<p>Re #87</p>
<p>Apparently, Brown did not cut any sports, as reported by Gorilla Glue. According to Brown’s athletics website, it still has the 4 teams the committee recommended eliminating immediately as of last April: mens and womens fencing teams (36), womens skiing (9), and wrestling (28). All include freshmen on their rosters. Looks like the committee recommendation got canned. Sorry, Gorrilla Glue.</p>
<p>Q: What’s the difference between believing in academically-meritocratic college admissions and believing in Santa Claus?
A: The available evidence (a full stocking, eaten cookies, etc.) supports the existence of Santa.</p>
<p>As for athletics, Malcolm Gladwell touched on the subject in [Getting</a> In](<a href=“Getting In | The New Yorker”>Getting In | The New Yorker):
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Male athletes, despite their lower S.A.T. scores and grades, and despite the fact that many of them are members of minorities and come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds than other students, turn out to earn a lot more than their peers. Apparently, athletes are far more likely to go into the high-paying financial-services sector, where they succeed because of their personality and psychological makeup…
…Shulman and Bowen would like to argue that the attitudes of selective colleges toward athletes are a perversion of the ideals of American </p>
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<p>Probably coz, Yale, Princeton and all the other ivy league colleges do not have art teams that compete with Harvard. Although, I am sure the Arts department must be looking for talented artists with academic stats that are different than the pre med applicants.</p>
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<p>That eliminates a few too many sports while you’re at it.</p>
<p>But in order to make it “fair” you would have to consider the ratios of various groups/classes/races in each sport and determine if selecting students in those sports discriminated against students who typically didn’t play or were not particularly good at those sports. After all, white men can’t jump :), so recruiting basketball players probably discriminates against jump-challenged white guys, not to mention vertically challenged asians. </p>
<p>The real question shouldn’t be whether a particular sport discriminates against or favors one group over others, but does the athletic recruitment program as a whole give a balance of students or does it favor some groups over others?</p>
<p>That said, I agree that sports like water polo are elitist but the ivies want to retain their image as a place for the 1%, so it’s important to have sports like water polo…</p>
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<p>[The</a> Yale Herald Blog Archive Undergrads on display: Art students show off class works](<a href=“yaleherald.com”>yaleherald.com)</p>
<p>[From</a> York St. to Broome, Yale artists grow up | Jan 21, 2000](<a href=“yaleherald.com”>yaleherald.com)</p>
<p>and of course</p>
<p>[Maya</a> Lin | Art21 | PBS](<a href=“http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/maya-lin]Maya”>http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/maya-lin)</p>
<p>Competing art depts? Absolutely. Are they recruiting artists? Is it a hook? I doubt aspiring artists at HYP have different stats than aspiring MDs ymmv</p>
<p>edit: someone who actually knows about art will have better links</p>
<p>There was an interesting story a few years back about a piece in Yale’s undergrad art show. A young woman on FA did a sort of collage showing how much money she spent at Yale. It was an eye opener for some of her classmates. I can’t remember her name to find a link to the story.</p>
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<p>Most, but not all, of them seem to have nothing in their background but for a litany of experiences in poking people with a sharp stick.</p>
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<p>There are plenty of paranoids who think not only that, but that most of the world is “organized” with that goal in mind. You can hear them on channel 127 on Sirius radio.</p>
<p>Even our public high schools have water polo teams in CA! Hardly elitist in warm(er) weather communities with competitive community swim teams all over.</p>
<p>Thank you camom for speaking up for non-elite water polo players everywhere. Water polo is not an elite sport in CA, TX, or FL. It is a great sport for strong swimmers who don’t have the talent or body type to race, but have the strategic skills to play a field sport - with a little bit of wrestling thrown in.</p>
<p>There is no doubt the ivies shop the preps for athletes. It is an easy way to find Div1 athletes who have proven they can also handle Div1 academics. But it is not some conspiracy to keep the super-selects for the 1% or legacy kids. After all some of those prep school kids are scholarship kids who got into the prep in the first place on the strength of their athletic ability.</p>
<p>BTW my Ds are not athletes and have no interest in the LAC where they have a double legacy. They understand and accept that some of their more athletic friends, particularly in esoteric sports, have an edge. But then they also want to go watch water polo matches in college, so they understand why there is a benefit to the institution.</p>
<p>“Who, exactly, is being squeezed out by the athletic recruiting?”</p>
<p>Additional kids who are outstanding in the arts, engineering, politics, service, journalism, etc.</p>
<p>Harvard doesn’t need 41 varsity teams with paid staff and admissions pull. There is no equivalent set of stakeholders ensuring that 41 different musical ensembles get their favored picks admitted. I believe we could get by with, say, 28 varsity teams.</p>
<p>so I am just wondering… what about equestrian polo? elitist or not? or is it regional?</p>
<p>When son1 was accepted to MIT we had no doubt that there must have been some surprised people considering none of sons attended our towns highschool. The following year son2+3 were admitted to Cornell and people literally stopped us when they saw husband or I to ask “how we did that.” First, it was our sons who did it and there was nothing magical about it. I really wonder if people realize that it is none of their bussiness where other kids get accepted. I could say this, that the most talented kids are usually the most humble, and maybe that explains why some kids are admitted over others. People in my town had no idea what my kids were doing and we never felt like it was their business. Even today after all of our sons have graduated we are still stopped by people we don’t even know who have heard about our sons…we can’t believe people have nothing better to do but think about how someone else might have done something. People need to worry about their own lives and their own children. Just help your children find the right school for them.</p>
