Really harvard, really?

<p>A quote from the article, “The scholarship offer was verbally accepted this past weekend…”
Again, no scholarships in the Ivies. Also, you’ll notice all the quotes are from the hockey club coach, nothing from Yale.
Club coaches love to put out releases about kids getting recruited from their programs. An Ivy coach wouldn’t dare make an end-run on admissions in the press</p>

<p>The author of the article made a mistake. Ivy League Conference Rules stipulate that all schools – Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, UPenn, and Cornell – cannot give an athlete MORE in financial aid than a non-athelete, so ALL financial aid is based upon need. See: [The</a> Ivy League](<a href=“http://www.ivyleaguesports.com/information/psa/index]The”>http://www.ivyleaguesports.com/information/psa/index)</p>

<p>The principles that govern admission of Ivy students who are athletes are the same as for all other Ivy applicants. Each Ivy institution:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>admits all candidates including athletes on the basis of their achievements and potential as students and on their other personal accomplishments;</p></li>
<li><p>provides financial aid to all students only on the basis of need, as determined by each institution; and,</p></li>
<li><p>provides that no student be required to engage in athletic competition as a condition of receiving financial aid.</p></li>
</ul>

<p>Admissions decisions will be communicated only by official written notification from Admissions Offices, by notification in Early Action, Early Decision or “regular” processes, or by “likely letters” after October 1, which are confirmed by one of those notifications. No other indication of a possible positive admissions result is or should be considered reliable.</p>

<p>yes male got oral commitment from yale, female lacrosse of course from harvard</p>

<p>^^ but as stated above:</p>

<p>Admissions decisions will be communicated only by official WRITTEN notification from Admissions Offices, by notification in Early Action, Early Decision or “regular” processes, or by “likely letters” after October 1, which are confirmed by one of those notifications. NO OTHER INDICATION OF POSSIBLE POSITIVE ADMISSIONS RESULT IS OR SHOULD BE CONSIDERED RELIABLE (my caps).</p>

<p>Also, FYI: <a href=“Before Athletic Recruiting in the Ivy League, Some Math - The New York Times”>Before Athletic Recruiting in the Ivy League, Some Math - The New York Times;

<p>But there is one thing the Ivy League does that truly sets it apart from its sporting brethren nationwide: it tracks and scrutinizes the finite, detailed academic credentials of every recruited athlete welcomed through the doors of the eight member institutions. </p>

<p>To accomplish this, the league came up with a measurement called the Academic Index, which gives all prospective high school recruits a number, roughly from 170 to 240, that summarizes their high school grade-point averages and scores on standardized tests like the SAT. The index number of every admitted recruit is shared among the member institutions to guarantee that no vastly underqualified recruit has been admitted at a rival institution and to allow member universities to compare classwide index averages for athletes against similar averages for the overall student body.</p>

<p>Perhaps the most talked about goal of the A.I. is the academic credential minimum it establishes, a number below which virtually no Ivy League recruit can be admitted. This summer, that floor was raised from an Academic Index of 171 to 176, which roughly translates to a B student (3.0 on a 4.0 scale) with a score of 1140 on the old two-part SAT.</p>

<p>^ and of course, that 176 AI is the absolute floor to be considered. In reality, every Harvard team over the past 4 years has had a team AI average over 200.
700 per section on the SAT is the general guideline to be in the recruiting zone.</p>

<p>Yes. I know a kid who had a “verbal commitment” from a Princeton coach, who supposedly had gotten an early read from the admissions office. Nothing in writing, no likely letter. The kid was rejected EA at Princeton. (And received a likely letter from Harvard a week later, four days after applying there with the Harvard coach’s support.)</p>

<p>Something similar happened to a friend of my daughter’s in 2005, at another Ivy. She applied ED there, then was deferred. She was ultimately accepted RD, and she managed to get an athletic scholarship offer from Duke in the meantime. This was a perfectly intelligent kid, by the way, with OK-not-great test scores and less-then-OK grades at a very strong school. (And, to be fair, a decent explanation for the grades.) She did not have trouble doing well at a top college.</p>

<p>And what happens if either of these students is injured between now and 2014, and unable to play?</p>

<p>Oxbridge will also be very interested if you can make the first XI or the first XV…those three sports will get you an admit. </p>

<p>The data as analyzed by the former dean of Harvard College, Harris Lewis (yes, Marlyn’s husband…) demonstrates with strong statistic significance that regardless of what measure one uses to determine “success” after college (not merely financially or even professionally) aside from those planning on entering academia that college grades have no correlation – the one factor that does is participation on a varsity sport. </p>

<p>Admission to any college, esp Harvard is not a colored star on your homework paper saying that you colored in all of the circles correctly. Ad Coms are NOT REWARDING past efforts-- so no one “deserves” admission bc of great grades or great boards or great ECs or great sports–it is an educated guess as to who the Committee feels would fit in well in a class – a class of many moving parts-- and whom they feel will contribute not merely to Harvard while a student but who will make a mark in some way in the world. </p>

<p>When someone writes that it isn’t “fair” that such and such a type of applicant got in but he or she didn’t-- that means that they just don’t understand what the admissions process is all about–Does that mean that those people have been sold a bill of goods by Mommy and Daddy and Teacher over the years?–yup, it does. </p>

