The Harvard Crimson: Filings Show Athletes With High Academic Scores Have 83% Acceptance Rate

Parents Forum
101

I’ve been following this discussion with some fascination, especially the debate over the value of athletics in admissions preference. Living in a country where university admissions is primarily based on grades and where very little athletics recruiting takes place it’s been very interesting to get a better insight into the ins and outs of undergraduate admissions at selective colleges in the U.S., and specifically Harvard, since it is not just in the U.S. where it’s reputation garners respect.

It seems to me that the debate presented here over the value of the criteria Harvard uses in choosing it’s undergraduate class, and especially with it’s focus on recruited athletics, leans towards people believing that the characteristics Harvard values in the students it selects are of questionable value. What Harvard values in selecting it’s undergraduate class is an individual’s future potential to financially support Harvard. Undergraduate education is a way for Harvard to ensure future alumni monetary support and not truly about educating the best and the brightest.

So if that’s true, it kind of begs the question, is the quality of a Harvard undergraduate education actually that superior to other schools or is the true value in it’s perceived quality? As long as Harvard is able to convince people that their undergraduate program produces superior graduates, whether it actually does or not, then people will continue to value a Harvard undergraduate education. That in turn creates more demand which just increases the perceived value due to increased selectivity.

If people don’t like the way Harvard selects their undergraduate classes, and question the characteristics Harvard seems to be valuing, why do people value a Harvard undergraduate education? Why are graduates of Harvard’s undergraduate program so highly regarded when it would seem that Harvard’s goal is basically to produce graduates who will continue to contribute to their coffers in order to support it’s post-graduate programs and faculty research? I’m not passing judgement, just generally curious if what is being described is in fact the best marketing campaign of all time?

102

While none of my family members have applied to Harvard, despite applying to and being admitted by other top colleges (Princeton, Yale, MIT), I can easily provide a reasonable, scholarly answer to the question “If people don’t like the way Harvard selects their undergraduate classes, and question the characteristics Harvard seems to be valuing, why do people value a Harvard education?” and the implicit question “Why would they even apply there?”

My answer is: Some people of a scholarly orientation would like to be taught by scholars of the caliber of those on the Harvard faculty, and they might be particularly drawn to Harvard by the presence of some of them. Among my colleagues, I know exactly one person who has turned down the offer of a full professorship (probably chaired) at Harvard, and he is at Stanford (and was at the time). He was told that Harvard wanted and should have the best people in the field, and he was one. It is hard to turn down that kind of approach.

On CC, a lot of the top schools are being “sold” on the basis of the great undergraduate student community, and the “amazing” other students you will meet. While it is no doubt true that the admitted students are fairly impressive as a bunch, and one could learn quite a lot from them, I sometimes think this is really a cop-out for the colleges. The colleges have famous faculty members, members of the National Academies, Nobel laureates–but implicitly, students should be happy to rub shoulders with other talented students, and never mind that they might not be taught by the stellar faculty who give Harvard its academic reputation, as distinguished from its worldly success reputation. Selling the school on the basis of the undergrad community is by no means limited to Harvard.

Actually, I know a few Harvard faculty who are very eminent (including a Nobel laureate) who teach undergrads, and the undergrads don’t have to enroll in graduate level courses to encounter them. Some of the very famous Harvard faculty also happen to be interested in undergraduates who want to go into a STEM field (I mean interested in a good way), pay attention to them, and help their careers. Being a Harvard undergrad offers a slight down-the-road advantage for an academic career, based on comparisons with other scientists of similar accomplishments, and it also offers some help in reaching any given level of career accomplishment. For example, a beginning STEM grad student at Berkeley may or may not be accepted to the research group of his/her choice. An incoming grad student who was a Harvard undergrad has some advantage in being accepted to the desired research group. There is still some minor carryover at the point when a person is applying for a post-doc.

Harvard admissions does not exactly share the philosophy of the Harvard faculty in STEM fields. In effect, there are multiple “Harvards,” and getting past Harvard admissions is just a hurdle on the way to reaching the Harvard that a future scientist might want.

