In fact there are acapella competitions (see one example: https://varsityvocals.com/2018-icca-lineup/ ) and of course debate etc have intercollegiate competitions as well.
Side note: Abby Philip wrote for the Crimson.
Crew is big, a big boost for a gal. Yes, maybe some of the point is the attention some sports bring. But the coxswain I know who tipped in likely would not have, without that. Just an anecdote. She did quite well. Itâs not htat hard to do well if youâre bright, with good study skills.
Iâm aware that there are intercollegiate a cappella competitions, @OHMomof2, but few of the mainstream Yale groups participate in them. In particular, the Whiffenpoofs, a seniors-only group that completely changes its lineup every year, doesnât have the time (theyâre basically professional musicians, with an insane gig schedule that takes them around the world every summer, and the members have to take the year off from school).
I also think it could damage the brand if the Whiffenpoofs entered competitions (Iâm only aware of them doing it once, years ago, for a televised special). Theyâre really good, but their value to the alums comes from what they symbolize (the hundred-plus year history and the iconic Ivy League vibe), not because theyâre judged in a competition to be better than some group from Harvard or Princeton. Their musicâs also fairly old-school and they donât do a lot of choreography, so they wouldnât show well in most a cappella competitions these days.
Certainly there are intercollegiate debate competitions, and I imagine that alums who follow them are happy when Alma Mater wins.
Anyway, I didnât bring the Whiffenpoofs up, but Iâll stop talking about them now and let people get back to discussing athletes at Harvard.
It is all about creating a diverse class. I know some people are jealous about that and they need to get over that. There is no magic formula. Gaming the system by taking 10 AP classes, having wealthy parents to help you through the process, and taking the SAT 6 times doesnât make you a better candidate or give you the right to claim half of the admission spots at Harvard more so than a future Mohammad Ali or a future Kevin Durant. Steve Young is worth 200 million dollars. Does anyone think for a moment that Harvard doesnât wish he was an alumni. Steve Young is no dummy.
Harvard wants students who will be future leaders in many different fields Diversity is their strength and athletics is just one part of that
@DeepBlue86 sounds like âno oneâs keeping score of exactly how good they areâ is not the case, they are âbasically professional musicians, with an insane gig schedule that takes them around the world every summer, and the members have to take the year off from schoolâ
Seems pretty serious to me. Do football seniors take the year off to pursue their sport so seriously?
Do they add so much more to the spirit of Yale than the singers in a way that justifies the much bigger admissions advantage athletes are given?
Thatâs my question.
@collegedad13 recruited athletics has nothing to do with creating a diverse class. In fact, if you have read the thread you would see that recruited athletics is the antithesis of diversity.
The emphasis on athletics in elite universities (Harvard in this case) could be also related to the big emphasis of sports in (elite) private schools?(Which is the chicken which is the egg tho?)
According to this three-year old article https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thestreet.com/amp/story/13325695/1/top-us-private-schools-with-the-most-graduates-getting-into-ivy-league-universities.html
âAlthough public high schools now account for approximately half of the admissions at these top universities, when you look at the per-school percentages, private school students still have a strong edge. According to an article in MarketWatch, 94 of the top 100 Ivy League feeder schools were private.â
@2mrmagoo I think it depends on how you define diverse class. I really donât see recruited athletes as the antithesis of diversity especially in the fields of football and basketball and baseball and track.
âBecause those who are not athletes will argue against any athlete getting any advantage, those who are not URMsâŠâ
If only URMs supported affirmative action, we wouldnât have affirmative action.
âIn particular, the Whiffenpoofs, a seniors-only group that completely changes its lineup every year, doesnât have the timeâ
The Whiffenpoofs had plenty of time for this competition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhMrdNVc4r4
I was a judge for the intercollegiate a cappella competition for 10 years. But everybody in the a cappella world knows when you have a great recruiting class, a crappy rebuilding year, etc. whether you compete or not. You donât need to compete to recognize excellence.
In the recruited athlete hook, the key word is ârecruited,â not âathlete.â The lawsuit docs suggest the vast majority of HS athlete applicants get little benefit beyond what they would get for participating in a general EC. A small portion of athlete applicants get a noteworthy, but not huge, benefit⊠likely those who may become walk-ons. And a very small portion of athlete applicants are actively recruited. The actively recruited ones get a huge boost, far larger than any other evaluated hook. If the goal was admitting more students who are white, affluent, and attractive; then Iâd expect a different pattern, with emphasis on being an athlete in certain specific sports, rather than on being actively recruited.
