Since EA/ED/REA reserve a large proportion for varsity students, their higher acceptance rate doesn’t really reflect a brighter picture for ‘normal’ folks. Thus I have the idea of combing through universities to look for schools that perform badly in sports (say, B or lower on niche). But then it dawned on me that if those colleges have a new chancellor who is hell-bent on improving their varsity stats, then applying for them might even be a greater mistake than not taking sports into account at all. Therefore, if you happen to know any (top 200) schools that explicitly state their policy of not favoring sports, could you list them here?
Also, are there sources other than niche when it comes to gather info about varsity ranking? Colleges like Pitzer share their teams with Pomona, so it’s hard to judge their policy. Or Reed, which doesn’t have a ranking on niche at all.
You are looking for the wrong thing. What you want are schools where the Athletic Office has little/no influence in the admission process. MIT is an example of a school that is often cited where the Athletic Office has less pull than at other schools.
Reed doesn’t have a sports/athletic ranking because they have no intercollegiate sports teams.
Why Top 200? Unis only or LACs too?
Obviously it also makes a difference how large the undergrad student body is. At a school of 30k+, the number of recruited athletes doesnt move the needle/impact acceptance rate of non-athletes. I could argue that’s true at a school of 20k too.
I’ll just do the USNWR Top 150 unis where sports are de-emphasized/don’t exist, are a small proportion of the total student body (30k+), or coaches have relatively little influence:
MIT as already stated
CalTech
U Michigan
UTA
U Florida
OSU
TAMU
UCSD
UCI
UCD
Wisconsin
UIUC
Purdue
FSU
Maryland
UWashington
PSU
Gallaudet
Rutgers
IU
Minnesota
Va Tech
Byu
Mich state
Boulder
Arizona
USF
ASU
The New School
Size of the school is probably the biggest factor. If a school recruits 200 athletes, that is 10% of a 2,000 student school, but only 1% of a 20,000 student school.
Also, the small school may, for other than recruited athletes, privilege athletic ECs over other ECs to ensure a pool of walk on athletes. A big school is less likely to be concerned about that, because it has such a large number of students.
Almost all schools are going to require athletes to meet the NCAA requirements, so Miss State is not different in that way. A few D1 schools will admit athletes who need remedial course, but very few. What good is an athlete to a coach if the athlete can’t play?
At Mississippi State University, meeting NCAA minimum academic requirements is not a special frosh admission consideration for recruited athletes, because its normal policy is to admit any frosh applicant (athlete or not) meeting NCAA minimum academic requirements. In other words, the frosh admission standards for recruited athletes are not any lower (more favorable) than they are for non-athlete frosh applicants. This makes Mississippi State University an example of what the OP was looking for.
The OP wanted to know where freshmen who aren’t athletes have a better chance at ED. Miss State isn’t using ED. Apply, be admitted; apply, be admitted. No need for ED as the rolling admissions process takes only 3-4 weeks.
I really doubt that’s what the OP is looking for.
As stated above, the bigger the school, the smaller the percentage of athletes admitted or needing a bump. Even at medium sized schools (ND, BC, UVM) the number of athletes admitted ED is pretty small compared the the overall freshmen class size.
Well said! You summarized what I struggled to express.
LACs too. For my situation, I want to aim higher than an average student.
Eh… did you mean Notre, Boston col & Vermont?
Some of you emphasized the importance of size. Coincidentally, I favor big size too. But what do you think is the general sweet spot where the student population is big enough but faculty number is still able to keep up a ratio of 10:1 or smaller? 15k?
It depends on the college and it depends on the major. Most college info websites (like College Board, U.S. News, etc) will include the student:faculty ratio provided by the college. That number, though, isn’t necessarily using universal definitions. Some colleges may only include full-time faculty, others include all faculty (including part-time and emeritus), others will include staff members or grad student instructors. So it’s a number to look at, but not take as being totally accurate at face value when making comparisons.
But if you look at the common data set, USNWR, etc, it will let you know what percentage of classes have fewer than 20 students. The bigger that percentage is, the likelier that a small student:faculty ratio exists.
But you also need to consider what the major is. Some majors are much smaller and have much smaller classes (foreign languages and linguistics are two that come to mind). Other majors are extremely popular and may still have large classes even in their upper-level coursework. So that is something you would probably want to ask at each university…in the departments you’re interested in, do the typical class sizes correspond with what is produced in the common data set, or are the classes larger or small than at the rest of the university?