103

In #73, Data10 posted the following excerpt from the Harvard Statement of Material Facts:

“Harvard Statement of Material Facts wrote:
An extracurricular rating of 5 is used to indicate that the applicant has family responsibilities at home or very limited resources that make it unlikely that the applicant could participate in extracurricular or other activities.”

The possibility that some students could face limitations on their extracurricular activities due to lack of resources or due to their home responsibilities is something that I have long thought, and occasionally posted on CC. I believe that it is only fair for colleges to take the possible limitations into account.

To say that an “applicant has family responsibilities at home or very limited resources that make it unlikely that the applicant could participate in extracurricular or other activities” is simply to recognize facts, among them the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day. It is not saying “poor them” to suggest that some high school students have to deal with these responsibilities and resource limitations, and that their extracurricular record may be affected by that.

Some applicants who have heavy family responsibilities at home and/or limited resources may nevertheless find ways to accomplish things that are quite impressive in the extracurricular realm.

But Harvard’s having a special numerical rating for extracurriculars in these circumstances makes it apparent that those students are the exceptions to the exceptions. Harvard admissions finds it reasonable to account for the impact of life circumstances on extracurricular accomplishments, without requiring super-human accomplishments. That’s a good thing.

104

“pretty sure the absolute number of top athletes in a given sport is a constant. The top 50 HS swimmers in the US might be better on average than 30 yrs ago, but last I checked there were still only 50 of them. And, as was pointed out, only a smallish percentage will have the academic qualifications to attend an Ivy.”

Ah, but it’s not the top 50 swimmers that matter. Harvard is saving space for the best swimmers it can recruit. If none of those swimmers are in the top 50, too bad for the coach, but X number of swimmers are still going to get this huge leg up at Harvard.

Not so for singers, debaters, soup kitchen volunteers, etc. You better be stellar if you want it to help you at Harvard. I can tell you as someone who was auditioning singers from the freshman class that the number of competent voices varied a lot from year to year. There wasn’t anybody ensuring that there was a critical mass of basses in each class. We just had to make do.

105

Yes, sometimes, singers, musicians, debaters, kids deeply involved in civic actions and/or a high level of advocacy, etc, do have their own pull. But when we discuss tips or the para-hooks, people miss that this is on top of a high level of qualification and a quality app. It isn’t just quantitiative, that gal who is in 4 choral groups, devotes xxx hours. Nor about awards. It’s the “value added” aspect to the college (and that’s specific to the college.) You’ll see, eg, solid performance kids who can rise above the pack because the music dept wants to bring them in, have a chance to work with them. They don’t have to be majors. It’s not the level of athletic recruiting or any guarantee. More like a little icing.

106

But then isn’t the talent pool of potential scholars so deep compared to the number of faculty jobs that excellent scholars can be found in a much wider range of universities than just Harvard and perhaps a few other super-selective schools?

107

That is absolutely true, ucbalumnus. Really strong research faculty are spread across a wide range of institutions. And within specific fields, Harvard is not necessarily at the top. There are other contenders. However, Harvard is one of a small number of schools where a tenured faculty position or a chair is unlikely to be declined, if offered.

In earlier years, students who went to Harvard might miss out on many of the top young faculty in his/her field, because Harvard’s tenure rate was 2% or so in several fields. A prospective faculty member was always making a bet on a first position, if offered an Assistant Professorship at Harvard: He/she was extremely unlikely to be tenured at Harvard, but a year or two before tenure consideration at Harvard, or even after being declined, he/she would probably be offered a tenured position at another university, say X (or a position with a strong likelihood of tenure in a year or two). On the other hand someone who could be hired by Harvard might instead go directly to Y as a young faculty member, and be tenured there without a hitch. So the decision comes down to the odds on which would be better, X or Y?

Harvard has ramped up its tenure percentages in recent years (maybe the past 10-15 years) in some fields, so that this consideration comes up a bit less. I was told early on that in my field Berkeley planned to keep every Assistant Professor that Berkeley hired, and wound up keeping about 50% of them. I was also told that Harvard planned to keep no one, and wound up keeping about 2% of their Assistant Professors.

