When an athlete is being recruited, is their race taken into consideration like it would be for regular admissions? Meaning, all things being equal, would a URM athlete with the same talent and scores have an edge over an ORM with the same profile?
I thought I heard that when the coaches are recruiting their athletes that they don't really have minimums on objective stats like SAT or ACT scores, but they might be held to an AVERAGE. So if they take an athlete with a lower score, they have to make it up by also recruiting an athlete with a higher score to balance it out. Not sure if this is true.
I know a number of athletes that were being recruited for elite colleges that were held to a pretty high standard on their scores. One girl I know being recruited for ND and Dartmouth was told she needed a 27 on the ACT (or something like that?) or she wouldn't even be considered (not sure how she scored, but she is at neither school but she is at a very strong second rung school and is struggling academically, just for the record). I know of a few others that were successfully recruited for their sport at an Ivy and they were very serious students that had tutors and made sure they got high scores and had the high GPA's....they focused on academics throughout high school as well as their sports and it paid off for them.
@collegemomjam - You mean D1 elites or D3? Rules and practice are different.
D1 - let’s say the Ivy League because it’s the elite D1 that operates differently from the rest in rules (notably no athletic scholarships, just admissions help).
At Amherst, in the NESCAC, coaches get a certain # of otherwise unqualified athletic recruits to help in admissions. If that athlete meets another institutional objective - is URM, Low income or first-gen then that recruit doesn't count against the quota. So in practice the quota for each sport is just used for ORM (at Amherst that means white) athletes.
It works out that about 74% of varsity athletes there are white, vs 47% in the student body as a whole.
IDK how race/recruitment works at D1 or even other D3 schools, I haven’t seen a report as detailed and thorough as the most recent one commissioned by Amherst.
It seems the average is the more important number in D1, Ivy League at least (since you asked about elites - I'm sure the process at Kansas State is different).
But there is a (occasionally excepted) floor for any one athlete: At Brown in 2011 it was a 3.0 and 1,140. Harvard would be higher.
When it comes to recruited athletes the only things coaches care about are rankings, times and scores etc; race has little to do with it. But there is a common misconception about the racial makeup of RAs at Ivies like HYP—many people believe RA and URM have a lot overlap. By my observation the opposite may be true. I was at a Harvard admit event recently and out of six RAs there two were Asian and four were white. I spoke to one of them who was the US champion of his sport. He had been actively recruited by all top schools including Stanford who offered full scholarship. But he chose H because of the full class schedule available to him while at S he could only pick from 50% of classes due to practice conflict. I would not be surprised that most of RA at Ivies are actually white and ORM.
The perception of athletes as being mostly URM is likely due to the fact that the two most visible (to spectators) sports in colleges are football and basketball. But that perception fails to notice all of the other college sports which have few spectators.
Also, usually the smaller the college, the larger the percentage of students who are athletes, since the size of the teams is similar at all colleges, and the total number of teams does not vary as much as college size.
It’s true. Ivy sports are OVERWHELMINGLY white. Basketball is where there are by far the most black players and still they’re half the # of white players - 126 white vs 64 black. Football 496 white, 172 black. Most sports have 0-5 black athletes, and there are 25 varsity sports.
However, is the % of black athletes different than the % of black students at that college, period? That’s an interesting question.
However, in the Ivy League, there is not one sport where black athletes are even half the team. I don’t know if other elite D1 schools have more.
And Ivies have zero black athletes playing several sports. Ice hockey, Sailing, Skiing. And under 5% in baseball, softball, cross country, equestrian, golf, lacrosse, rowing, squash, swimming, tennis, water polo, wrestling and women’s fencing.
Only a person who has no personal experience at the Ivies would ever think most of the athletes are URM. On the other hand Ivy FB and BB are weak overall compared to the top D1 programs with the occasional exception of BB. While interesting the selection of RA’s at the elite colleges has nothing to do with race. Keep in mind Jeremy Lin only went to Harvard because he received no D1 full ride offers. Ivy athletes are mostly non-URM in the major sports because of the AI that is required. This entire discussion of the athletic recruits really has nothing much to do with race and admission to elite colleges. These two issues are largely unrelated with only minor overlaps.
