<p>280 would be more like D lineman than a linebacker but exactly so. UCLA's "normal" admissions tails of rapidly under a Math + Verbal SAT of 1100 but for football they go down to 900 without having to be reviewed by Special Admissions...and some fans are vehemently irate that UCLA sets 900 as the lower limit instead of the NCAA minimum of 820 used by virtually all the "football factory" colleges. </p>
<p>You don't have to choose between the integrity of a serious academic institution and having a strong football program. But many schools do.</p>
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You cannot make a blanket statement such as "athletes underperform academically." That is certainly true of some athletes, but it is not true of all of them and you know that.
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<p>All statements referred to the group, of course not to individuals. At the Ivies, athletes as a group underperform, legacies do not.</p>
<p>You may want to read the book again. Not only do they not lump all the athletes together, they in fact separate the sports by "High profile" (football and men's basketball and hockey) and "low Profile" (everything else) status. As you might expect, high profile athletes do worse academically than low profile athletes. </p>
<p>Further, they present rank in class data individually for 33 different sports (Figures 5.5 a and b and appendix Table 5.3) Only for men's and women's sailing and women's fencing is the average rank in class for athletes IN THAT SPORT above 50th percentile. They also show that participants in these particular sports are quite unlikely to be recruited (appendix Table 4.1).</p>
<p>Further still, Ivy League rules do not permit lumping the women's fencers in with the football players to establish overall academic levels. Instead, there are bands of high school academic acheivement mandated by the League, SPECIFICALLY for football. The rules are only slightly less detailed for the other high profile sports, and lumping the other athletes in with basketball and hockey players is not permitted either. Every single female athlete could graduate magna cum laude, and it would not affect football, basketball or hockey recruiting one bit. See note 9 page 387.</p>
<p>I am not against having excellent athletes in the Ivies, nor against favoring them in admissions. I am just keeping the facts straight.</p>
<p>UCLA reports to the NCAA an average 83% 6-year graduation rate for its students overall. Not spectacular, but quite good for a state university with a broad mandate. However, over the same period, their scholarship athletes graduated at a 61% rate, and their football players 55%. </p>
<p>The Ivies are a different story. They do not have athletic scholarships, so they do not report the grad rates of their athletes to the NCAA. However, according to RTG, Ivy male students overall gradute at 91% in 6 years, high profile recruited athletes 86%, and low profile recruited male athletes 89%. Women athletes graduate at higher rates than women at large. Walkons, both male and female, graduate at higher rates than students overall. Whatever else happens at the Ivies, the athletes graduate in high numbers.</p>
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...rank in class data individually for 33 different sports...
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<p>Are you talking about rank in class in high school or rank in class in college? Because if you're talking about college, half the student body is "underperforming" including non-athletes if being in the bottom half is considered underperforming.</p>
<p>1Down2togo: The book defines underperformance. In sum, says that given an SAT score how did you perform GPA versus students with comparable scores. Athletes generally underperformed. Musician exceeded expectations. It has nothing to do directly with class rank.</p>
<p>Yes, given an SATscore, GPA generally doesn't keep up. It's understandable. It takes a very motivated student-athlete to maintain the kind of gpa they are capable of while competing in D1 athletics. Some do, but many don't. Still, they do graduate, and since we're talking about Ivy schools, my guess is that most people would be happy to underperform by graduating from an Ivy league school.</p>
<p>Bowen also co-authored "The Game of Life..." which came to similar conclusions to the more recent study cited above. It ahs been a while but here are some of the conclusions i recall. BTW, the study focused on selective private colleges and universities.</p>
<p>-the greatest disparity in SAT scores between recruited athletes and other admittees was in wrestling, hockey and football</p>
<p>-varsity athletes typically underperformed academically, ie lower than is predictable from their own entering qualifications</p>
<p>-athletes were typically less engaged in general college life</p>
<p>-following graduation, athletes were typically less engaged in community service</p>
<p>-following graduation athletes were less engaged in alumni activities and lagged in monetary gifts to the college.</p>
<p>Another interesting conclusion in all of this was that the adverse impacts were far greater on selective smaller colleges and universities than large public because a far greater %age of the student body is involved on varsity athletics at the former. For instance, about 30% of the student body at a Williams College is involved in interscholastic sport vs about 2% at a university like Ohio State.</p>
<p>BTW, the findings published in this book were derived from a 25(?) year longitudinal study involving more than 100,000 students by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation.</p>
<p>An interesting quote from "The Game of Life" in noting that paradoxically, athletes tend to earn more money after graduation than their peers:</p>
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One of these characteristics can be thought of as drivea strong desire to succeed and unswerving determination to reach a goal, whether it be winning the next game or closing a sale. Similarly, athletes tend to be more energetic than the average person, which translates into an ability to work hard over long periods of timeto meet, for example, the workload demands placed on young people by an investment bank in the throes of analyzing a transaction. In addition, athletes are more likely than others to be highly competitive, gregarious and confident of their ability to work well in groups (on teams).