A student could generally be very confident that the 40-ish-year-old faculty at Harvard would be among the very top in their fields. Harvard or one of a few other universities is likely to raid away top 40-ish-year-old faculty from other very good research institutions, and is likely to get them. So,if a student is looking for a Nobel laureate in the classroom in my field, the student will find more than one at Harvard. The student will not find any at my public research university. The student will find people who were at my university, but were recruited away and subsequently won the Nobel Prize. Future Nobel laureates might be found here, just not those who had already won. And similarly down the other levels of major academic recognition.

So, in connection with the issue on the thread: Yes, there are rational reasons for applying to Harvard, even if one does not like the way the admissions office selects the class, and even if one’s athleticism consists of punching one’s way out of a paper bag.

108

Interesting details about faculty tenure and quality, but the students I personally know who have attended Harvard as undergrads in recent years have aspired to, and gotten, jobs on Wall Street. Admittedly that is a very small anecdotal sample, but it also seems to be a dominant goal among CC students who aspire to Harvard. CC parents are very likely to offer up the value of the alumni network as a reason to choose Harvard over, say, a full ride at some well-regarded but far less prestigious university. Honestly, I doubt whether more than a handful of undergraduate applicants would be able to provide the names very many Nobel Laureates on Harvard’s faculty if asked.

So yes, Harvard has a very accomplished faculty, some who teach undergraduates. But no, I don’t think that’s the draw. I think the draw is prestige, and the perception that the prestige is associated with a path to high-paid, high-status jobs after graduation. Or, among the offspring of those who already have wealth and prestige, it is the perception that a Harvard experience will maintain that status.

I think that the small number of undergrad applicants with a strong academic bent are more likely to be focused on very specific faculty members in their department of interest— who may be at any school – and may at times end up with some unconventional first choice colleges because of the presence of those faculty members. And rather than focusing on who has won Nobel accolades, the scholar-applicants are far more likely to be familiar with the work of those who have achieved fame in some way or another, whether or not tied to the Nobel. And these perceived leaders in their fields tend not to be concentrated at a particular university. (Probably some internal politics in that as well-- it may be that the luminaries suck up all the attention and make it more difficult for the up-and-comers in their departments of affiliation to get traction.)

109

Isn’t it a bit presumptuous for a 17 year old to declare he or she wants/needs to study with, say, a Nobel Laureate? It likely wouldn’t impress much as a Why Us?, at that age. Of course, there are kids who are of superb precocious quality in their fields, who can explain this. But they’re still relatively untested. Even top performance, to-date, is still limited by time, maturity, independence, experience, and more.

110

Curious if anyone knows the attrition rate for recruited athletes at Harvard?
I suspect the percentage is also startling.

111

calmom, I believe that you are right about the draw of Harvard for many of its applicants. Presumably the ones who are focused on future financial success (and will be good at attaining it) are the ones the Harvard admissions model is designed to select. So they probably don’t have a lot of complaints about it. I was trying to suggest why someone who does not like the admissions model might still want to go to Harvard–for the quality of the faculty who are teaching there.

Obviously, there are some real stand-out faculty outside of HYMSM. Sir James Fraser Stoddart, Nobel laureate at Northwestern, comes to mind right away.

However, in STEM fields, the concentration of National Academy members tends to be higher at most of the single-initial CC schools than elsewhere–although Berkeley has many Nobel laureates and a large number of academy members. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign also has a fairly large number of Nobel laureates in STEM fields–or has had, since some of them left for another university post-Nobel, or have retired.

Still, going somewhere that is really off the radar (not meaning Berkeley or UIUC) would be an atypical move for an undergrad, regardless of the person with whom he/she hoped to study–although it could be happen.

lookingforward, I agree that it would typically presumptuous for a high school student to say that he/she needed to study with a Nobel laureate, though in a few cases, it is not. Mathematicians of the caliber of John Milnor come to mind. Interestingly, Milnor is apparently now at Stony Brook (supporting calmom’s point), although he spent 20 years at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. His spouse is a professor at Barnard. The “academic two-body” problem sometime causes stars to be found at research-intensive universities such as Stony Brook, rather than the single-initial schools.