âHarvard more so than a future Mohammad Ali or a future Kevin Durant. Steve Young is worth 200 million dollars. Does anyone think for a moment that Harvard doesnât wish he was an alumni. Steve Young is no dummy.â
None of these guys would be recruited by Harvard, maybe Young, but he wanted to attend BYU for religious reasons. Harvard is not going to touch a player like KD, big time college basketball is corrupt and theyâll need to pay off middlemen to get a recruit, make unsavory deals with shoe companies, watch the recruit not show up to class, then leave after one year.
âI think it depends on how you define diverse class. I really donât see recruited athletes as the antithesis of diversity especially in the fields of football and basketball and baseball and track.â
Most would define diverse to include more than one race, and most of the athletes at the ivies are white. Even football is close to 50-50, basketball is the only one with over 50% URM, track does have more blacks with baseball more latinos, but again they donât make up more than 25-30% of the roster (this is from a thread about a few months back). But thatâs men, womenâs sports outside of basketball, are predominantly white, maybe some Asian at places like Stanford. And these sports, - rowing, lacrosse, hockey are also, shockingly, upper and upper middle class.
Including more than one race differs from having a majority. According to the lawsuit docs, the admission shares would change as follows if athlete preferences were removed during the 6-year sample for which Harvard applicant numbers were provided. This is not the same as number of recruited athletes, as a minority of recruited athletes would still be admitted without the admissions preference. The alternative models without admissions boost for recruited athletes estimated the number of recruited athletes would drop to 9 to 20 per class.
White: 45.4% â 42.5% (over-represented among recruited athletes)
Black: 12.9% â 12.9% (balanced representation)
Hispanic:12.9% â 13.8% (under-represented)
Asian: 22.3% â 24.3% (under-represented)
OK, Iâll keep talking about the Whiffenpoofs, if people insistâŠ
@OHMomof2:
I think performances by the Whiffs promote Yaleâs brand and alumni engagement, but itâs not because the Whiffs are âbeatingâ the Harvard Krokodiloes or the Princeton Nassoons. Theyâre a very good a cappella group, performing a lot of concerts. Everyoneâs a satisfied customer, no matter how virtuoso the performance. There are only 14 members, and Yale doesnât have to expend any effort recruiting them. Yale doesnât directly make significant money from them either.
The football team plays 10 games a year, and they keep score. Thousands of alums attend the games, and many more follow from a distance. Yale doesnât have a Power 5 / FBS-level team. But a lot of alumni care if they beat Harvard, and are annoyed if they donât. That has direct and significant implications for alumni engagement and generosity, which is one big reason Yale feels it has to work hard to recruit most of the 100 or so members of the team.
@Hanna:
Yes, that video is of the single competition Iâm aware of the Whiffs ever having participated in, the televised one that I mentioned upthread, which took place eight years ago. If there were others, perhaps judged by you, Iâd be interested to hear about them. If not, I think my point stands: the Whiffs donât do competitions because they donât have time (or, as I went on to speculate, because thereâs no meaningful upside for their brand), with the above mentioned exception (for which I imagine they considered the televised exposure to be worth it, and maybe they got paid).
Iâm sure that with a cappella groups that participate regularly in (usually untelevised) competitions, and whose members participate throughout their undergraduate careers, keen observers can tell when theyâve got great incoming classes and crappy rebuilding years. Iâd guess itâs less clear for a group like the Whiffs that generally doesnât participate in competitions and completely changes its members every year.
In any case, though, Iâm not sure I understand the point youâre trying to make. I think most listeners would view the Whiffenpoofs as entertaining and talented, the alumni love them (as they do the football team), theyâre important to Yale (although I believe the football team to be far more directly financially important, leaving aside the relevance of both to campus culture and/or Yaleâs brand), Yale doesnât have to do anything to recruit them (unlike the football team), and they do all that they do without having to compete against anyone (again unlike the football team). Thatâs all Iâve been saying.
HOW would Yale recruit for the Whiffenpoofs? If you canât be in the group until you are a senior, how would Yale recruit for that when looking at high school seniors?
