<p>The vast majority of students in this country attend whatever public high is nearest to them, and they don’t have any opportunity to attend an “academically rigorous public magnet high school” – such opportunities are limited to those in / near major cities who have family circumstances and public transportation that make that possible. So, again, why is “privileging” them a better thing than just letting them fall as they may?</p>
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<p>Right. Which sort of proves my point – the group that you (generic you) are a member of, you want to see well represented / overrepresented – whether that’s being from NYC, being from a public magnet, being an athlete, being a legacy, being a high SAT-scorer, being a gifted musician, etc. There’s no more cosmic rightness in tilting the landscape towards academically-rigorous-big-city-public-magnet grads than there is in tilting the landscape towards athletes of whatever stripe.</p>
<p>"A recruited Ivy League athlete must have the academic credentials to survive the stringent and highly selective admissions process at each institution. Coaches have little sway in the admissions process, although they do provide a list of potential athletes to admissions officials. </p>
<p>Yeah, I’m sure that the Harvard admissions department turned down a lot of players that Tommy Amaker “recommended” who met the standards prescribed by the Academic Index.</p>
<p>“I’m pretty sure the top SAT scorers and low-income and URMs are identified and contacted early too.”
Receiving a “please consider applying to Harvard” letter or email is in no way like having a coach come out and see you play, talk to your parents, or you about how much he wants you on his team or exactly what scores you will need to achieve to get into the admit pile or, take you on a 2 day recruited athletes ONLY tour of HYP or have your application hand delivered to the admissions office in early Oct. </p>
<p>give me a break…</p>
<p>My top SAT scorer never heard a word from HYP . Turns out he wasn’t interested in them anyway, so no loss.</p>
<p>But so what? Are you saying you would prefer that whatever college, which has made the decision to field NCAA athletic teams, not make any attempt to recruit the best players it can? If doing so requires more effort than courting a top SAT scorer, why does that make you so mad?</p>
<p>Bay, I don’t have a problem with colleges prizing athletic talent - I would never say “well, given the 2000 athlete and the 2100 non-athlete, the school should always prize the 2100 over the 2000.” What some of us don’t like is the skirting-of-admissions-protocol – that gee, athletes know in September they are going to XYZ college, but not musicians or legacies or URM’s or just Joe-Schmoe-Applicants. THAT’s what’s often objected to – the skirting of the process.</p>
<p>PG,
I’m trying to understand why some of you are so offended by the process. Non-athletes are not competing for athletic slots. Why does it matter to you that they are on a different admissions timeline?</p>
<p>^ exactly Pizzagirl .
Bay, recruited athletes are treated DIFFERENTLY by the admissions office. The receive preferential treatment not given to any other “highly desirably” student. That’s all we are saying.</p>
<p>I should have been more clear…I meant academically high achieving PUBLIC SCHOOL GRADUATES. </p>
<p>As for city living being highly privileged, that may be true now, but I am old enough to remember an era when cities were widely considered among mainstream middle/upper-class America as cesspools of inner-city socio-economic ills and that only those who were unable to afford fleeing to the suburbs or the better off rural communities remained. </p>
<p>Heck, the folks who held such notions IME ranged from upper/upper-middle class elite college-educated relatives/folks who inhabited some of the most toniest coastal suburbs to unemployed working-class high school dropouts in a few rural Midwestern towns. Though I realize they got most of that from too many mass media reports and bad Hollywood films overhyping the worst from NYC’s nadir from the late '60s till the late '80s, this stereotype is quite commonplace all over the US and even internationally. </p>
<p>In fact, I’m reminded that this stereotype is still prevalent nowadays everytime an out-of-towner or international student talks about NYC dangers as if there’s a gun/knife wielding felon hiding on every street corner. </p>
<p>In short, my comment was meant to address my relief at news Princeton is starting to attempt to correct for its past classist/anti-urban attitudes that it once held…especially considering several older high school classmates experienced those very attitudes firsthand.</p>
<p>It’s the very concept of “athletic slots” vs “non-athletic slots” that is the bothersome part. Why are athletics so important that it’s important enough to explicitly set aside X number of slots for them? To Hanna’s point, Harvard doesn’t explicitly set aside X number of slots for baritones. Schools don’t explicitly set aside X number of slots for chemistry majors or kids from North Dakota or kids who will join the Young Republicans club. Why are sports so important that you can’t just “let it fall” as you let these other things fall? There’s some awful, terrible fear that some sports team won’t be full-up. Well, so what? So a sports team isn’t full-up. If the Young Republicans club or the student newspaper or the a cappella group or the horseback riding club folds because not enough students were interested, everyone pretty much shrugs and says, “Oh well.” But it’s like there’s some fear that there would be a sports team that wouldn’t perform at maximum capacity, and what-a-terrible-state-of-affairs-that-would-be.</p>
<p>"Why does it matter to you that they are on a different admissions timeline? "
oH GOOD GRIEF! you dont think its an ADVANTAGE to KNOW where you are going to go to college by Oct of your Sr year?
