@twoinanddone I don’t for a second doubt that the athletes that are recruited for these selective schools are worthy academically, and I definitely do value the discipline, work ethic, and other great qualities of student athletes. However, the issue I have is that athleticism is valued so much more than other equally intensive ECs that require as many (or sometimes more) hours and just as much strength of character. Why should someone with great stats who can dribble a basketball be better than someone with great stats who can act or dance, or writes fantastic fiction, or is a top-notch debater? There are many ways that students can distinguish themselves through their talents and hard work, but the athlete is the only one whose efforts really turn into much of a “hook.” We are a sports-fanatical culture and colleges help to magnify that aspect of our culture. I would personally say that on the whole, the costs of that outweigh the benefits, from a larger social standpoint. Even in this specific case, it’s hard for me to understand why anyone would be more likely to donate to the Harvard college alumni association because the football or lacrosse team is good, but clearly I’m not Harvard’s target audience! Obviously Harvard thinks it’s a winning strategy to have such a large percentage of their students as recruited athletes.
Sorry to keep beating a dead horse, but, also many sports have become very much “pay to play” with club sports, private coaching, etc. So that adds another layer of privilege begetting privilege.
Few people complain about it, even though it should theoretically be eliminated earlier as a preference stacked on unearned advantage, rather than a preference that theoretically tries to compensate for unearned disadvantage (low SES / financial aid, race/ethnicity) or which is given for earned achievement in something (athletics, other ECs).
But there are still a lot of poor students who wouldn’t be in college at all without athletics. My child had a lot more options because of her sport. The merit money alone wouldn’t have been enough to afford the school she picked so she needed the athletic money.
I don’t think many schools have big crowds watching sports (other than football, basketball, and hockey). It’s just parents and girl/boyfriends watching with massive crowds of 94.
If a group of schools want to form a league for theater or band or robotics competitions, they can do that. Harvard or Yale can decide they want to reserve a few spots for those students and they probably do but they just aren’t as regulated as athletic recruiting. The orchestra director probably does have the ability to say he needs 4 violins and 2 flutes.
Clearly a recruited athlete who also is excellent academically has the golden ticket.
The conversation as to whether that should be the case or not is an interesting one. The value of the effort made on the part of the student athlete to excel at that level. The importance of athletics to a school or to the overall culture of a school. Should these things matter?
Harvard is excellent in recognizing the arts and a wide range of other student talents but in no where close to the same manner as the admissions preference that athletes receive.
I have attempted to calculate the odds of admission for our daughter who had just recently graduated from Harvard. The conclusion that I have come to is akin to the odds of throwing a football through the eye of a needle.
Legacy-no
Athlete-no
URM-no
Developmental donor or political influence-no
Intel or other prestigious scholarship winner-no
First Generation college student-no
When you look at admissions statistics the percentages do not reflect all the things a student applicant may not be. The consideration of those things represents your true liklihood of being admitted, which in my opinion is clearly so dauntingly unlikely.
I think the reason many don’t complain about legacies is the fact that at many schools legacy=money. Some of these families can be counted upon to be generous to their alma mater beyond their 100% full-pay status. You can’t argue against that. Not in America.
A lot of commentary in this thread isn’t ringing true for our family. Athletes at our public high school are highly scrutinized for behavior, don’t get cut any slack with regard to academic work (grade inflation or special treatment), and programs are nearly self-funded. There is an established Athlete Association (voluntary membership levels from $100-$500), kids are required to fundraise, money is made through ticket sales, concessions, and parking raffles. Corporate sponsorship is solicited. Tournament trips are self-funded. As for travel teams, my kids have played travel soccer and baseball (for many years) and scholarships have always been available for those that couldn’t afford it. My daughter played with a girl who was on scholarship for all 4 years in high school.
As a parent of two kids that could have played in college (but elected not to), they were also very good students. They had to be excellent time managers to get it all done. Any accolades they received came from a lot of hard work and enormous time commitments. Maybe our school is unique, but sporting events provide venues for kids from all corners of the school to come together and unify. They travel to away games to support their teams, as well as the cheerleaders, step team, dance team and pep band. It also gets them unplugged and engaged in face to face conversations.
I agree 100% that many youth sports have become big business.
