The national championship team as a whole has a high GPA as well. This year they averaged a 3.71 GPA. Harvard and Yale’s team averaged 3.62 and 3.55 respectively.
“HYP actually are or can become very competitive at a number of non-headcount scholarship sports.”
Very true. The planets do align in a few sports so that the Ivies can play at the highest level. Mens lacrosse is one.
Duke, UVA, ND, Gtown can offer 12.6 scholarships shared among 45 players. So a typical partial scholarship is nice but not outcome determinative money. Wealthy families can full pay at Cornell or Yale if they want to, and lax is a very upper SES type of sport. To the extent there are middle class and lower families, they’ll do better getting Ivy financial aid than getting a partial athletic scholarship or forgoing the partial athletic schollie and taking FA at a non-Ivy.
Lax is a heavily northeast oriented prep school type of sport and several Ivies have a strong past history of program success. Last, there’s no meaningful revenue or pro careers involved in the sport. Put all that together, and the Ivies have a fairly level playing field. They’ll certainly lose some kids due to academic hurdles, but other kids will see that as a positive and an opportunity to attend a school that would be academically out of reach to them absent the sport.
In fact no one at all is, there is a student contribution of a few thousand a year that is part of every FA package, even those of the very poorest kids.
The athletes who can get into the Ivies, with both athletic skill and academic stats, have a lot of options to get scholarship money for both athletics and merit at other schools Some do better financially at Harvard, others do better taking merit and athletic aid at another school. However, they still have to get into Harvard or Stanford before they can take the financial aid over the athletic aid.
The Ivies aren’t dropping their standards to admit academically unqualified students. They are ALL academically qualified. What seems to be angering people here is that Harvard ‘saves’ 200 spots for athletic recruits over 200 equally qualified students in the general pool. If not for those 200 spots, everyone else in the big pool of 30,000 qualified applicants (and perhaps a few less qualified ‘development’ students) would have a better chance at getting one of the 1700 spots. Odds are still not in their favor. Overall the student body wouldn’t be any more qualified or smarter. Would the orchestra be better or the debate team better if there were 200 more ‘general’ students? Who knows. We do know the sports teams wouldn’t be as competitive if athletic recruiting ended.
As has been noted, ~1 out of every 7 recruited athletes at Harvard received the worst possible standard admissions academic rating – a rating for which it is nearly impossible for anyone other than a recruited athlete to be admitted at Harvard. This doesn’t mean they are completely unqualified to the point of being likely to fail out. Instead I expect the vast majority of this group graduates without significant issue. However, the academic standards are by no means the same. Of course Harvard, is far from alone in dropping standards for recruited athletes. Most Div I colleges sometimes drop standards to a significantly greater extent.
The lawsuit did some simulations about what the class would look like, if all hooks were removed and they instead gave half the recruited athlete boost to disadvantaged applicants . They didn’t just remove athletes, but I still found it interesting to see how athletes and other groups changed. Harvard’s expert found the following changes. All numbers are expressed as ratios, not percentage point differences.
Number of Recruited Athletes: Decreases by 93%
Number of Legacies: Decreases by 70%
Number of Faculty/Staff Kids: Decreases by 28%
Number of First Gen: Increases by 97%
Number of Disadvantaged: Increases by 165%
Asian: Increases by 43%
White: Decreases by 5%
Black: Decreases by 51%
Portion pursuing engineering and physical sciences: Increases by 10+%
Portion pursuing humanities: Decreases by 10+%
Average SAT: 2239 → 2235
Average ACT: 33.3 → 33.4
@twoinanddone, my understanding is that not all 200 recruited athletess are in fact as academically qualified as the general pool and that is the sore spot for many. Only the average for the team needs to be within one band of the AI for the college, correct? This means that yes, there are some stellar academic athletes. But it also means those top students do balance out the AI for those who aren not as ‘academic’ (and who would very likely not be admitted) but for their ‘spot’. Perhaps the AI prevents standards from falling as low as other D1 schools, but this doesn’t mean that the students are academically equal to their unrecruited peers. A good many of these students would be unqualified without their sports. Sure some of them may be, but many of them are not.
As an example, Harvard hasn’t accepted any student for the past 3 years from my son’s high school until this year. All who applied in '17 and '16 were top students (gpa and test scores) were denied. This year three applied. Two were admitted. They are both athletes. But both these students (female, not bball, volleyball, lacrosse) had stats that would be very unusual for a Harvard acceptance. One had a 3.89 with 1360 SAT; One had a 3.7 with 32 ACT. Clearly the athletic boost helped these students. Neither would have had much of chance at admission without their sport. They likely would have not qualified academically. The AI is a tool whereby the academic standards are widened for athletics. That IS a different standard.
Now a separate argument is whether these students deserve the boost for all the many reasons already argued in this thread. But it is a mistake to argue that the ivies aren’t ‘dropping their standards’. Of course they are. The rules are different for recruited athletes (and legacies, etc). The standards for admission are different.
Re:#385 surprising numbers @Data10 . Removing athlete preference actually reduces average SAT and drops # of black admits by half.