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<p>Now, I'm not saying that making lots of money is the goal of an Ivy education. I'm just pointing out that there are various ways of measuring performance (and underperformance).</p>
<p>I agree. The one thing I wish the authors had addressed about athletic underperformance was "who cares about their lower grades?" The point of college is not to get grades, and they prove that the athletes go on to sucessful careers. Not mentioned in that work, but well established in the medical literature, is the observation that college athletes live longer healthier lives.</p>
<p>1down, having been a reasonably accomplished "athlete"(albeit in golf) in hs(all county team soph-sr, state meet qualifier fr-sr), and a big fan of my alma mater fball teams(OSU), no need of convincing me of the bebefits and joy of interscholastic college sports.</p>
<p>Another factor in the post graduate monetary success of ahtletes is the well documented fact that taller, fitter and yes more physically attractive physical attributes gives a person career advantages over ones peers. Add to that the other positive attributes mentioned by Bowen and you get a winning combination totally unrelated to academic attributes, though any graduate of a highly selective college has more than enough grey matter to make it in all but a few professions.</p>
<p>However one point that Bowen and Shulman wwere making in "The Game of Life" was that the impact of intercollegiate athletics is much greater in significant ways at highly selective colleges as compared to the much maligned big time Div 1A sports programs.</p>
<p>When one considers that a Dartmouth college fields more sports teams and has more intercollegiate athletes than a University of Michigan, college administrators need to carefully consider the impact that sports has on academics, student life and campus culture. And while the overall sports program at a University of Notre Dame makes a "profit", this is not the case at a great college like Yale(though endowments can easily fund the deficit). This may not be the case at a fine college such as a Denison.</p>
<p>And realize that this is largely a US college phenomenon. In Europe essentially all sports are operated as student clubs similar to the student orchestra or juggling club. There is no BBC telecast of the national university soccer championship match for instance. At the University of Edinburgh the football(soccer) team is a part of the Student Association and is listed next to the trampoline, hot air balloon and hill walking clubs.</p>
<p>So the question that college administrators and alumni need to honestly confront is this: given the conclusions drawn from mountains of emperical data by Shulman and Bowen, does the adverse impacts of intercollegiate athletics on an institution's central academic mission at our most selective institutions outweigh intercollegiate sports individual and institutional benefits? Is it desireable to have in excess of 20% of the institurion's student body involved in intercollegiate athletics which, due to the resultant time committments required, significantly limit those students participation in the general student life of the institution. Would the institution and individual students be better served at these elite instiutions by an active sports program modelled upon the European club system?</p>
<p>It "might" be true that athletes at these private prestigious institutions are slightly more likely to end up in the bottom half of their class. They may also be slightly more likely not to come from wealthy families, may have slightly lower SATs or GPAs to begin with, and may spend slightly less time studying. So? Are they any less "deserving" of an education as a result? Shouldn't the "central academic mission" of a college be defined by what they are capable of offering ALL students, not just the geekier ones? (or, alternatively, aren't we all better off when various colleges come to different conclusions about same - why should Swarthmore be like Williams, or Williams like Swarthmore - don't we all benefit from their DIFFERENCES?</p>
<p>Take the athletes out of the equation, and more geekish students end up in the bottom half of the class. In other words, if Bowen is correct, it is the athletes who make it more likely for the non-athletes to gain entry into top graduate schools. ;)</p>
