago nobody I knew gave a hoot. If we went, it was because we were bored and it was something to do on a Saturday. I went maybe twice.</p>
<p>now as for hockey:</p>
<p>" Many Cornell posters greatly enjoy the hockey"
yah, it''s fun.</p>
<p>"and defend their players as student-athletes who can and do make a real contribution to the fiber and vitality of the school and its overall undergraduate experience. "</p>
<p>look it's fun,. but I don't defend anything, or anyone. I don't know that some other scholars should lose their places for a few imports from Canada who can swing a hockey stick.</p>
<p>Since they were in fact there, and I liked sports, I enjoyed it. But I won't be defending those individuals, or that use of resources. If they weren't there I'd just watch the Yankees or something. No biggeee here.</p>
<p>There's no reason why colleges need to sponsoring "big sports", in my book. It should just be club sports, for people who enjoy doing it. No scholarships for it, no nothing.</p>
<p>Pro sports should sponsor and create their own minor leagues, it should have nothing to do with higher education whatsoever.</p>
<p>And no, this will not be overridingly important in the ivy league, IMO. Except once in a while, when someone happens to be unusually good at something, as an aberration, it will get some mileage then. For a while.</p>
<p>The "Harvard-Yale" game is not really about football, if you can understand that.</p>
<p>BTW: the "Real" competitiion in Ivy sports was in the marching bands, in my day; Brown and Columbia were the bands to beat, IMO. I did grow tired of hearing them play "Old McDonald", but I could see how it could be amusing..</p>
<p>Yeah, the marching bands are the best part. The Cornell marching band split up and went into the stands to serenade the fans at football games. I played trumpet for the Cornell pep band (including hockey games) but it became too time-consuming for an engineering major. Cornell has the best marching band in the Ivy League; the only "real" marching band as they say.</p>
<p>Cornell has, in fact, the only marching band in the Ivy League. None of the other sever march any longer.</p>
<p>^^I guess it depends on the definition of "marching." The Harvard University Band certainly marches parade-style, in uniforms. I saw them do so when they marched out of the '08 Commencement after the ceremonies were over. They had a drum major and everything.</p>
<p>Maybe "marching" was the wrong term; they certainly weren't doing much of it..</p>