Further to your point, lookingforward, in my first year of college, my math prof (whom I will call John Smith, for anonymity’s sake) told our class that it did not matter at that point whether we were being taught math by John von Neumann or John von Smith. The subject matter was simple enough. But he said that at a later point in our careers, it would be very important to work with the real experts. (Actually, he was one, within his sub-field.)

On the other hand, whether it is presumptuous for a high-school student to want to study with a Nobel laureate–no, I don’t think so. The perspective of Nobel caliber scientists tends to be both broader and deeper than that of most scientists. The professors that an aspiring scientist encounters as an undergrad do mold their students’ mindsets and affect the ranges of their visions in their fields, to some extent. This is detectable even later on, at advanced career stages.

112

I expect the bulk of students who apply to Harvard are not doing so because of the quality of faculty, nor are they doing so because they think it will help them get jobs on Wall Street. Instead I expect the bulk are primarily applying due to Harvard’s general reputation as being a top college. In certain communities; families, schools, friends and others all reinforce the idea that top students should strive to get accepted to an extremely selective college, such as Harvard. If Harvard somehow lost it’s reputation as a top college while maintaining the same faculty, this group would apply whatever the new top colleges were. We see this often on CC… such as posts about students applying to all 8 Ivies, without being able to explain why those particular 8 colleges would better assist with their goals than countless alternatives.

While we see this group often on CC, there are plenty of other communities that generally do not reinforce the idea that top students need to strive to go to top colleges. For example, the study at http://www.nber.org/papers/w18586 concluded, “the vast majority of very high-achieving students who are low-income do not apply to any selective college or university.” I attended what I consider to be a typical public HS in upstate NY – not especially high SES or especially low SES. A good portion of top students did not apply to any highly selective colleges and instead chose to attend one of the nearby SUNYs… not out of financial concerns, more out of it being accepted that students from of a variety of academic backgrounds attend a nearby and familiar college, rather than striving to attend a further away and less familiar college like HYPSM. A few top students started at community college, then later transferred to a SUNY in an effort instead to save money.

113

Most top students could get a fantastic education at many of the top 30 to 50 colleges. Since it’s really difficult to truly differentiate between them in a meaningful way (with rare exception), candidates use perceived prestige as a proxy for doing so. And Harvard is at the top (or nearly so) of practically everyone’s list of prestigious institutions.

114

QM, I respectfully think you may be a teeny bit idealistic on the laureates. Too many applicants, even top performers, are not able to distinguish on that level. I know you mean great and accomplished young scientifc minds. But those are few enough. It can’t explain the general drive to H (or other tippy tops,) in particular.

Nor is this all about stem or banking careers.

Of course, when one is a stellar young Bright Mind, those relatively few, Harvard rules change. We know this, from them. And a Harvard will be comforted to know they have John Doe or Mary Jones, who seems, by all measures, at this moment, destined for a great academic (or other society serving) future role. But ime, the first adcom focus for the vast bulk of applicants, is how they will fare during the four years. Done well, they pick a class based on traits and strengths that will serve them as UG first, with confidence these kids will later go on to their own greatness, whatever it is, large or small, after they graduate, after H hands them the sheepskin and says, fare thee well and don’t forget to donate. It’s not a major consideraton for getting in.

115

One of my freshman roommates, at a Harvard peer, not only said precisely that, but said it in the context of saying that his ambition was to be a Nobel laureate himself. (He also wanted to date a classmate who was the child of a Nobel laureate at another university.) Was that presumptuous? You bet. But there are plenty of freshmen who are presumptuous like that at Harvard and similar places (and probably somewhat more at Harvard than anywhere else). That’s part of what gives elite universities their character. If you think you are a Mutant, and you want to be a superhero, you go to Dr. Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters if you get the opportunity.

I was there, too, because I wanted to study with the Nobel laureate-equivalents in my field of interest. And I, too, thought maybe I could join them someday. But I didn’t say so out loud as much as my roommate did.