Practically speaking, Yale couldnât recruit for the Whiffenpoofs for the reason you mention, which is that theyâre all seniors (and, by the way, the previous yearâs group selects them, so itâs not at all clear that a student Yale admitted in part for their extraordinary singing ability would be selected for the Whiffenpoofs when they auditioned for the group in their junior year - assuming they wanted to join the group in the first place instead of, say, choosing to focus on musical theater or opera.
I think the point originally being made was that perhaps Yale should focus as much on recruiting for the Whiffenpoofs (or the Yale Daily News) as for the football team, since those organizations also reflect well on the school. As noted, though, Yale admits enough applicants in the ordinary course who are strong singers and/or talented journalists that those groups get filled without a need for specific recruiting for them, even if that were possible.
I think this is the underlying reason that Yale does not give a recruiting advantage for the Whiffenpoofs, but does give an advantage to football players: They have a sufficient number of future Whiffenpoofs who clearly qualify academically, without any Whiffenpoof boost. Given that Harvard admits athletes who are in the Academic 4 category, I think that Yale probably also has to give special consideration to students in the sports where Academic 4âs are admitted to Harvard. These particular athletes would be unlikely to qualify for admission without the boost. But Yale wants to field a competitive team. This says nothing about the fencers, who probably cross the academic bar easily.
Different countries, different circumstances: In Cambridge, many of the colleges have Choral Scholars, who sing at Evensong daily in term and may perform in Cambridge for BBC radio or BBC television, and in some cases may also perform outside of Cambridge. It was generally believed that one could tell the âeasiestâ degree by seeing what the majority of Choral Scholars were taking.
A fair point, @DeepBlue86 . The football team definitely needs to recruit to be good and it seems many alumni care.
The benefit is less clear to me for sailing or fencing or tennis or rugby or LAX or the other sports that get recruiting slots with admissions, though. They seem to me to be more on par with a strong singing group or newspaper, or less so.
And as the parent of a varsity athlete who has played several positions in her two sports over the decade or so she played, I also think players in a lot of those are more fluid as to position and dropping the extreme preference for those athletes would likely result in strong teams there too.
One of the Whiffs in my class claims he was tapped despite mediocre vocal abilities, because at the time one key song in their repertoire required a guitar accompaniment, and he was the only person auditioning who could play guitar. That said, @DeepBlue86 is completely right that Yale does not need to recruit for basses who want to join a cappella groups.
Another anecdote, however. My Yale class had not one, not two, but three people who were serious enough harpists to want to play in the orchestra. As it happens, the orchestraâs only harpist for the previous few years had graduated the previous spring. Then â shocker! â somehow no serious harpist was admitted in the two classes after mine, or if one was admitted she didnât enroll, or she didnât ever play her harp on campus. But then, when we were seniors, sure enough a freshman harpist showed up.
At the time, without the benefit of any lawsuit discovery to provide a lot more information, no one thought that was random. Yale may not have ârecruitedâ harpists, but my friend the harpist sure thought her instrument had something to do with her admission. And it was a good thing, too, because now sheâs as rich as an NFL starter. She would give Yale a lot of money if it hadnât turned down all three of her kids
âI think this is the underlying reason that Yale does not give a recruiting advantage for the Whiffenpoofs, but does give an advantage to football players: They have a sufficient number of future Whiffenpoofs who clearly qualify academically, without any Whiffenpoof boost.â
Not quite. Few if any people can tell whether this yearâs Whiffâs are better or worse than last yearâs Whiffs. Or whether the Whiffs are slipping as compared to the glee clubs at H and P. In contrast, everyone can tell in one second how the Y sports team is doing vs. H and P. Even in obscure sports that garner no fan interest beyond parents and BF/GFs.
scoreboard. It literally is that simple.
The recruiting advantage is provided in sports (but not other student activities) because you keep score in sports. If one school dips a little to get better players, they dominate on the scoreboard and everyone knows/sees it. So the other schools have to follow suit or drop the sport. You canât go out and get destroyed in every game. While no one really cares about Ivy and NESCAC sports, you have to be reasonably competitive on the scoreboard if you are going to have a team.
The whole reason why the Ivy League and the AI system came into existence is to put some cross-school limits on how low you can go. Given the way the AI system works, the standards for athletes keep increasing as the overall academic credentials of the student populations at those schools continue to increase. But the standards for athletes are always allowed to be a bit lower.
By the way, you know who was both an athlete and a Whiff? The admissions director at the University of Chicago.