Kyle Kashuv, Hogg’s classmate with a 5.345 weighted GPA and 1550 SAT. Hogg has a 4.2weighted GPA and 1270 SAT. No way Hogg was going to Harvard without his media enhanced status.
All the Hogg stuff is off topic, no?
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Ok, I’m sure Hogg who was rejected by 4 UCs during his initial round of college applications would have been accepted by Harvard had he applied. My point is that a weighted 4.2 isn’t that high when compared to an actual harvard admit from the same school who had a 5.345 weighted gpa and a 1550 sat.
Hogg had zip before the media made him a celebrity.
Yes it is. And I’m done discussing it.
Maybe I’m reading this wrong, but he applied before the shooting which was in February and he announced his acceptance to Harvard well after the following December.
Sorry yes I wasn’t clear, kashuv applied after the shooting but my point was that his stats gave context to Hogg’s stats as far as whether a 4.2 was considered competitive within his HS grading scale.
This thread is about “elite” colleges, which often have a lot of “preppy” type sports that are mostly composed of wealthy kids… even wealthier than the already wealthy non-athletes at such schools. For example, a comparison of income distribution among athletes and the full student body in the Harvard freshman survey is below. I used Class of 2022 since later surveys added a “prefer not to say category.”
Harvard Athlete Income Distribution
$500k+ Income: 26% of Athletes, 17% All Students
$250-500k Income: 20% of Athletes, 16% All Students
$125-250k Income: 23% of Athletes, 22% All Students
$80-125k Income: 19% of Athletes, 16% All Students
$40-80k Income: 9% of Athletes, 15% All Students
<$40k Income: 4% of Athletes, 14% All Students
The difference was even more extreme at Amherst – a college for which 35-38% of students are athletes.
Amherst Athlete Demographics
Male Athletes – 6% Low Income, 4% First Gen, 73% White
Female Athletes – 2% Low Income, 2% First Gen, 74% White
Non-Athletes – 31% Low Income, 20% First Gen, 35% White
All Students – 23% Low Income, 15% First Gen, 47% White
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Proper nurturing and good work ethics are always necessary. However, natural ability is also an indispensible ingredient in the development of a great talent.
The Kashuv - Hogg comparison is pointless. Hogg didn’t get in over Kashuv. Just the opposite. Kashuv was accepted and then had his acceptance rescinded due to his racist writings. Every college reserves the right to do the same. Kashuv’s damage was self-inflicted.
Hogg media enhanced? The shootings at Parkland were a major news story. Hogg and his cohorts decided to do something about what happened to be in the public eye already. He wasn’t created by the media. His public persona was his own creation and the media covered it as part of the story.
Lebron James’ high school games were in ESPN. Does this mean he was a media creation? Come on.
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Regarding Hogg and similar, they aren’t the least academically qualified students at Harvard by any stretch of the imagination. The lawsuit analysis found that the least academically qualified students were almost entirely athletes. For example, among applicants who received a poor academic rating of 4 or worse, the admit rates were:
Non-ALDC – 0.01% admitted (3 students)
LDC Hooked – 3% admitted (13 students)
Athletes – 80% admitted (171 students)
I expect other Ivies show a similar pattern since Ivy League athletic recruiting rules allow athletes to average 1 SD lower stats than non-athletes and allow a few special athletes to go down to 2 SDs below. This includes Columbia or others that are reputed to have a tough core. The athletes who are admitted have no problem graduating. Some example numbers are below. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if athletes average a significantly lower GPA than non-athletes, such as athletes averaging 3.4-3.5 GPa compared to non-athletes averaging 3.7-3.8. Hardly anyone at Harvard graduates with a <3.0 GPA – athlete or not.
Harvard 6 Year Graduation Rate (only GSR is available on NCAA site)
2019: Athletes = 99%, Non-athletes = 97%
2018: Athletes = 100%, Non-athletes = 98%
Schools with different sizes and athletic conference rules will show a different pattern. For example, I mentioned Amherst is 35-38% athletes, but only ~2 athletes per team (except football) are notably less academically qualified than non-athletes due to different athletic conference rules.
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Comparing “LeAnkle” James to David Hogg?
That’s the funniest thing that I’ve heard since yesterday. 
Data10, elite colleges include others than Harvard and Amherst. I specifically gave examples of Duke and Stanford. No one is posting the stats for them. Or Notre Dame. Or Michigan. Or UCLA. Or Vanderbilt. Or North Carolina.Or Virginia.
The fact is that admissions for athletes are a separate category at every school. I was responding to a post about gender, race, and first-gen status. Athletic admissions are an additional category that gets special treatment. If you want to argue that boutique sports are wealth related that’s fine, but there are at least a handful of sports where wealth and privilege have nothing to do with an athlete’s attainment.
I posted stats that have been published. Duke, Stanford, Notre Dame and so on have not have published income stats for athletes as far as I know, but they offer sports besides soccer, football, and basketball for which wealthy students are usually notably overrerpresented and non-athletes are underrerpresented. Evan among popular sports, low income students are usually not overrepresented. They just aren’t as dominated by wealthy kids to the same extent as less popular sports and/or sports with a high pay to play (at a high enough level to be recruited) threshold.
Lets instead look at the reverse. Can you find any example of any “elite” college (how ever you want to define it) where athletes are not not notably wealthier than non-athletes on average? If not, I wouldn’t assume it to be true.
The more democratic sports (for lack of another term) are typically track & field, football and basketball. Many of the others - rowing, squash, soccer, hockey, skiing, lacrosse, water polo, golf - are the purview of the upper middle class/wealthy. Potentially talented kids from lower SES families have little chance of accessing or excelling at these activities.
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Soccer? Really?
Yes, at least around here - club teams can run families several thousand a year and that doesn’t count camps, personal coaching (yes, a thing) etc. Obviously, it isn’t in the same realm as some of the more esoteric sports but like many kids activities it has been professionalized and, as a result, monetized. Youth Soccer in America: How Prohibitive Costs are Hurting the Game - Econsult Solutions, Inc.
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Our D has played club soccer since 3rd grade. The players in her club are very diverse and come from a wide range of incomes. They do travel some but the club and teams subsidize based on need.
Their practice fields are shared with lax clubs and football club teams (no grade school or middle school teams).
Soccer is one of the most accessible games on the planet. All you need is a ball and some grass. No pads, sticks, or helmets needed.
As a Big 10 alumnus myself, I am all for hyping us up, but the Ivy League has a LOT fewer alumni. Just one B1G school (Penn State) has almost as many students as the 4 largest Ivies have, put together.
It is a universal game, for sure. My kiddos still play pick up soccer with friends regularly over at our HS although only one or two of the group are still playing officially. Still, it is hard not to notice how $$ has made itself known and not all clubs are like yours in terms of providing opportunity to kids whose parents can’t afford the travel and fees.
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Indeed, but we are only talking 500 companies. If there was an obvious advantage to an Ivy degree, there are plenty of grads to fill all of those spots. Instead we see more of a spread distribution. That indicates to me that it’s about the power of the individual, not the power of the school. Contrast that to the SCOTUS, where the cult of the institution deems not only an Ivy pedigree nearly mandatory, but only two, Harvard and Yale law. Only the most recent addition, ACB has a degree from another school.
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