@SAY wouldn’t you say a part of the reason there are less URM’s recruited for athletics at the Ivies is that they don’t give athletic scholarships where as UNC, Duke, Alabama, Georgia, etc. do?
Yes of course collegemom. Prior to the decision to end scholarships the top Ivies were major football powers. Today Stanford has continued that tradition of fielding top teams and being the most selective college in the USA. H and Y today would field top teams if they had full scholarships. What keeps black players out of the Ivies in FB and BB is the use of the AI index. This is a sort of combined academic/athletic SAT that greatly reduces the potential players of all races and almost entirely eliminates all but a few black players. FB players get admitted because they are blue chip recruits with decent but far below normal standards(top recruits) and the rest are very good players with good SAT and grades. There are virtually no black players in that second group. BB is impossible because the best players typically plan to jump to the NBA without finishing college. In a prior post someone went into great detail about athletics at Amherst. This is an entirely different discussion. Amherst is a great school and arguably has better teaching than the Ivies but if you asked even reasonably educated people very few would have even heard of Amherst, Bowdoin, Carleton, or Swarthmore. The only LAC with even modest name recognition is Williams because it’s always ranked #1. My point here is that elite admissions at HYPS and a few other universities is the tip of the spear of race in elite admissions. These schools have National and International immediate name recognition for excellence. It shouldn’t matter but to many people it does. If you meet people in London, Paris, or Rome all of them will know HPYS and act very impressed. If you tell them your child is at Amherst or Bowdoin they will give you a blank stare and feel sorry your kid is going to a local state school. Traveling with friends I have watched this over and over. This is one of the big reasons there is so much competition to gain admittance to the top schools and being a URM dramatically increase one’s chance of gaining admission. Being a recruited athlete is even better but has absolutely nothing to do directly with race.
@collegemomjam Are you suggesting URMs are poor enough to make a college decision based on receiving an athletic scholarship but not poor enough to get Ivy financial aid which is some of the best in the country?
Athletic scholarships have nothing to do with family income. Statistically the vast majority of black and Hispanic students would get full rides without loans at the Ivies so no that is not the issue. Are you familiar with the Athletic Index used by the Ivies? Despite receiving substantial preference the student athlete must either be a top D1 recruit or have pretty good SAT’s and grades. Of course nothing like regular admits at HPY who have nearly perfect GPA’s and test scores. This is why being hooked is so important. Athletic recruit is the best hook but being a URM is also a major hook.
Please go back and re-read Satchel’s data on elite law school admissions. There are just very few URM with high grades and scores and this means a low AI. The Ivy coaches must combine the overall AI’s of all their recruits to meet the standard of each school. This means they use white good players with relatively highGPA/scores to balance out the recruiting class. I say white because so few Asians are recruited.
Looking at the Amherst document, I was struck by just how difficult it appears to be to gain acceptance if you are white and not an athlete. Table 1 (p. 9) breaks down enrollment by athletes versus non-athletes. While whites constitute around 74% of the athlete group, they are only 35% of the non-athlete group. Students “of color” constitute 53% on the non-athletes, but only around 24% of the athletes.
Once you factor in legacy preferences for non-athletes (I am assuming the legacy group is largely white, although no doubt that is changing over time) and development preferences (ditto) it would appear almost impossible for a non-hooked white student to gain admission.
Yes Satchel that is correct. At the HS level it’s well understood that the way to get into the top LAC is through sports. An athlete still needs to be good but nothing like what it takes to be recruited to the top Ivies. This is why the country is filled with travel club teams and private coaches. At the top LAC something like half the students play on a varsity team. Totally unhooked your chances are slim. Elite admissions at every level is about finding a hook of some sort. This is why the URM issue is so thorny because it’s a very good hook.
That’s part of the reason Amherst has commissioned the reports @SatchelSF . The college is very interested in the impact of their athletic admissions preferences.
Interested maybe but they will never accept their teams getting slaughtered by Williams, MB, or Bowdoin. Athletics is a major part of the NESCAC. Their are D3 schools where athletics not considered or minor: