<p>In other words, they don’t want their schools to become what UC Berkeley and Oberlin were back in the heydays between the 1960’s and 1980’s-'90s…schools filled with a critical mass of students who were far more willing to question and even vociferously protest* all that is wrong with the status quo of their day without resorting to conformist-oriented excuses such as “That’s the way they’ve always done it” or “If you don’t like it, leave/don’t attend/don’t think about it.” </p>
<p>One of the great things about having a critical mass of such intelligent and outspokenly non-conformist classmates willing to probe/question anything is that you have engaged classroom discussions where practically all classmates were on and ready to jump in with their thoughts…sometimes a bit too enthusiastically. </p>
<p>That was a great contrast to the Ivy classes I’ve taken/sat in on at the invitation of Profs/TAs where most of the students were a bit too passive for my taste and only a handful of students dominated the entire class discussion. In fact, it bothered me so much I brought it up with the Profs/TAs afterwards…and they agreed that something needed to be done to engage the passive majority. </p>
<ul>
<li>On and off-campus…including risking arrest by protesting on facilities such as the US Military’s School of the Americas.</li>
</ul>
<p>Yeah, I’m still waiting for that revolution they promised was coming soon. I was there. It was mostly a waste of time that distracted from real school work.</p>
That’s because you don’t care if Harvard has a good fencing team or not. Harvard does care. I maintain that you haven’t really made an argument about why Harvard shouldn’t care, other than that you think Harvard should adopt your values instead of its own.</p>
<p>Boy, I really hope this is true. I’d like to think that the Ivy League is at least one hold-out island of academic legitimacy for “student athletes.” </p>
<p>There seems to be a general sense that the Ivy league schools lower their academic standards somewhat to recruit athletes, but it’s not clear by how much. My sole personal data point is from Stanford and not Ivies, but my nephew (a 4:07 miler and state champion in high school) was heavily recruited and offered a admission and a track scholarship at many schools including Stanford. His high school GPA was ~3.7 UW, which is not bad but certainly not in the same academic stratosphere as most accepted students at Stanford. (He ended up choosing another school).</p>
<p>But I suppose academic prowess can at times be all relative. I recall when Ron Darling was a star pitcher for the Yale baseball team, all the articles about him made it clear that he struggled to keep up with his classmates academically. He fit a lot of the dumb jock stereotype. But after he left Yale (can’t remember whether he earned a degree) and went pro, his major league teammates regarded him as a genius, the Ivy League brainiac.</p>
<p>While I disagreed with some of the protestors’ aims, they actually provided great outlets for students to learn how to advocate, engage in the democratic political process…including protesting/civil disobedience, and debate/think on their feet. </p>
<p>IMO, that’s not a distraction from “real school work”…but a good co-curricular activity to further the underlying training such schoolwork is meant to provide. I’m not sure a passive conformist citizenry is good for the US…or any society which aspires/views itself to be a pluralistic democratically run Republic.</p>
<p>Oh good grief, talk about self-important. Really, Oberlin and UC Berkeley, fine schools as they are, don’t loom so large in everyone else’s minds that they would make decisions to consciously be NOT like those two schools.</p>
<p>"I don’t know that it’s nefarious, but giving so many predetermined slots to athletes who are as a group, overwhelmingly white and middle to upper middle class, certainly does ensure that a big chunk of the student population looks and acts a ‘certain way’. "</p>
<p>Are you suggesting all whites act a certain way?</p>
The whole article is relevant. College education - at any school - is most importantly an exercise in social programming. The environment at Ivy League schools is the way it is for a reason.</p>
<p>“I maintain that you haven’t really made an argument about why Harvard shouldn’t care”</p>
<p>I maintain that Harvard should care about the quality of the fencers it admits to the same degree it cares about the quality of the bassoonists and nuclear physicists and Namibian well-diggers it admits because athletic achievement is, at a minimum, not superior to achievement in other fields. It is good for Harvard to have its current students and alumni leading the world and making headlines in every type of positive human endeavor. The current system, which privileges the athlete over the achiever in other fields, suggests that quality sports teams are more important to the university than quality newspapers, plays, chemistry labs, etc. I don’t believe they are. Anyone who is an inter/national quality fencer will still get in under the ordinary admissions system, just as inter/national level pianists do. We don’t need to give X spots to the fencing coach to fill when we don’t give any to the biology department or the choir director.</p>