I think @twoinanddone has summed things up pretty well. Part of the disconnect is that some of those opposed to athletic recruiting seem to assume that standards are being lowered for all 200 recruited athletes. They aren’t. I think drilling down on the numbers as you have been doing would help place things in the proper context. You mention 1 in 7 recruited athletes receive the worst academic rating. That is roughly 30 athletes? Do we know if that’s the number admitted or the number who applied (that is, are any of those part of the pool of recruits that applied and wasn’t admitted)? Finally, how many non-recruit applicants with the same academic rating applied and were admitted?
I think these raw numbers would be helpful but I don’t know if they’re available?
The AI might widen those who can be on teams, but many kids with 1360/ 32 ACT type scores can be successful at these schools. And contribute athletically as well.
^ plus, 32 act isn’t even in the bottom quartile at Harvard.
ETA: we all could share anecdotes. Here’s mine: I’ve known several athletes recruited by ivies. All had ACT scores in the 35-36 range. They were ‘more qualified’ in that sense than the vast majority of students at any of the ivies. Plus they were more fit.
@sevmom absolutely! I am not saying these students can’t thrive at Harvard by any means. My point is that they would not be getting in without their sport. Period. So in that context, academically they don’t meet the admission standard for the un-hooked non-recruited admit. This is a matter of semantics. One can’t say for every admitted athlete that they would have gotten in regardless of their sport. Academically with a 3.7 it would have been highly unlikely. In this sense the student would not have been qualified. But due to the AI band and intstitutional priorities (right or wrong) this student was accepted.
@politeperson, no a 32 is not bottom quartile, but taken with the gpa an unhooked student would be very unlikely to get admitted.
“ETA: we all could share anecdotes. Here’s mine: I’ve known several athletes recruited by ivies. All had ACT scores in the 35-36 range. They were ‘more qualified’ in that sense than the vast majority of students at any of the ivies. Plus they were more fit.”
Yes, as I said there are some stellar athletes that are highly qualified. This is not the point. These students are academically qualified in comparison to their unhooked peers. My point is that the standard does in fact change for those who fall below the average AI. Twoinanddone stated that the Ivies do not drop their standards. I argue that they do, though their bottom standard is significantly higher than other D1 schools.
They are not dropping their standards . They have standards that athletes are expected to meet .
“ETA: we all could share anecdotes. Here’s mine: I’ve known several athletes recruited by ivies. All had ACT scores in the 35-36 range.”
Here’s mine – 28 ACT just fine to get a friend’s kid into Harvard as a stud athlete.
@twoinanddone
I applaud your efforts here but I think there are some who just will never be convinced. The narrative against student athletes in the Ivies seems to be a very popular target as is demonstrated by the number of threads started here on CC.
Each of our perspectives is informed by our experiences as parents, students, alum…and is relevant to the discussion.
Those of us who see what student athletes do, what they contribute, know how powerful that contribution is to a school’s cohesion is. If others are unconvinced then so be it…
I still wonder why anyone cares about this. It is a private college not publically funded and they could fill their undergrad with whomever they want. So they like smart athletes and why is that an issue for endless discussion especially in this country where education has never been solely grade and test based not even in K-12.
Note that the simulation removed all hooks – not just athletes. In the sim without hooks, ~7% of recruited athletes were still admitted without any kind of admission boost for being a recruited athlete. Larger portions of all other hook groups were admitted. For example, most children of faculty/staff that are admitted under the status quo would still have been admitted if the college gave no admission boost for being children of faculty/staff.
The specific quote is below. Athletes who do not receive a 4 also receive a notable boost. For example, the majority of recruited athletes receive a 3 academic rating, and this group has a ~90% acceptance rate. Among non-athletes, the acceptance rate for applicants who receive a 3 in academic and the median rating in the other categories was 0.1%.
But their lottery ticket chances go way down when they are put in the general pool where many are qualified, few are chosen.
So, don’t put yourself or your kid in a “lottery” position if the stress of dealing with athletic, legacy, URM, first generation tips is so stressful . It isn’t going away. Kids are happy and successful at many schools.
I still don’t understand why anyone would be surprised by the high percentage of “recruited” athletes being accepted to Harvard. They tell you up front that you’re almost assuredly going to be accepted because you are smart enough to be successful there and that Harvard wants you on their campus.
Or are we now beyond that, and we’re just quibbling over whether Harvard has the moral right to set aside spots for people who haven’t necessarily invested enough (literally) to have stats worthy of a valedictorian?
@RandyErika… ha. Yes, the thread has gone in circles. Beyond whether it is a surprise or not, I think the numbers coming out via the lawsuit have been enlightening. This opens discussion as to Harvard’s institutional priorities, their mission and whether these are consistent. Some find the recruitment unfair, others are just frustrated at what appears to be lack of transparency. Others want to argue why sports define the culture of the school and are a necessary and integral component of the experience. I apologize for not narrowing the discussion when I first posted. I just wanted others thoughts on the article. I sure got that! FWIW, I have appreciated reading them, even if some went a bit off topic. I think i’ll step away from the discussion now. Oh, and a huge thank you to data10 for sharing your statistical insights. I’m not a math person so I appreciate your input.