Legacy Admissions Strike Again

Parents Forum
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<p>I think you are exaggerating how far the Ivies “stepped back.” Other than football, all of the Ivy sports are NCAA Division 1, with Harvard offering the highest number of sports of any other college in the country. They still recruit, they still spend millions on athletic facilities, they still reach the national rankings in some sports or with some athletes. Obviously, the Ivies must in fact, think sports are related to a college education. To conclude otherwise is a stretch.</p>

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<p>I just now stumbled across this thread, and I find it both annoying and amusing.</p>

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<p>OK, I get it. Fencers aren’t “real” athletes, they’re ”just” privileged elites, and/or they’re academically unqualified for top colleges.</p>

<p>It’s a nice, comfortable stereotype, but it isn’t true, at least not for my kids and for many other student/athlete fencers I know. My kids are both Division 1 NCAA fencers at excellent colleges, and both enjoyed the benefits of being recruited. But they defy your silly stereotypes.</p>

<p>Upper class (1%)? No, solidly middle class.</p>

<p>Prep school? No, the local public.</p>

<p>Academically unqualified? I think not, but perhaps I’m biased. DS was valedictorian of a class of 320, State and National AP Scholar. DD was “only” 3rd in her class, but still both State and National AP Scholar. Both had great scores, excellent non-academic ECs, great recommendations, etc.</p>

<p>Just writing this brings a huge smile to my face. How many parents can say they have two State AP scholars in the family?</p>

<p>/rant</p>

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<p>Financial Aid Changes Game as Ivy Sports Teams Flourish</p>

<p><a href=“Financial Aid Changes Game as Sports Teams in Ivies Rise - The New York Times”>Financial Aid Changes Game as Sports Teams in Ivies Rise - The New York Times;

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<p>^Could this be a part of the reason why the FA programs were instituted???! </p>

<p>And, that topic, i.e. the real reasons why the FA programs were increased so dramatically at HYP, could lead to still another major tangent…</p>

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<p>Because Princeton wanted to get ahead of Harvard and everyone needed to follow?</p>

<p>It was very interesting watching a presentation at Harvard in 2010 summer. The lead presenter representing Harvard was still in grad school or a housemom or something like that (her husband was defintely in grad school) who completed under the old rules with 100k or more debt while the 3 student reps at the presentation all said they came to Harvard because it was cheaper to go to Harvard than their State schools.</p>

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<p>A couple of points, sherpa: First, in my comments about the fencers coming from the 1%, I was relying on the link posted by Bay to Harvard’s men’s fencing roster. If you take a look at the earlier post, follow the link, and then take a look at the schools from which the fencers come, I think that you will see that I was not employing a stereotype, but just reporting an observation.</p>

<p>Also, I’ve said earlier on the thread that in my experience, fencers are actually the academic elite among the sportsmen and sportswomen.</p>

<p>I believe that Caltech has a woman fencer who has qualified for the NCAA’s in fencing this year, and was number 2 in the nation in sabre (the last time I looked). I think she just started fencing in college. There was also a comment upthread about a largely self-taught fencer.</p>

<p>I don’t “hate” the athletes in any of the sports. Nor, actually, do I regard them as academically under-qualified for HYPSM. I think the point that Bay and some others overlook is this: Many of us in the Parents Forum have the rare good fortune that we can take it for granted that our children will be academically well qualified for HYPSM, etc. when they reach application age. For a recruited athlete, that becomes an automatic admit. For a student who is similarly placed nationally in a non-sports EC that is equally time-intensive, that combination of circumstances probably yields odds of about 40% of admission, rather than 100%. It’s hard for the non-sports-people to see why sports are so important that the odds shift so much.</p>

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<p>I seem to recall at our tour of Caltech many years ago that they often have a competitive fencing team because it’s not that unusual for people to take it up in college. There just aren’t that many fencers to go around.</p>

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<p>Are you freakin’ kidding me, here? Music and theater are academic subjects. Physical education isn’t. That doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile to be physically fit, sound mind in sound body and all that, but that doesn’t make physical education an academic subject.</p>

<p>Why does my alma mater – a fairly typical representative elite school – offer majors in umpteen different instruments through a school of music, and theater / performing arts through a school of communication – but not a major in physical education? Because music, theater, fine arts, etc. ARE part of a college’s mission, just like English, French, history, math, etc.</p>

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Caltech’s fencing team is far from competitive, for the simple reason that their coach has no admissions pull. The idea of the fencer taking it up in college and becoming truly competitive is a myth. There may have been a success story or two thirty or forty years ago, but not today.