By the end of the year, both of us had concluded that we were not exceptional enough to reach that height. I fell way short (but not until I hit my 30s). He has accomplished a heck of a lot for an also-ran (MD at a top-5 institution, long tenure as a department chair at a leading academic hospital).

116

I agree, lookingforward, that the great majority of Harvard applicants are not applying there because they want to study with Nobel laureates, or other people who are essentially defining the top of their fields.

I would also agree that a lot of the people who are complaining about Harvard’s admissions practices are not motivated by wanting the opportunity to study with Nobel laureates.

I was really making a fairly narrow comment in regard to the question, if people don’t like how Harvard runs admissions, why would they want to go there? Some of the applicants in that category actually are drawn by the prospect of studying with professors who have been “tagged” by Harvard as the best in the business, so to speak.

In response to JHS’s comments in #114, when it comes to enhancing one’s own chances of becoming a Nobel laureate (in case anyone on the thread is interested :slight_smile: ) the key is to pick a Ph.D. advisor who is in the running for a Nobel prize, or has one already. Undergraduate study is less crucial. Yet, I am convinced that many people’s approach to problem selection and problem solving in STEM fields is heavily influenced by their undergraduate professors. So it makes some sense. I selected my own undergrad university (not big on CC) partially on the basis of the eminence of a particular faculty member.

In terms of Harvard’s selection process, I am not sure whether the applicants scoring 1 in academics have prior connections to a Harvard faculty member, whether any faculty member anywhere will do for a 1, or whether the student applies, the application is forwarded to a Harvard faculty member, and then the applicant may be moved from 2 to 1.

With this information in the news, I expect a lot of my faculty friends at Harvard to be hounded in the coming year by applicants who want to move into the 1 category by having a connection to them. I am experiencing Schadenfreude over this. :slight_smile:

117

Agree, QM ^. But even with respect to H, S, Y and Wharton, what we see on CC chance threads is only the tip of the iceberg. Too many kids are still wrapped up in the hs scheme, what gets them ahead in hs standing, what they do that’s unique in that one hs context (not realizing it’s not so uncommon.) When they point to the opp to study with Prof X, it’s often a rote look up, not a deeply considered motivation. (Eg, Why Us? “I can take blah-blah class with Prof X.” As CC has pointed out, many times, X may not even teach undergrads or offer any research other than to PhD students. Etc.)

Since H apparently made the commitment to the Bright Minds, I accept it. Go for it. If they’ll let you access the Laureate, fine by me. Yes, in my own UG, I saw the value in working closely with particular profs who not only inspired, but shared ideas, were willing to engage in critical discussions to enhance my own view and scholarly directions. But frankly, that’s what happened once there.

As for the “1” (or some 2’s,) a reviewer can bestow it, but leave how a particular applicant advances toward an admit to faculty impressions. Eg, “Let’s see what faculty think(s.)” A “1” is not a final determinant.

118

@2mrmagoo

I’m also interested to know more about the attrition of recruited athletes. Recently on cc there have been a few recruited athletes at ivies that drop before the first workout. What happens over four years? Within my community the scholarship athletes usually stay with the sport even if their parents can cover tuition. Some sports even provide five years of scholarship. The recruited athlete with no scholarship? Very rarely do they stay at the varsity level more than two years before they drop to club level sports. There is just always someone younger and better at their sport.

119

Some articles can be googled and it’s not always a simple explanation. Many realize their lives are not just sports. A few come in with a couple of sport and decide to focus on just one. And considering the top schools continue to recruit, it’s not as if a kid who drops a sport to pursue other ECs or academic goals is irreplaceable.

Do they game the hook? Well, that’s the age old question. The colleges certainly know their own retention stats for active athletes on a team. Whata number they need to keep playing, what contingencies.

120

I’ve known athletes who didn’t make it through September of the first year and (many) who have played the full 4 years. You can look at any roster and see who has transferred in (the previous school is listed, and if it isn’t a high school, you can assume a transfer). You can also see how many seniors are still on the team. If you see 15 freshman and only 5 seniors, you can assume there is a lot of attrition. Some attrition is expected but not 50%.