A course that changed my life was “Comedy and Tragedy”, taught by a “famous” scholar of Shakespeare- who was also an incredible showman, lecturer, unbelievable teacher. The university capped his class (every class he taught) at whatever the largest lecture hall could hold- and there were still unenrolled students who showed up for every lecture sitting on the floor, sitting in the doorways, on windowsills. (Fire codes be damned).
Sometimes large classes are large because the professor is world class. That’s not a bad thing- that’s one of the reasons to go to college instead of just reading the syllabus on your own. I know kids who ONLY want small classes- but why? Why would you miss opportunities to learn from the greats?
My kid at MIT had several enormous lectures, one a Freshman class taught by a Nobel Laureate, who was also hilarious and made the material come to life, and got a standing ovation after every lecture. One was a class taught by a professor who was not famous, but had one the undergrad teaching award for years on end- my kid said he was mesmerizing.
So I’ll ask- why would one care about the ratio? I’d rather have a big class taught by someone who knows how to make the subject fascinating, vs. a small class taught by someone reading from notes in a monotone. Quality counts, no?
As OP indicated an interest in a school with a small student:faculty ratio (10:1) I was trying to help OP determine that, as it’s not necessarily a function of the university’s overall size.
One of my few large classes was something entitled something like The Musical Experience. We had fabulous musicians perform and talk about various musical traditions and it was a super fun class. It was not, however, a class where I interacted with my peers and got to exchange ideas with them, something which I think OP is desirous of (based on his other threads). Large classes can be wonderful classes. But the educational experience is usually significantly different if most of one’s classes are large vs. small.
For OP’s purposes, besides being outdated, the figures are also misleading. Many of the smaller schools, especially the LACs, have chosen to field a variety of teams, many if not most of which, need to fill their rosters with walk-on/non-recruited athletes. Looking at recruited athletes as a percentage of an incoming class is also misleading. The correct percentage if you want to see the percentage of “spots” allocated to athletes is the number admitted each year. So taking for example Yale, 200/2200 ± = 9%.
If the OP is looking at this type of info to see where there are more “available” spots, he/she should also be looking into % URM, % legacy and % low SES. Those buckets may be more sizeable than athletic recruits.
Now that is a subtle way of using CDS! But requires a lot of calculation, I suppose.
Thank you, surely will do.
That’s the smaller part of my intention. The bigger one is about seeking help from professors, and I’m afraid if they have to deal with a high ratio of students, they won’t have time to spend on any particular thing.
@sashwhodat : that was cool, thanks! Holy crab, some LACs actually have varsity accounts for more than half of their remaining ‘liberal arts’ portion. It’s absurd.
It seems the site only allow studying 4 colleges at a time, and doesn’t provide a direct ratio, instead forcing users to do that last single step… Or am I doing it the wrong way?
Doesn’t that make the situation even worse for normal folks?
Er… what are URM, legacy and SES? Seem too technical for the purpose of determining which colleges have undistorted ED ratio, which takes a not-very-big significance in the final college choice decision. That said, could you point me to a source that list that 9% Yale and others?
You’re way overthinking this. What if the schools where athletic depts have little influence over ED admissions aren’t schools your child wants to go to? You’re going to choose a binding process just for the purpose of getting an ED admission?
Yale limits athletic admits with a push in ED to about 200. I think the other Ivies have a few more, up to about 220. Other athletes who have the grades can get in ED the same way other students do - with good grades, essays, and test scores. Some athletes are also at the top of their hs classes.
There are plenty of schools that don’t give a big advantage to athletes but they aren’t in the Ivy League, the NESCAC, Liberty League, The Big East, the Service academies, the PAC 12 (including Stanford, USC, UCLA, UC-B) etc. You can eliminate them from your list, but then you are eliminating a lot of really fine schools based on this one fact, that they give an advantage to athletes. Most do.
I say list the schools your child wants to attend, look at which have ED, and then decide if that is a school where the number of ED spots that go to athletes makes it worth your while to apply ED. If not, move on (or apply RD). If your child really wants to go to Yale, Duke, Tufts, Williams, then the ED pool is going to include athletes. That’s just how it is, even if the teams are bad.
All faculty hold office hours each week to meet with students. It’s part of their job.
Many students don’t take advantage of this opportunity to meet with their faculty. So you don’t have to go to a school with a small faculty:student ratio in order to spend one-on-one time with faculty on a regular basis, although if other students also sign up for office hours you may get less time on that particular day.