<p>There are a few sports that potentially serve to unite the student body and alumni and enhance the university experience for everyone. If the current recruiting system (sans scholarships) is necessary to be competitive in those sports, fine. Even taking a generous view, the number of such sports is in the single digits and a lot lower than 41. As for wrestling, skiing, fencing, golf? Let them compete in the regular pool.</p>
<p>I meant that as a half-sarcastic joke. Lighten up. :D</p>
<p>Half based on the “misfit” stereotype those two schools seem to hold in professions filled with professionals most likely to sit on the alumni boards of more conventional elite universities including the Ivies…business executives, finance/bankers, law firm partners, business consultants, etc. </p>
<p>I encountered it with one interviewer for a small financial services firm…relatives/friends who went to UC Berkeley encountered encountered far more of that BS when they graduated from the early '70’s to late '80s during their first job interviews with folks in those occupational fields.</p>
<p>Most of the recruiting process driven by NCAA rules. If you cannot field a team or fill a minimum roster, then you cannot be a member of the NCAA. If you are not a member of NCAA Division 1, then you cannot compete at the highest levels, and will have trouble recruiting players. The NCAA sets the NLI signing dates, which drive the need for Ivy likely letters in order to compete for the best players. If the Ivies didn’t offer LLs, then once the top scholar-athletes signed with Stanford or Duke or Michigan, they cannot go to the Ivies. If they wait for Ivy regular admission and don’t get in, they have lost a chance to play at a scholarship school.</p>
<p>Colleges can choose not to join the NCAA. I don’t actually know of any that are not at least Div. III, but there must be some. Your first step will be convincing colleges not to join and how that will make their colleges more attractive to applicants.</p>
<p>I assume you know all this, but if you do, I don’t understand why you don’t understand why the process is the way it is. It is not unfair to anyone, because non-athletes are not competing for athletic spots.</p>
<p>I repeat my earlier tongue in cheek thesis - if a school like Harvard admits only 2400 SAT 4.0 H.S. valedictorians, who is going to be responsible for the mental counseling needed for the formerly number 1 kids who are now at the bottom of the class? CC already has numerous posts along the lines of “Help! I got a C! My life is over!” Another kid might say - I won my fencing match and I’m still managing a 2.3 at this super hard school!</p>
<p>I have a lot of respect for Oberlin, work with several Oberlin grads, and really, they aren’t any “different” from any other comparable-LAC grad. I sense the difference is rather like U of Chicago, in the sense that any real difference is more in their own heads- and self-conceit-------- than based in reality.</p>
<p>“Some?” Yeah, like about 300. These colleges belong to the NAIA instead of the NCAA. NAIA caters to the athletic competition ambitions of small colleges. They have their own organization, recruiting rules, etc. that have nothing to do with the NCAA.</p>
<p>Right. I mean, I’m not a personal fan of how athletes have their own back door / likely letters, but if we want to talk about crimes in higher education, it’s about football factories churning out football players who can barely string together a coherent sentence and for whom no attempt is made to provide a real education, versus the “crime” of Duke or Stanford or Harvard or whoever admitting the 3.7 athlete over some other 3.8 kid. perspective, please.</p>
<p>I keep reading about the injustices of one kid getting in over another “more qualified” student. It seems the definition of more qualified is higher GPA and SAT. I don’t agree that scoring higher on a standardized test or having a higher GPA necessarily makes that student more qualified than a student with very similar but lower numbers.</p>
<p>“It is not unfair to anyone, because non-athletes are not competing for athletic spots.”</p>
<p>But the topic of discussion is how many “athletic spots” there ought to be. The athletic spots are a very large percentage of the freshman class as compared to, say, the University of Alabama. Harvard has a real problem with having to turn away thousands of fantastic candidates every year for lack of space. To be excellent throughout the 21st century, we need more engineers; we need more international students. How come we need 41 varsity teams, more than any other school?</p>
<p>“If you cannot field a team or fill a minimum roster, then you cannot be a member of the NCAA.”</p>
<p>And? Suppose, without having wrestling “spots” and a special admissions process, we didn’t get enough walk-ons to field a varsity wrestling team, or it didn’t qualify for NCAA competition. So what? Who, besides the wrestlers and some unfortunate freshman assigned to the Crimson sports section, would even know whether we took the Ivy crown vs. some third-rate regional tournament? For the sports that don’t attract spectators, isn’t the important thing that the students enjoyed the meet and got a good workout?</p>
<p>As far as I know, no one at in admissions at Harvard is taking steps to make certain that there are enough basses admitted to ensure that my a cappella group, the Veritones, can function musically. One year there might not be enough basses to go around among the singing groups, and the Veritones don’t sound good. The group might even go under altogether. That would suck for me, but I don’t view it as Admissions’ problem.</p>