My youngest son is a very dedicated soccer player. Last year I spent somewhere between $10,000 - $15,000 on his soccer. He was in 8th grade. Think about that. All that being said, there’s little else about our life that would indicate privilege. We live in a modest home. I just bought a “new to me” truck with 92,000 miles on it. My boys go to public schools in a decidedly more blue collar town than the ones that surround us. I can tell you that there are wealthy kids on his team, but there are more middle class and lower middle class kids. I know a few kids are on full scholarship with his team for financial reasons.
If your child is accomplished both athletically, and academically, there are a lot of opportunities that present themselves.
My son will be a freshman in high school this coming fall. Our high school coach has followed his development since he was quite young. The school competes in the top division and hasn’t missed the playoffs in 30+ years. We’re a soccer town. He already reached out and offered my son a varsity spot as a freshman if he decided to play for them.
We’ve also been contacted by the coach of a local prep school. They wanted him in the fall for their varsity team. They aren’t able to offer any “athletic aid”…but their “financial aid” offer would reduce the $50,000 tuition to significantly less than I paid for his club soccer last year if he decided to play for them.
The reason I wrote, “decided to play for them,” is becuase what most people don’t take into consideration are the sacrifices that many dedicated athletes have to make in order to chase their dream. He has played in the top club soccer league in the country for the last 2 years. He’s started every game and played every minute. The issue, though, is that the league precludes its players from playing high school sports. The players are contractually mandated to train and compete with the team for 10+ months per year. This past season he had 5 practices per week plus 1 game. There were team trainings, specialized training for his position, fitness sessions, speed and agility, it was endless. He loves it. I tolerate it, I endure it, it’s the soccer war of attrition for parents.
A “normal” day for my son is as follows:
- Wake up at 5:45 for school
- On the bus at 6:50
- Home from school at 2:45
- "Downtime" from 3:00 - 3:30
- Homework from 3:30 - 5:30
- Dinner at 5:30 - 6:00
- Leave for practice by 6:30
- He naps in the car
- Arrive at practice by 7:45
- Practice 8:00 - 9:45
- He has a snack on the ride home
- Home around 11:00
- In bed around midnight
On weekends he has 1 game. They range from New Jersey to Montreal. Sometimes we travel and stay over for the night. Other times we drive 4+ hours, he plays the match, then we drive 4+ hours home. There have been several 13-14 hour Saturdays or Sundays like that.
He doesn’t get to hang out with friends. He misses dances and other school functions. Sometimes he misses family events. Non-soccer vacations are few and far between. He chose to stay with his club team again so he won’t be playing high school soccer next year. That means he has to deal with social pressure from friends and potential high school teammates. It also means he won’t be able to capitalize on the prep school offer. The increased workload of honors high school classes will be a challenge. He may have even later nights if homework necessitates working after he gets home at 11pm. He leads a very regimented life.
What these kids go through to compete at the top levels definitely plays a factor in the emphasis placed on high level athletics by top schools. We just got back from 5 days in San Diego for the playoffs. He flew with the team. He roomed with teammates. He ate with the team. I flew out separately, basically saw him at the fields, at a team dinner, or in passing in the hotel lobby. He’s 14 years old. At his age I was jumping my BMX bike off walls, or playing wiffle ball. He’s growing up much more quickly than most kids his age. He’s extremely selfsufficient.
In San Diego the Harvard coaches watched one of his matches. The U15 National Team coach watched his best match. Several UC coaches watched. It’s a different world for these kids. My son is decent. He’s big for his age but he’s not a freak of nature like some of these kids. He’s regionally and nationally ranked but he’s young. He wants to play in college, and he may very well realize that dream. What I won’t allow is for him to settle for a particular school to play soccer. Soccer needs to be a means to a better school, rather than just a cheaper one. Next year the real recruiting process will begin. He’ll need to contact coaches and continue to engage them because they can’t respond until he’s a junior. Honestly, I hope he decides to leave his current club team after next year so he can play for his high school team, have a social life, and concentrate on extracurriculars beyond soccer. That will make soccer recruiting more difficult but should improve his opportunity for top academic performance and potential merit money. We’ll have to see where this all leads.
In the end, I can see why colleges place a premium on athletics, but most people are incorrect in assuming that athletes lead a charmed life.
I live in a diverse neighborhood in what would be considered a average school district. We some years back we had two football players that were offered at several Ivy league schools. Like stated earlier Ivy league schools do not offer athletic scholarships but rather financial packages to athletes. I know one of the kids well and said they did not accept the offer because they still would have left school with a good deal of debt. Both players accepted full rides at Rice and both graduated this spring. The point being Ivy league schools are not going to admit anyone who is at risk of not graduating.