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<p>I remember reading something years ago about LL Bean, and how they actually sell very few duck boots, but they have to feature duck boots in every catalog because being a place that sells duck boots is very important to the image of what LL Bean is and what an LL Bean purchaser aspires to be or to be like. </p>
<p>To some extent, I think that’s the purpose of water polo, fencing, lacrosse, etc. at some of these schools. It’s not that they are really part of the core educational mission, but being at a school that offers water polo, lacrosse, etc. is part of the image these places try to sell. (Disclaimer: My nephew is a water polo player at HYP. He’s got the academic goods, too, trust me on this one.) </p>
<p>If you don’t like it, don’t apply. I’m not a huge fan of major bonuses given to athletic scholarships, but guess what? My S attends a school that gives athletic scholarships. Clearly I don’t object to it enough to “forbid” him from going there. Either put your money where your mouth is, or don’t complain. The people who seem to think that the world revolves around a mere handful of schools are the dumb ones.</p>
<p>Equestrian polo is not a NCAA sport, is not a recruited sport at Harvard (or Yale, the other equestrian polo school, though Brown, Dartmouth, and Cornell all have equestrian teams in some form), and is supported by alumni/ae donations, not university funding. It is a club sport.</p>
<p>There are two different (IMHO) reasons that Harvard and Stanford (most notably) have a cornucopia of athletic teams and vie for the “most athletic teams/different sports teams at any college in the country” title.</p>
<p>Harvard has a rich athletics history and many of its athletics teams (particularly those that some posters have classified as preppy and/or elitist) are supported wholly or mostly by alumni/ae donations. This is particularly true in the case of a sport like squash. My understanding is that the squash team budget is 100% funded by alumni/ae giving and endowment and even the team coaches are paid from this funding too. Heck - there was an alumnus who gave more than $100,000 to Harvard’s squash program back in the 1950s - you can only imagine what folks give today. The net costs to Harvard, if any, are very, very low and in essence this sport becomes a “bonus.” You have to remember that “physical vigor” was used (though sometimes as a proxy for other markers, but that’s a discussion for another time) as an admissions criterion for many years for Harvard and schools of its ilk; many Harvard men (and it is all men - Radcliffe didn’t have teams like this yet) from the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, who are now in a position to make large gifts, either played sports competitively or did so recreationally.</p>
<p>On top of that, those very alumni/ae who now support these athletics teams are also very likely to give other unrestricted gifts to the university as a whole, a pipeline that may be impacted if you cancel their sport. I don’t think that “Sorry Mr. Leverett, we don’t want your $100,000 for the squash program this year - we don’t think we should have squash anymore - but feel free to still give us your annual fund gift!” would earn anyone in development any favors.</p>
<p>Of course it’s not just about money - I don’t doubt the folks in Mass. Hall really do care about student-athlete development, leadership, excellence, etc. etc. </p>
<p>I think that a smaller reason for Harvard - but perhaps much more significant one for Stanford - is the idea of being a breeding ground for literally world champions in everything, including sports. Stanford has long liked to think of itself, from my perspective, as a place where smart Olympians go. In fact a development person once essentially articulated this fact to the family of a friend of mine who are all Stanford alumni/ae and support the school donation-wise.</p>
<p>momma-three, it’s not necessarily accusatory. Maybe they have a bright kid and wonder if they are doing enough to be in the running. If no one talks about what it takes (or doesn’t take) you get a bunch of people who think that high scores trump everything.</p>
<p>While in theory I don’t mind the fact that so many schools value athletics so much, it does bug me that none of the arts get as much recognition. I think it’s pretty rare that the oboist gets admitted because one just graduated. And as far as I can tell being an amazing visual artist counts for nothing except at art school.</p>
<p>I happen to agree with Pizza. Private colleges determine the image they want to portray and the kids they want to accept. People certainly aren’t voting with their feet as applications in ever higher amounts seem to drop from the sky. Nothing is going to change unless it is driven my the consumers of their product. My S1’s school was going to drop a team…guess who funded it, wealthy alumni. Two new buildings…funded primarily by alumni and his was not an Ivy League school. Alumni who really support to the tune of a million or more also have a great deal of “say” in the culture of the college. Until those two factors - kids applying and alumni donating - change…not much is going to change and as Pizza says, if you don’t like it don’t apply.</p>
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<p>[NCAA</a> Division I Men’s Water Polo Rankings - NCAA.com](<a href=“http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/waterpolo-men/d1]NCAA”>Men's Varsity Polls - Collegiate Water Polo Association)</p>
<p>Seems to be a popular sport in California. Of the top 20 NCAA Division I teams, only #10, #15, #17, #19, and #20 are not in California.</p>
<p>In Junior Olympics, for 16u’s, the top 33 teams were all from California.</p>
<p>"The net costs to Harvard, if any, are very, very low and in essence this sport becomes a “bonus.”</p>
<p>I’m not worried about the money issue. Harvard’s got enough money to go around. What there isn’t enough of is seats in the freshman class.</p>
<p>“is the idea of being a breeding ground for literally world champions in everything, including sports.”</p>
<p>I’m totally down with giving a gigantic admissions boost to Olympians, whether they’re going to play their sport at Harvard or not. Outside of a few sports (squash, crew), most of the recruited athletes in the Ivy League are not Olympic hopefuls. Not even close.</p>