<p>That doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t do the best one can and excel – but one should do it for the inherent value not because one thinks that some admissions committee will go “yippee, they have all of the boxes checked–let’s admit!!”. Doing that sets one up for a nasty fall and even if one does get admitted starts a cycle of doing the same for grad/professional school/ then first job etc until one day the person realizes that they have completely blown it-- that one has never actually “been” anywhere because one has always just seen wherever one happens to be as merely a steppingstone to the next rung --and in the end one has missed life along the way. How sad.</p>

<p>@etondad: It’s actually my belief that many people can actually benefit from taking a fall, or fail, or feel completely lost at one point or another in life. The people who keep on hitting (or wanting to hit) the next benchmark will never (or rarely…again, hate to generalize) take big, massive leaps. They’re too afraid to mess up their perfect ascendance in life.</p>

<p>Verbal commitment from an Ivy coach means you can get a cup of coffee if you have two dollars along with the verbal commitment. It means absolutely nothing until the time you have received a likely or an admission. The coach can no longer push for an admission if the applicant can’t play and it is in their best interest to find another player who can actually play.</p>

<p>Once they are admitted, it is a different ballgame. The players can get hurt and may miss a season or their entire student playing career. I have heard of at least two players at Harvard who missed the 2011-12 season in their sport after joining in 2011.</p>

<p>Ivy league is a sports league with no athletic scholarships and only need based aid. So not sure why people are shocked that athletes get recruited. The colleges allocate between 10 and 14% annually for athletes who are able to make the AI cut academically. All one has to do is read the local paper around signing time to see which athlete was signed (issued likely or admitted) by which Ivy. These announcements usually come out before EA/ED decisions are announced, early to mid November.</p>

<p>There are some sports–LAX for example–that do make their “offers” very very early-- including late sophomore year–I know of a boy at Exeter who has one from Harvard. Does that mean that he can/should sit back knowing his future is secure–of course not. He has to continue at the same level both academically and athletically (which btw has to be done with a LL recipient, just for a shorter period of time…). However, the commitment means a great deal more than a cup of coffee-- if a coach offers such commitments and reneges on them, their credibility is shot and once shot, he or she is done. Do you think that coaches at Exeter or a major public high school who has had a kid “played” will make sure that his or her future athletes are aware of what that college coach has done? There is a coach in the Ivies in a minor sport who has done this and his name is mud throughout the prep school world-- he couldn’t recruit a kid who just started his sport at this point. He will, God willing, be fired soon–as his teams continue to deteriorate. </p>

<p>I think that the idea of such early commitments are nuts–both for the kid and for the college–but in these sports they are facts of life. In these sports if you don’t have a commitment by spring of junior year you are out of luck. Weird I know, but so it goes…</p>

<p>Colleges, even Ivies, don’t exist to be fair to all the kids who worked hard in high school. They exist to fulfill their self-interest by perpetuating strength as a university and the excellence of the college experience they can provide. Having strong athletic programs at these schools keeps their alumni donating money and maintains an interesting, diverse student population. College admissions is not like at court with a judge deciding who is more in the right or deserving; it is more like a contract when two different parties hope to mutually benefit from each other. </p>

<p>Unfortunately, that means that some really hard-working, smart kids simply won’t get in because what they have to offer just isn’t as valuable as some of their less academic but more athletic peers. You may think it’s unfair that you can’t help whether or not you’re truly athletically gifted, but the vast majority of kids aren’t smart enough to even have any chance at Harvard whatsoever simply because of genetics. So please, think twice before you start crying injustice at people who are differently talented than you getting opportunities that you’re not.</p>

<p>^ yup. you put it well jrfthd. Every season people just don’t understand that admission acceptance or rejection has no reflection on their worth as a person. Parents (and I am a parent) do themselves and their kids a poor service by measuring success by what window decals are on the back of the SUV.</p>

<p>Yeah… no athletic scholarships in the Ivies…that’s their story and they are sticking to it. Bottom line: Universities are businesses that need to keep federal grants and corporate grants and, in the case of elite schools especially ALUMNI DOLLARS coming in. It is the only way to feed the beast. Sports brings in the Alumni dollars. </p>

<p>I know it is quaint to think of these schools (not just Harvard, but the whole cadre of top-100 schools in the U.S.) as noble institutions, and of course they do great things because they allow great people to cluster. But at the end of the day, it is the balance sheet that rules their decisions. This is not cynicism, but simple reality.</p>

<p>^^^You’re right that athletics play a role in alumni giving. Strong endowments enable schools like Harvard to be need-blind and accessible to all students, regardless of their financial situation.</p>

<p>Harvard athletic teams don’t have many academic exemptions to give out. Even if you’re good enough to play sports at Harvard, you still need something like a 2000 SAT score to get in automatically. It’s not automatic even if you’re a great athlete. Personally, the Harvard swim coaches won’t even email or call me back, even though I’d fit right into the times of the kids currently on the team.</p>

<p>yeah my friend who is a sophomore in hs right now is looking at colleges right now and harvard wanted her and she said all she needed to get on the SATs was a 1900… calm down doe she probably won’t go there but shes like one of the top 30 soccer players in the country or something.</p>