These percentages of hook groups can be quite significant. RD applicants had a ~2% acceptance rate in this year’s class. I expect the acceptance rate would be closer to 1% for applicants who aren’t in a hook/boost category. Percentage of admits with different types of hooks/boosts are listed below, from the lawsuit. Note that the categories are not mutually exclusive, so percentages are expected to sum above 100%.
Applied SCEA: 54%* of admits
URM: 28% of admits
Disadvantaged: 18% of admits
Parent(s) Attended Harvard (Legacy): 15% of admits
Recruited Athlete: 11% of admits
Dean/Director’s Special Interest List: 10% of admits
First Generation to Attend College : 7% of admits
On Z-list (mostly wealthy/connected): 3% of admits in next year’s class
Parent(s) on Harvard Staff: 0.9% of admits
Parent(s) on Harvard Faculty: 0.6% of admits
*For class of 2022, assuming 94% yield, as listed in lawsuit for 2016
@ccprofandmomof2 at our high school we have to pay an athletic transportation fee for each sport that pays for the bus to away meets. I suppose if debate wanted a bus they’d have to do the same.
"A “normal” day for my son is as follows:
- Wake up at 5:45 for school
- On the bus at 6:50
- Home from school at 2:45
- "Downtime" from 3:00 - 3:30
- Homework from 3:30 - 5:30
- Dinner at 5:30 - 6:00
- Leave for practice by 6:30
- He naps in the car
- Arrive at practice by 7:45
- Practice 8:00 - 9:45
- He has a snack on the ride home
- Home around 11:00
- In bed around midnight"
This is a long day and no one should doubt that. A point I would make is not that this is not a large amount of time, but whether it is necessarily more time than what low income students spend at work or in a family business, for example. This athlete spends just under 2 hours per day on his sport during the week and then a long day plus travel on the weekends. Many low income students work at a job or family business more than 2 hours per school day and then more on weekends. Those who take care of family members - other siblings, ill parents - spend at least that much time on household work as well.
It’s a legitimate question to ask why the time commitment for a sport is more highly valued than the same time spent at physical work that provides money to live or on care of family members.
Agreed. If he told me tomorrow that he wanted to quit and play high school I’d gladly get off this treadmill, save a boat load of money and get my life back.
“In a rather profound way, the legacy boost privileges the already privileged.”
Sure.
But so does insisting upon very high academic qualifications. High test scores are MASSIVELY correlated to higher SES.
So does relying heavily on ED/SCEA.
So does requiring lots of interesting ECs.
So does giving an admissions boost to athletes. While you do get some diversity in Ivy hoops and football, pretty much every other sport trends heavily towards suburban and well-to-do. Crew, squash, lacrosse, swimming, ice hockey are the stereotypes for sure. But even un-preppy sports like baseball wind up being pretty much a whiter shade of pale. There’s a heavy pay-to-play aspect to most youth sports these days.
Cutting the other way, you have the strong hooks afforded to URMs. And also the large need-based financial aid dollars.
Legacy kids at these schools tend to have pretty strong academic credentials. Mostly, the legacy pref allows the smart white suburban legacy kid with a 34 ACT to beat out another white suburban non-legacy kid with a 34 or maybe a 35. It is hard for me to get too wound up about that injustice…
The youth sports grind is a big grind and very expensive too. From an ROI perspective, it is a much better play to spend the money on ACT/SAT prep and maybe just one or two non-sport ECs that are more interesting and less time consuming.
But when it works, the sports thing is a golden ticket.
Friend’s kid is a star in a featured Ivy sport. The parents spent a fortune on travel teams, prep school, repeating a grade, post-grad year etc. etc. etc. But the pay-off was that the kid’s 26 ACT worked just fine for getting into Harvard (32-35 ACT range).
Because college admissions is not an awards system – the colleges don’t select based on which students they think is most worthy or deserving.
Colleges select based on their own internal wants, needs & agenda. The colleges wants/needs X,Y,Z. They pick and choose based on which students best fill those needs.
And league sports is one of those highly valued items on the college agenda. My kids weren’t athletes and we aren’t into spectator sports. So I don’t know why. For many years my daughter’s ballet schedule looked a lot like the soccer schedule posted above, and I was very happy when my daughter enrolled in an arts high school and cut back on the private studio hours.
