<p>With 2D's recently having undergone the recruiting process at Ivy league schools, I can speak to this issue with some expertise. Yes there is a preference given to recruited athletes, but it varies by sport. Football and basketball are the glaring examples of this. (A close friend of one is being recruied by Ivy schools who is neither the same quality student nor the same caliber athlete on the national level as my D.) The other "non revenue" sports generally require a standing that is equal to the admission criteria of other admitted students. Most non revenue sports at non Ivy schools also give "hooks" to athletes (My D's were encouraged to apply for merit based money to offset the limited scholarship funds at non Ivy institutions.) Ivy admissions are a crap shoot. It may not be "fair", but we must remember: "C students rule the world."</p>
<p>Highly selective colleges have the opportunity to choose among applicants who are outstanding in a variety of different ways. As this thread suggests, the colleges themselves must choose among a variety of different plausible strategies in making these choices. Under these circumstances, "fairness" to the applicants requires only that the rules be clear in advance so that prospective applicants whose priority is to obtain admission can plan their high school lives accordingly. The current system of dealing with athletes is clearly "fair" under that test.</p>
<p>gudoc,</p>
<p>What "merit based money" are you referring to? </p>
<p>Again, Ivies do NOT give merit-based scholarships. So are you referring to outside scholarships?</p>
<p>I was speaking of non Ivys regarding the merit money. My point was that even at schools that do give athletic scholarships the aid for non revenue sports is limited, and coaches encourage high academic achieving athletes to apply for merit aid so they can build a stronger program. In many situations this is preferable to an athletic scholarship that is year-to-year and can be withdrawn for injury or poor performance.</p>
<p>Thank you. </p>
<p>This thread topic concerns Ivy athletic recruiting. It gets very confusing when posters bring up non-Ivy athletic recruiting procedures, which can be completely different from Ivy recruiting at many levels.</p>
<p>"Shoshi...maybe you are getting caught up on the "recruitment" aspect. But other than "recruiting", I can assure you that the most selective colleges WANT talented musicians, dancers, actors, writers, and not just athletes."</p>
<p>It's true, but incomplete. A college can do without an extra violinist, dancer, actor, or writer, but not without a quarterback. That's why so many of them try to lock up the QB in ED, but as to writers and dancers and musicians, there is always another one.</p>
<p>I guess this is a fundamental point of disagreement. I don't see the difference between finding another quarterback and finding another -fill in the blank-. Rare talent is rare talent regardless of the type of talent. IMO, there are as many would-be quarterbacks out there as there are would-be dancers, violinists, writers, or whatever. I'm frankly amazed that you'd think exceptionally talented writers, musicians, or artists are all that commonplace that "there is always another one." Not in my experience.</p>
<p>"IMO, there are as many would-be quarterbacks out there as there are would-be dancers, violinists, writers, or whatever."</p>
<p>Yes, but they can do without another dancer, violinist, writer, or whatever. They absolutely CANNOT do without a QB.</p>
<p>It is not IMO. If writers, dancers, violinists, etc. were so rare, in THEIR opinion, and so valuable in THEIR opinion, they'd be recruited, and getting in with lower SAT scores and lower GPAs. But they don't. It isn't a matter of our opinion - it is only the school's opinion that counts, and they open doors and wallets quite easily for QBs.</p>
<p>(My d. wrote an opera and had it performed by a professional company at 16, won a major international composing competition for adults, and had a perfect verbal SAT at 13 - and there is no question that she was not subject to anywhere near the recruiting she would have been had she been a QB. And my opinion as to their relative value has nothing to do with it.)</p>
<p>There are fuzzy areas in determining the "talent" of writers and musicians. And as NSM points out very directly in her post, there are many talented writers at Harvard and the like. In fact most of the kids are very talented in writing as demonstrated by their academics and activities, and there are many who can play instuments well enough for their orchestras. I know Yale has extra orchestras to accomodate all who want to play in college. That is not the case for an athlete. A quarterback able to play D-1, ivy level is rare enough to recruit. There is not always another one to step into the sport within the student body. Not only that, they have to train in the preseason and go through alot more than the regular student at that level. There are many who question why these top schools have to compete at that level when their reputations are for academic prowress, but that is not the issue at hand. They do, and they need the bodies to do so, and those bodies are scarce when they have to have the academic resume to make it at schools where the students are pretty skilled academically. Our high school has one quarterback applying to colleges this year and he is not D-1 material. There are a dozen kids applying to Harvard at our school and the majority of them, if not all of them are outstanding writers, and most of them are proficient musicians as well. I don't see a single qb applying to Harvard in the last 6 years, and our coach who often brings up successful football students has never mentioned such an examples. And this is a school that sends about a half dozen kids to Harvard each year, and has a strong football program, as well as rigorous academics.</p>
<p>Soshi, I think in the case of Div1 QBs, the ability to be successful in that position is extremely rare. Sports are not at all subjective. We can all readily see who is stronger, or faster, or can accurately pass for the most touchdowns. The arts are very subjective. It's nearly impossible to rank candidates; athletes are ranked all the time. My 10 year old could rank NHL hockey goalies, for example. I bet his list would not be far off from that of most sports fans. But try ranking the greatest American novelists & see if there is much consensus! Probably not much. Therefore, very, very different processes emerges for admissions of athletes and artists.</p>