To the contrary, there are plenty of good fencers, many, many of them academically very strong, but very few collegiate fencing teams. The competition among the prospects for the few spots is intense.</p>

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<p>Actually, it can in theory be an academically rigorous subject (lots of study of biology/biochemistry and physiology, as distinct from the physical education activity courses or “joke courses for jocks” type of courses), though perhaps it is not in many cases. Certainly it can be an overtly pre-professional subject like music and theater are.</p>

<p>At schools where there is no specific physical education major, it and courses on it may be found as a subarea of biology. See courses 123 through 129 here (note the prerequisites of pre-med level biology and chemistry, which precludes them from being “joke courses for jocks” type of courses):
[General</a> Catalog - Integrative Biology Courses](<a href=“http://sis.berkeley.edu/catalog/gcc_list_crse_req?p_dept_name=Integrative+Biology&p_dept_cd=INTEGBI]General”>http://sis.berkeley.edu/catalog/gcc_list_crse_req?p_dept_name=Integrative+Biology&p_dept_cd=INTEGBI)</p>

<p>Of course, the presence or absence of such courses or major is not necessarily the same as the presence or absence of big time intercollegiate sports.</p>

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<p>Laura Decker, Caltech sabreuse, qualified for the NCAA tournaments back to back in 2010 and 2011. She was second in the NCAA Western Regionals (sorry about the earlier inaccuracy–her second place was regional, not national). Took up fencing at Caltech, as far as I can make out from the website. Admittedly, she only won 3 of her matches at the NCAA national tournament.</p>

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<p>This is where the annoying assumptions are made. You will never be recruited if you are not a Division 1 - level athlete. The chances of you accomplishing this are very very small. Much smaller than scoring a high SAT score and a 4.0 GPA. Even if you are good enough to be recruited, this does not mean that the colleges you want to attend either need or want your particular athletics skills. If there are better athletes in the pool who are also academically competitive, you won’t get an offer. If the college doesn’t need any pole vaulters that year, you won’t get an offer. The idea that athletes are “auto-admits” whose chances are 100% are fabricated out of ignorance, sour grapes and bias.</p>

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<p>here is an indepth report NYT’s on the AI .
<a href=“Before Athletic Recruiting in the Ivy League, Some Math - The New York Times”>Before Athletic Recruiting in the Ivy League, Some Math - The New York Times;

<p>"You learn the nuances and ignore some numbers,” said James Jones, who is in his 12th year as the Yale men’s basketball coach. “My team average is over 200. I know I’m not getting anybody admitted who is in the 170s, and I get very few, if any, in the 180s. So I’m looking at kids in the 190s and above — unless there’s a kid in the 180s that I really want or I feel will get through admissions for some other reason.”</p>

<p>"One of the most misunderstood aspects of how the A.I. works is its fluctuation from institution to institution. Because the eight Ivy League members have varying academic standards and the basis for the athletic A.I. average is the overall student body, the average A.I. for the athletic cohort at Harvard, for example, is several points higher than the average at Brown. That means a soccer recruit with a 210 A.I. who is rejected at Harvard might be accepted at Brown. And the whole league knows it. "</p>

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<p>"You will never be recruited if you are not a Division 1 - level athlete. "
There is a HUGE difference between the level of play that most DI athletes are capable of vrs recruited athletes in the Ivy League.
And that is what most people here are talking about - not the dumb football player recruited to play for Ol Miss.</p>

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<p>I was surprised to hear a couple of fencing kids were recruited this season from our local PUBLIC schools this year by Princeton and Penn.</p>

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<p>As long as there’s so much talk about fencing here, let’s look at NCAA 2011 final rankings.</p>

<p>1 Notre Dame
2 St. John’s
3 Harvard
4 Penn State
5 Ohio State
6 Princeton
7 Duke
8 Pennsylvania
9 Stanford
10 Yale </p>

<p>Four Ivies in the top 10, plus ND, Duke and Stanford. Ole Miss and Caltech are notably absent.</p>

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<p>Caltech has a single fencer who has made a name for herself. That can’t get them nationally ranked since you need several fencers to compete for each school to have any chance.</p>

<p><a href=“http://gocaltech.com/sports/fencing/2010-11/releases/deckerNCAA[/url]”>http://gocaltech.com/sports/fencing/2010-11/releases/deckerNCAA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Caltech is a division III program with no slots for recruitment.</p>

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<p>^ Exactly. I don’t want to minimize Ms. Decker’s accomplishments, but one successful competitor does not make a competitive team.</p>

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<p>Please defend this statement with some facts. </p>

<p>Here are some randomly selected DI sports and their respective rankings. Notice that no Ivy League colleges are ranked near the bottom. For the most part they are in the middle to upper-middle of the rankings. Certainly respectable for volunteer (non-scholarship) athletes.</p>

<p>[NCAA</a> Division I Women’s Volleyball Rankings - NCAA.com](<a href=“http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/volleyball-women/d1]NCAA”>http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/volleyball-women/d1)</p>

<p>[NCAA</a> Division I Men’s Lacrosse Rankings - NCAA.com](<a href=“http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/lacrosse-men/d1]NCAA”>http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/lacrosse-men/d1)</p>

<p>[NCAA</a> Division I Women’s Soccer Rankings - NCAA.com](<a href=“http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/soccer-women/d1]NCAA”>http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/soccer-women/d1)</p>

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<p>Bay, what you say is true, but the sports you cite are not the big-time sports that get picked up on national television.</p>

<p>What about football and basketball?</p>