So I am not a fan of athletic recruiting.
But I understand it. IF the college places value competitive, league sports, and if that college allows its coaches to recruit – then of course the recruits are going to be in a favored position for admission. It’s just the nature of the game.
It’s not just playing a sport. Most that play a sport do not receive a noteworthy boost in admissions, even if they spend many hours on practice and travel. It’s just recruited athletes that receive the huge boost, and that boost for the few applicants who are recruited athletes is larger than nearly any other hook.
At Harvard, 33% of applicants said their primary EC was playing a varsity (22% varsity, 11% JV). However, only 2% of applicants who said their primary EC was playing a sport were recruited athletes. Only 27% of them even received a strong (1 or 2) rating in the athletic category. The other 73% whose primary EC was playing a sport did not receive a strong (1-2) rating in the athletic category, suggesting no notable boost compared to other ECs.
For the purposes of being admitted to HYPSM… type highly selective colleges, I think sports generally give a low admissions benefit per time and effort spent on the activity compared to other types of ECs. A minority of sports with few HS participants in comparison to the number of recruitment spots HYPSM… .teams could be exceptions, such as women’s rowing. This likely relates to why the students who received the lowest evaluated rating in the athletic category (no sports) appeared to received a small admission advantage compared to those who received a 3-4 rating (sport participation, but not “strong” in that sport).
I interview for a different HYPSM school, and my interview training mentioned that both the examples you mentioned were valued in the interview ratings, particularly spending a large time commitment to take care of family members. I’m sure they are valued in other aspects of the holistic decision as well.
“Colleges select based on their own internal wants, needs & agenda. The colleges wants/needs X,Y,Z. They pick and choose based on which students best fill those needs.”
Agreed. I’m still curious, though, about what need some of the athletes fill. Many of these sports are not - as one of the Harvard alums pointed out - spectator sports, so the sport isn’t adding to the social scene, camaraderie or any of those traditional roles that sports play. The mom quoted was making the point that the colleges value the athletes because they know how much time has to be devoted, which lets the college know the student can balance multiple time commitments and still be a good student - so my question is what makes the school make a value choice that the use of time for athletics (even for sports which nobody watches) is what the school wants/needs more than that use of time for a social or family need? I don’t know the answer and didn’t go to Harvard, that’s why I ask - it doesn’t make sense on the face of it given some of their other claims.
As for the idea that interviewers are instructed to equally value certain things - haven’t we seen time and again that interviews count for little to nothing in admissions? All we can do is ignore the claims and watch what actually is done. The data from the lawsuit allows a look at what is actually done as opposed to what is said. It’s interesting.
Well the point in some cases is that it gets a spot in a high-prestige school where the student might otherwise have little chance of admission. And once in, they are in - there is a high cost in terms of time commitment for their sport, but if an Ivy recruit gets injured along the way has to drop their sport, they don’t get kicked out of school, and their aid package won’t change. So one reason for a high-need applicant to prefer an Ivy over a school that can offer an athletic scholarship – whereas someone who truly aspires to go pro after college, a slot at school that is not as strong academically might actually be better. For example, if the primary goal is athletics over academics, Pac-12 might be a better choice for many.
I do think that athletic recruiting really makes sense only for students who love their sport – who truly would rather be practicing and playing than anything else.
Please read my post again. I never said I don’t think student athletes are hard working. My son is also a highly elite student athlete and I see how hard he works. I think he’s totally deserving of accolades and respect. What I said is that my other kid who does debate works just as hard, has just as long of hours (longer actually) and gets no social status in the high school social scene or among college admissions folks for that. I personally believe that is indicative of a privileging of athletics above most other things in American culture. If I’m wrong, please point me to the debate tournaments that are nationally televised all weekend long. I love my kid, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t see some problems with the way sports in America, and particularly in American colleges, are valorized. In fact, I think a healthy skepticism is probably better for him in the long run as it keeps things balanced. And even his coach has complained about the pay to play aspect of his sport–yes there are scholarships, but they don’t often cover everything, and as others above have outlined, elite sports are crazy expensive.
@HSP2019 In fact, I’ve been told by former scholar-athletes that being able to say you played X sport for the local university is very helpful in business after graduation. One person described it to me as “like having been in all the fraternities at once.” Maybe not the case at the super elites, but definitely an advantage in a lot of communities.