Thousands of students, especially those who apply ED or SCEA, would probably give their eye teeth to be done with the whole application process early.</p>
<p>I totally agree that athletes are treated differently. What I don’t agree with is the implication that they have an easier time in admissions. What it took for them to become someone eligible to fill maybe 3 spots for a particular position, who is both good enough to play Div. 1 athletics, meet and fulfill rigorous admissions requirements, and be approved by another layer of scrutiny: the coach (and maybe the team), is not something that deserves scorn, imo.</p>
<p>Ok, I get it now. Its the (maybe) 6 months of not having the same stress of not knowing that bothers you so much. This seems a rather trivial issue in the scheme of life, and undeserving of pages and pages of debate.</p>
<p>Bay - do a little thought experiment. Let’s say Elite U explicitly said they were going to ensure that, I don’t know, 400 seats in the next class were going to be legacies. And they were going to pick those legacies by hand so they’d be done September 15, and they didn’t have to go through the normal admissions process. Don’t you think there would be push-back? For all the complaining about legacy preferences that goes on, colleges aren’t explicitly “holding” X number of “legacy seats” for which only-legacies-need-apply. For all the complaining about legacy preferences, legacies are still applying using the exact same time frames (EA, ED or RD as they see fit) and don’t find out one minute before anybody else. There is no “office of legacy preferences” to shepherd the precious little pumpkins through the process – nor are there special tutoring sessions and hand-holding for the legacies when they get there. But, in some twisted set of priorities, athletics … something that’s not even germane to a university setting … is not just important, it’s so important that it gets to circumvent the normal process. THAT’s what’s being objected to. I have NO objection to a college saying that it values athletic talent just as it values artistic, academic, leadership, etc. types of talent. That’s great. I do object to the “and it’s so super-duper special it has to occur outside the normal admission template / process.”</p>
<p>Ok, but that is a separate argument. Once a college has decided to become a member of the NCAA, that fate is sealed, at least as to fielding and filling the requisite number of teams.</p>
<p>PG,
I personally don’t care if private colleges want to set up a separate admissions process for legacies. That is their right, as far as I am concerned.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t know what the NCAA does if it walked in the room and hit me over the head, so that’s not really compelling to me. Why does athletics “need” some kind of governing body like the NCAA? Fascinating how all other kinds of extracurricular activities (music, dance, etc.) can be pursued at extremely high levels in a college setting without requiring governing bodies to make sure that everyone is coloring within the lines.</p>
<p>Supposedly there are some rumblings by some football schools about withdrawing from the NCAA because they are displeased with its sanctions for violating NCAA rules that were established to keep colleges honest and keep the playing field level. </p>
<p>I mentioned the NCAA signing dates earlier. The dates are uniform per sport for all NCAA member colleges across the country, to protect the student-athlete’s interests. It is those signing dates that drive the earlier admissions process.</p>
<p>So, Bay, you are saying that these preferential processes would be even WORSE sans the NCAA!</p>
<p>I guess athletic recruiting has turned into a big fat arms race.
But are the Ivies really in that competition? for all sports? for any sports?! I wonder how many athletes the Ivies “lose” to athletic scholarships every year…, and in which sports.</p>
<p>I just do not believe that it is so important for the JV sailing team to have special slots to “give” out in the summer before Senior year… YMMV</p>
<p>Bay, it is offensive to some people that one type of EC is valued more/treated preferentially over others, because that is basically what is happening. A super-star bassoon player deserves just as much kudos as a superstar athlete IMO.</p>
<p>Which colleges do this? or have a JV sailing team for that matter? Or are you just making this up to make the process sound stupid?</p>
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<p>I get the being offended part. Its just that it seems petty. Why should anyone care about bassoonists, anyway? If they were replaced with kazoo players, no one would notice the difference. And anyway, many of the most highly regarded performers today never went to college, so why are we wasting any resources on performers in college? I’m offended.</p>