<p>I don't see what the top or bottom half of the class has anything to do with this argument. Bowen's point in Reclaim the Game is the university suffers by cutting admission standards to let in a group (athletes). The athletes don't add positively to the school's environment. Your anti-intellectual comment on 'more geeks' shows you don't know what the school loses by letting a bunch of helmet wearing athletes. What about the scientist or musician who loses the experience of elite U as he is displaced by a quarterback? I don't want to get I DAD into the fray but athletes are also linked to binge drinking. Finally, Bowen equalized for SAT variances in his 'under performance' analysis so don't shed a tear for the unfortunate, not wealthy family athlete.</p>
<p>First of all, you should know that my non-athletic d. turned down a hefty financial aid package at Williams, where she was heavily recruited as a musician, at least partially because of her firsthand experience of heavy-drinking athletes (or athletic wannabes). And I know all about the binge drinking numbers (I deal with them for a living.) But Bowen is clearly wrong when he says that athletes don't add to the school's environment at the schools where they are wanted and recruited - it is obvious that the trustees, who are paid to make those decisions - feel otherwise. They might not add to what the non-athletic-minded faculty want; they might not even add to what "geekier students" (like my d.) want, and with all the fine colleges and universities out there, I don't cry for the supposedly displaced scientist or musician either - there are plenty of places where his or her talents will be better appreciated (as my d. so easily found out, even though she wasn't displaced.)</p>
<p>The top/bottom half has a lot to do with this argument. At Swarthmore, for example, serious students who would likely end up in the top quarter of student bodies elsewhere often end up in the bottom half of their respective classes. Yes, graduate schools will make some allowance for same, but probably not enough to make up the difference. And an athlete who graduates from a top college is likely to value his or her education just as highly as the geek, even though often different parts of it.</p>
<p>And it's great that there are schools like Swarthmore and Reed and UChicago where, if the student chooses, he/she can go without having to experience the excesses of student athletes, and I'm sure the student -athletes at Williams and Princeton and Amherst often feel the same way about them.</p>
<p>It's great that there are choices out there.</p>
<p>1Down2togo: Another great read on this topic is Stagg's University. The University of Chicago was a Big 10 member and even had the first Heisman trophy winner. A school president in the 30's had the presence of mind to realize that big time athletics were ruining the school (the details are well developed in the book). He dropped football and the Big Ten (can you imagine a college president dropping out of a major conference for the sake of the school's mission today?). Some 70 Nobel prize winners later, I think Mr. Hutchins got it right. Emory is not losing anything without Big Time football. The world does not need another university corrupted by football power house athletics. Finally, there are students out there looking for majors in 'fashion merchandising.' Popularity does not make something laudable.</p>
<p>University of Chicago, my law school alma mater, recruited my athlete son quite strongly. There are plenty of athletes on campus and Chicago is in a strong DIII conference and competes well in a number of sports. Emory also recruited him. If you get out of the football/basketball mindset, you will be surprised at how seriously many of the colleges not considered big sports schools DO take their athletics. They value these student-athletes and do actively recruit and encourage them.</p>
<p>i agree with most everything afan has added to this discussion. My original point was that in early decision at ivy schools, many of the admits are athletes, as was the case at my son's school where of the 5 admitted to Brown, 3 were recruited athletes, all for crew, which is currently a very highly recruited ivy sport. 22 had applied early. And it is true that by regular decision athletics does not play as important a role, as the majority of the athletes have already been selected through early decision.</p>
<p>Actually, where we live, it is the same ED and RD, though this year, for the very first time in a decade from what I can tell, a non-athlete was accepted to Yale (but he's considering turning them down to go to UChicago.)</p>
<p>(Athletics will play a role RD when they have a need they didn't fill in the ED round.)</p>
<p>How many public high school kids get to compete in crew so they have a chance to be recruited? In my neck of the woods, crew is a club sport requiring around $1000 contribution per year from the parents. Lots of kids would like to play and might even be good at it, but the parents can't afford the fee. The same with hockey and equestrian sports (even bigger $$$) Pretty selective group already.</p>