It depends how you define “high.” 82% of non-ALDC admits had a 1-2 academic rating. 91% of unhooked admits had a 1-2 academic rating. So among the unhooked student body a 2 is standard, rather than high. However, a 1 academic rating truly is high among the non-ALDC student body. In the 6 years covered in the study only 1 recruited athlete had a high 1 academic rating. If you also include the standard unhooked 2 as “high”, then nearly a quarter of admitted athletes had the rating.
This fits with the earlier AI discussion. You need a significant minority of athletes with an AI on par with typical non-athletes to offset the significant minority of athletes with an AI far below the athlete average, keeping the overall AI athlete average at the -1 SD limit. In a normal distribution (I realize the AI distribution does not form a good normal curve), one would expect the AI rules to create a distribution with 16% of athletes having an AI above the school average, and 84% of athletes to having an AI below the school average. Among recruited athletes (excluding non-recruited team members), one might find under 10% of recruited athletes above the school average, and more than 90% below. Regardless of how you define “high” and how you measure academic admission criteria, there is a large gap between the typical recruited athlete and the typical non-athlete.
As noted above ~9% of unhooked admits received a 3+ academic rating, so there are indeed others besides athletes in this 3-5 range. However, if you look at 4-5 academic rating rather than 3-5, then the athlete overrepresentation is far greater. Even though athletes only compose 10-11% of admits, they make up almost all of the 4+ academic admits.
I agree. However, one also needs to control for major and even better specific classes. As dropbox, was getting at, I expect there will be a notable difference between athletes and non-athletes in these fields. Such a difference has been alluded to in the Harvard senior surveys, as have things like between 1/3 and 1/2 of athletes admitting to cheating while at Harvard and the Goverment 1310 cheating scandal (majority of class members in this Q guide “easy A” class were athletes, as were the majority of those accused of cheating ).
My memory from a prior reading of some of the court docs is that 2 is the highest academic rating based on grades and test scores. 1 is a qualitatively different designation reserved for applicants with evidence of accomplishment in a field that has been confirmed by faculty review. So a kid with perfect test scores and grades would be a 2 while a kid with lower grades and scores but a significant contribution to an academic field could be a one. That’s why I’m treating recruited athletes with academic scores of 2 as highly rated. I’m not even sure there’d be a point in seeking the review needed for athletes who might receive a score of 1, as there’d be no question of whether such candidates receiving coach support would be admitted. But I’m willing to concede that an athlete with a 35 ACT and perfect grades who practices 20 hours a week year round might not have had the opportunity to cure cancer. Yet.
But to my larger point: given the variation in the population, why talk about the “typical athlete” or generalize about the entire population at all? It certainly doesn’t help us understand the terrain. What the data do show, however, is that if admitting those with a rating of 3-5 is such a concern, eliminating athletics altogether would “solve” about a third of the problem. So it isn’t the athletic program bringing down the curriculum. Maybe it’s the poets or thespians.
That is likely approximately true, though I haven’t crunched the numbers to confirm.
No, it is not poets or thespians, although they may contribute to the “problem.” It is not difficult to see that the vast majority of the remaining 3 or below academic ratings admits are themselves also preference admits. Just look at the academic ratings in Panel B of Table 5 on page 44.
The point is a 2 appears to the standard rating among the non-athlete student body. It is not high compared to the non-athlete student body. Even among hooked LDC admits and racially hooked admits, a 2 or better is standard, not high compared to hooked admits. Specific numbers are below.
Unhooked Admits – 91% Received 2 or better
LDC Hooked Admits – 78% Received 2 or better
Racially Hooked Admits – 63% Received 2 or better
My post did not generalize about the entire population and instead described the distribution. If the word “typical” bothers you, replace it with “mean.” Mean academic rating appears to have a huge 1.6 SD gap between athletes and non-athletes-- a gap many times larger than any other hook group I am aware of. Mean AI is expected to be similar, with a gap between 1 and 2 SDs between athletes and the over all student body, due the Ivy conference AI rules. Such a huge gap in mean academic stats between athletes and non-athletes has a variety of negative implications, even though there are a minority of athletes with academic stats on par with the non-athlete mean, or on par with the mean of other hooked groups.