<p>You said it better than me, cpt. It's a good way to look at it.....How many of the QBs, or goalies, or BB centers on you kids' h.s. teams could play Div1 sports & succeed? Not many. How many could succeed at an Ivy or elite school academically? Plenty. How many concertmasters could handle the repertoire of an Ivy orchestra? Plenty. And aren't there over 25,000 high schools in American sending a debate team captain, a concertmaster, and a valedictorian out into the applicant pool each year?</p>
<p>A truly talented writer, proven by the public and the market, who applies to the top schools will certainly be courted. But we are talking about PUBLISHED work of critical acclaim bringing in MONEY. Just as with performing arts kids, it comes down to getting a PAID role, not one where the parents have paid for the kids to play. With sports, the bar is lower in that paid athletes are often banned from college sports like football because of NCAA rules. When you look at Harvard with people like Yoyo Ma, professional actresses, writers and other nationally/internationally acclaimed personalities, you can see how high the bar is in the arts and writing to get the school's attention. On the other hand, Harvard athletes are not exactly filling up the draft positions, so the standard there is not so high for them within their field as it may be in a Big 10 school. I have known a couple of very good athletes who turned down Harvard to go to a state school where they would have a better chance of taking the next step into professional atheletics.</p>
<p>Yup mini, you are 100% correct and I agree with what you say. It's honest and forthright and puts the bias of these elite schools out there. A school's priorities are set by the school and I have to accept them whether I agree with them or not. No problem. I tend to get ruffled when I read posts that suggest (to me anyway) that athletes are somehow entitled to special recruitment because of their ever so rare and ever so special talent. I just don't see that this talent eclipses any other. But then I'm equally amazed at and discomfited by the discrepancy in compensation between celebrities and professional athletes on the one hand and college professors or high school teachers on the other. It is what it is whether I find it fair or right or just but...I don't.</p>
<p>And I'm still amazed that there's a belief out there that simply because there are people with writing ability or musical ability at a given elite school that this is somehow the same as standout writing or musical ability--since that is, after all, the analogue to the sort of athlete we're supposed to be discussing. It's one thing to say that the schools don't prize it as they do athletics but it's quite another to say that it's common. At dd's school there are easily 10-12 kids (10% of the class) being recruited for athletics. Yet I can think of only two truly exceptional musicians and one, maybe two, standout writers in the entire school. There are lots of kids who are talented, but not many who are exceptionally talented.</p>
<p>P.S. Your dd sounds amazing! What is she doing now?</p>
<p>Sticker Shock, you're right, there definitely is an issue of subjectivity wrt the arts. I do think, however, that professors of music could distinguish between Yo Yo Ma and the talented but not exceptional concertmaster of a high school orchestra. And musicians are ranked all the time! Strings players compete for chair positions and memberships in competitive orchestras, pianists and vocalists compete in national and international competitions.</p>
<p>shoshi- you might be a little naive about what constitutes "exceptional talent". There are many VERY talented young people around, and I respect them. However, there is a rarified level that only a few achieve and it is hard to imagine this level of talent unless you check in at some of the national events like ARTS or go visit Interlochen.</p>
<p>No doubt I am naive. As I said much earlier on, my kids are not exceptional musicians. But doesn't it support my point that exceptional musicians (or whatever sort of artist) are just as rare as exceptional athletes?</p>
<p>I had three people in mind when I thought of talented musicians from my d's high school. One was accepted to Julliard and chose to attend an Ivy. She's performed professionally and I am told she is exceptional. The two current high school students I mentioned have performed as soloists with a well known local symphony and have won numerous awards. Perhaps they are not as "out there" as I think.</p>
<p>shoshi,</p>
<p>Perhaps the reason you have such difficulty appreciating athletic talent is because, as you have outrightly stated, "it is not important to me." Those of us who have had intimate experience raising and observing a D1-level athlete are probably as awestruck with their physical and mental abilities as you are with your daughter's writing skills.</p>
<p>People who have little experience with sports generally do not appreciate the devotion, commitment, mental discipline, split-second decision-making, strategy, courage, pain (I could go on)...that these kids who compete at high levels go through. Perhaps if you took the time to learn a little more about athletics, you would understand the value placed on students who excel in it.</p>
<p>P.S.</p>
<p>I would rather hang myself than spend an entire day playing chess, because it is not important to me. But I still appreciate the exceptional talent of a national chess champion and understand why an Ivy would be interested in admitting one.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>IMO, there are as many would-be quarterbacks out there as there are would-be dancers, violinists, writers, or whatever. I'm frankly amazed that you'd think exceptionally talented writers, musicians, or artists are all that commonplace that "there is always another one."<<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>"It is amazing to me," said Bingley, "how young ladies can have patience to be so very accomplished as they all are."</p>
<p>"All young ladies accomplished! My dear Charles, what do you mean?"</p>
<p>"Yes all of them, I think. They all paint tables, cover skreens, and net purses. I scarcely know any one who cannot do all this, and I am sure I never heard a young lady spoken of for the first time, without being informed that she was very accomplished."</p>
<p>Bay, I don't mean to belabor this any more than I already have and I promise to go away with this last post. You're absolutely right that I have said that athletics is not important to me personally. It isn't. That doesn't mean that I don't respect and appreciate the talent and devotion that goes into athletics. I believe I said this as well. </p>
<p>My point continues to be that I don't think that athletic ability is inherently more valuable than any other endeavor that requires equal commitment and ability. But, as mini quite correctly observed, it really doesn't matter what I believe.</p>