<p>Now that decisions are in, I would be curious to learn of the other schools in the decision set of those who have selected Princeton.</p>
<p>Conversely, if you did not chose P, where are you going?</p>
<p>S chose P over Dartmouth. Very difficult decision. I think it was all the input from princeton alums that made the difference.</p>
<p>S chose P over H...recruited athlete!</p>
<p>H and Y, also recruited athlete.</p>
<p>I chose Princeton over MIT.</p>
<p>The University of Chicago. Extremely difficult decision, and I was leaning the other way until mid-April.</p>
<p>I chose Princeton over Stanford and University of Chicago</p>
<p>I chose Princeton over Columbia, Harvard and Penn</p>
<p>I chose Princeton over MIT, Caltech, Columbia, Cornell, Olin, and Duke.</p>
<p>I chose Princeton over Yale, Columbia, and CMU</p>
<p>It's incredibly unfair that athletes, who usually aren't even in the same universe as qualified applicants, get accepted. I still don't understand why Princeton, and other Ivies, hold on to this archaic notion that the athletic achievement of a university is important. Furthermore, Princeton doesn't need the publicity associated with successful teams. Schools like Florida State and Penn State and Davidson this past year are significantly aided in this respect; Princeton's academic reputation and prestige suffice.</p>
<p>For the record, I love watching and playing sports.</p>
<p>dontno: There are so many obvious problems with your post that it's almost laughable.</p>
<p>
It's incredibly unfair that athletes, who usually aren't even in the same universe as qualified applicants, get accepted.
</p>
<p>Unfair? What do you mean? Since when is it less fair to get into a university on athletic merit? Or, conversely, since when has it become a universal maxim of fairness that it is more fair to let someone into a university based on academic merit than on athletic merit?</p>
<p>You are yet another person who assumes that academic merit should be the primary index for determining an applicant's worth. That is simple not the case. There are a number of ways to determine merit, and none are inherently fair or unfair. You might like one type of merit more than another, but that does not reflect anything except your personal biases.</p>
<p>S chose Princeton over Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Wharton, Cornell and Dartmouth-and it was not that hard a decision! Go Tigers! He was NOT a recruited athlete.</p>
<p>Just on a side note, why do parents always use "S" and "D" instead of son and daughter? Especially for son, is it really a big difference between typing "S" and S-O-N?</p>
<p>Convention</p>
<p>there are plenty of recruited athletes who are also academically qualified for Princeton. sure, being recruited helps tremendously, but its not as though Princeton is always compromising the academic quality of its student body by letting in talented athletes. I, for one, had 2330+ SAT board scores, 5s on all AP tests taken, 750+ on all three SAT subject tests etc. I was in the top 5% of my class at a highly competitive private school (nearly 20% of my grade is going to a top 10 school). Undoubtedly there are plenty of students with my stats who don't get into Princeton, but they also aren't national champions...</p>
<p>I just get frustrated when people universally stereotype "recruited athletes" as dumb jocks..</p>
<p>I hold that academic merit should be the primary basis of acceptance because, umm I dunno, a college is a ****ing academic institution. </p>
<p>Maybe you weren't aware of this, but colleges are schools. Classes are taught by teachers. There are students who take notes, study, then take exams and leave with a certificate noting that they've successfully completed the ACADEMIC program. Yes, there are of course social aspects to every college. But primarily, it is a place of learning. Thus, admission, especially at the upper tier (HYPSM), should be based primarily on academic credentionals. </p>
<p>These universities are the holy grail and realization of lifelong work for so many people. It's unconscionable that someone with incredibly low scores can be accepted over academically qualified individuals. </p>
<p>To summarize: Academic institutions (are you going to argue that a college is not, by definition, an academic institution) should accept STUDENTS (we call them students, not athletes) based on academic merit. Pretty simple.</p>
<p>@ Previous poster:
Clearly you deserved to get in and I'm not against the admission committee using your athletic achievements as a sign of your dedication. If this was a tiebreaker, then I have no problems. My beef is with clearly unqaulified students. Someone from a neighboring high school was accepted to Penn as a football recruit. He went to one of the worst high schools in the state (vo-tech) and got an 1100. Almost everyone from my high school (the best in the state) got rejected. </p>
<p>Furthermore, Im sure there are a handful of recruited atheletes who also excelled in academia. But they're by far the exception.</p>
<p>dontno. How exactly do you know this the following statement you made is true? "Furthermore, Im sure there are a handful of recruited atheletes who also excelled in academia. But they're by far the exception." I would bet if you looked at all the sports played at these schools you might find they are not all 1100 SAT's, and that they are not the exceptions. As for the one metioned in your post, was it a URM? You may want to wander around through a number of other threads.</p>
<p>I don't mind if athletic ability is a consideration for an applicant, but sometimes it seems to go a little far. I've heard of students at these universities who do not quite speak the most intelligible English talking about how they were recruited even though they had a 2.x GPA and other unimpressive stats. </p>
<p>@ dontno: Though I agree to a large extent with what you say, I just want to speak in defense for a moment about the student with 1100 SATs who attended a bad school: I am strongly against standardized exams, and I also think it's very important for a school to look at what a student has accomplished within the scope of what their school has to offer. It's really not fair if someone didn't have the appropriate education at the secondary level, and if they're showing that they have clearly surpassed what their school has to offer then they should of course be a serious consideration. This student may very well be a terrible applicant, but I don't think we can know that from his school and his SAT score alone: these are of the least consideration. Rigor of transcript, GPA, and the more discrete letters of recommendation and essays can tell a very different story. You may very well be right that this athlete didn't deserve to get in, but I just wanted to point out that there are probably some people that come from poor backgrounds who have achieved surprisingly well academically given their situation and played sports well enough to give them that final push.</p>
<p>But yeah, if the admissions council has doubts that a student can succeed in an Ivy environment, I think that's really pushing it, especially when I hear that some of these kids have to have a little bit of academic hand-holding throughout their years at the Ivies. It's the students who simply can't cut it at Princeton academically that I feel shouldn't be there, regardless of their athletic ability. If someone can do well academically and has achieved extraordinarily well in athletic ability, I think they should be given as strong consideration as the student who took the initiative to open a business or the musician. But to get in purely on athletic ability and nothing else is going too far.</p>
<p>To feign on-topic posting, I'll add that I also turned down Cornell and the University of Florida (those are all the schools I applied to), but they're far, far from the same level as the University of Chicago and Princeton in my eyes. :)</p>
<p>^^ dontno: I was kind of with you a little bit, until you brought up that example of the kid. To elaborate on what JoeTrumpet said, I don't think a student should be evaluated by the high school he attended. He might have done very well in actual classes.</p>
<p>I also agree 100% that standardized test scores are by far the worst indicators of "intelligence." I get more and more frustrated the more I see SAT practice tests because the questions are SO stupid and ask for "skills" that you will never practically use.</p>