However, eliminating athletics would eliminate nearly all of the 4-5 academic rating admits, perhaps nearly all of 3- admits as well. In any case, nobody has proposed eliminating athletics. There are many ways to continue athletics, without holding athletes to a much weaker admission standard than other hooked groups. This is especially true considering how large a fraction of Harvard’s athletic competitions are either within the Ivy League conference (conference could be held to same athletic admission standards) or in less popular sports.
Not to mention the modest athletic quality of most of the recruited athletes. These are not future national college football champions. Maybe in a few niche sports the Ivies have excellent athletes, but in most, the performance level is mediocre compared to D1 schools.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: I am surprised that several long-time posters seems to have forgotten that there is only ONE thread on CC where race in admissions may be discussed. This isn’t it. I had to delete a lot of posts. Yes, I probably missed a few.
Harvard did lose its first football game of the season (one of two Ivy League teams to lose), so its football recruiting/admissions may not have been as successful as desired.
“Why would a school want an athlete over some other applicant when the academic stats are similar or even identical? Maybe history has shown them that athletes make good students.”
Nope. There’s only one reason why athletes get the big tip. Even in the athletically meh Ivy League (the lower range of D1), they still keep score of the games. Even if there’s only tens of people in the stands.
If the Yale Whiffenpoofs or the Harvard poets are down 10% as compared to last year, no one can tell or notice. They’re still pretty good. People will still go to the concerts and readings and be none the wiser.
In contrast, if you are going to have teams then they have to be somewhat competitive. Even though no one cares about Ivy League baseball, it is notice-able, embarassing and unsustainable if Yale baseball loses every game by 15 runs. And that baseball lousiness will be known to all. One glance at the box score in the Yale Daily News tells the whole Yale community that the baseball team is pathetically inept.
Since you can’t have that, you have to recruit to keep up with the other Ivy Joneses.
To its credit, the Ivies play by their own league rules that limit the extent to which you can cut the standards. But it is still surprising that (given how dear the seats are) the Ivies still make the accomodations they do to fill the rosters of so many low profile sports teams.
I think at CC, we often overemphasize the importance of test scores and GPAs and forget or ignore the many other factors that are more indicative of future successes: interpersonal and collaborative skills, disciplines, perseverance, and the ability to face failure/defeats with equanimity…all of which are common characteristics shared by many athletes. Maybe that’s why elite schools/big employers all like to recruit athletes and former military personnel.
^Yes, but we’re the only country in the world that equates interpersonal and collaborative skills with being able to bench press 300 pounds, run a 6 minute mile, or being over 6 ft tall.
“but we’re the only country in the world that equates interpersonal and collaborative skills with being able to bench press 300 pounds, run a 6 minute mile, or being over 6 ft tall.”
It seems like this country is doing pretty darn well in attracting high caliber students all over the world, maybe the other countries should emulate this 300lb-bench-pressing/6-min-mile-running formula for a change ?
Caltech, MIT, and other selective colleges that do not dramatically reduce admission standards for athletes seem to do okay. I expect part of the difference relates to more limited fields of study in Caltech and MIT. If you admit students who are much less academically capable then their peers, then they have more limited options at Caltech and MIT than they would at Harvard.
The Amherst report found that athletic factor admits (coach endorsement “weighs prominently in admission decision”) rarely chose non-environmental science STEM majors and instead favored social sciences. However, coded athletes (coded athletes receive similar admission academic rating to non-athletes) and walk-ons had similar STEM major distribution to non-athletes. Similarly athletic factor admits rarely pursued a senior thesis, while coded athletes and walk-ons with less admission preference had a similar rate of senior thesis to non-athletes. Harvard mostly competes in Div I, so I expect Harvard’s athletic preference in admissions is far stronger than Amherst or Div III schools in general, Similar effects may be quite noteworthy at Harvard.
My brother is the VP of a corporation. He has two Ivy undergrad degrees and an MBA from Stanford. He’s stopped recruiting at Ivies because all the candidates are exceptional test takers, but lack the interpersonal capabilities to adequately function on any of his teams. He was not an athlete in either high school, or college by the way.
@lookingforward I’m simply relating the experiences of an Ivy grad that’s interviewed hundreds of other Ivy grads during his tenure and has found them lacking in the last few years.
Not only the qualities of the students vary significantly from one Ivy to another, but they also vary significantly within each Ivy partly due to special admission preferences (including athletic preference) given to some applicants.