Our daughter knew a number of athletes at her time at Harvard and there are two that immediately come to mind that were recruited athletes and decided no longer to compete. In both instances these were women. One of these woman was intensely academic and was carrying a 4.0. She was more concerned with what her grades would mean to her future than her participation on the team she was recruited for.
I would anticipate that for many student athletes that they weigh the intensity of their schedules and after Freshman or Sophomore year if it looks like they are not going to see reasonable playing time that may hasten their decision to focus solely on their academics. As being non scholarship athletes I do not know what would prevent them from doing that. Of course their conscience/ethics should be a consideration as their athletic skills are more than likely what had them be admitted.
For those of you who may be interested Harvard professor Michael Sandel has some excellent YouTube videoās on the topic of affirmative action that are specific to admissions. The student participation was very interesting. Michael Sandel is a master, one of the many excellent professors that our daughter had while at Harvard.
āI think itās @northwesty who likes to say that the legacy effect is powerful because itās a tiebreaker in a game with a lot of ties. If 42% of the applicant pool to Harvard is an academic ā1ā or ā2ā, thatās a lot of ties.ā
@DeepBlue86 ā Bingo!
In NHL ice hockey, only about 10% of games go to the shoot out tie breaker. So penalty shooting is important.
In World Cup soccer, about 20% of the elimination games go to penalty kicks. So even though PKs are ājustā a tie breaker, having an edge in the PK/tie-breaker round is very important.
If 40+% of the games are ties, holding a legacy ātie-breakerā card is YUGE!
" Iām also interested to know more about the attrition of recruited athletes."
Attrition of one-third of the kids (maybe a bit more) over the course of four years is pretty typical. If your scholarship/financial aid isnāt tied to team membership, it is quite common and understandable that kids move on and pursue other interests during college. Especially if thereās not a lot of playing time in the cards.
But close to 100% of the kids who drop a Harvard sport will continue at Harvard and graduate.
40+ % of academic ratings being 2ās does not mean that these 2 academic rating applicants are all ties. Instead Harvard bases their admission decision on far more than just the academic rating. They also have +/- indicators.
Among applicants other than recruited athletes, only ~1% of applicants receive a 1 in academic, EC, or personal. Getting a ā1ā is extremely rare is does not mean the pinnacle of highest stats. It more means the special ācaveatā groups the Dean of Admissions mentioned in the NYT quote, such as āour faculty believe place them among the best potential scholars of their generation.ā And another ~6% applicants are āall-aroundersā who receive three or more 2ās in the four ratings. These ~7% of applicants make up ~58% of admits and I expect the overwhelming majority of unhooked admits. They arenāt tied with the 40+% of applicants who received 2 in academic. Instead they received better combined ratings.
The regression coefficient for legacy suggests it is roughly as powerful as the difference between a 2 and 3 rating. For example, a legacy with a 2 in academic, 2 in ECs, and 3 in personal might have similar chance of admission to a non-legacy with 2 in academic, 2 in ECs, and 2 in personal. ~80% of applicants receive a 3 in personal, so this would have a large impact on admit rate.
I doubt very many of the undergraduate kids who attend Harvard care that they may be taught by a nobel laureate
Also Harvard does surveys periodically and about 18 per cent of the kids wind up in Finance
Which pretty much proves my point ā there are eminent faculty members all over the place, including at many schools that are ānot big on CCā (so hence are not referred to with single letter initials).
I think among the small fraction of undergrads who are considering such things, they will have varied interests and may find the faculty in a wide variety of settings. It might attract them to a particular school, or it might be a factor in a choice of school.
Example: my daughter was accepted to Berkeley as a linguistics major. At the time, George Lakoff was on the Berkeley faculty. My daughter opted for another college ā¦ and thatās a good thing because after taking linguistics her first semester (coincidentally from a different Berkeley prof then deemed a āvisitingā prof at Columbia) , she decided that major wasnāt her cup of tea. But back when we were choosing colleges, we knew who Lakoff was and were familiar with both his work and his politics ā and his presence on the faculty would have been a positive factor. (My daughter ended up as a poli sci major, so very much interested in the intersection of language & politics ā so might have been very happy for an opportunity to take a course or two from him.)
But the point is: there are many ways that faculty members achieve eminence beyond the Nobel, and depending on field of interest, eminent faculty members can be found in a wide range of college and university settings. And winning a Nobel (or achieving fame in any other way) - doesnāt necessarily mean that the faculty member is a particularly talented or engaging teacher who would be reasonably available to undergrads.
So it goes back to broader prestige ā being able to boast of multiple Nobel Laureates on the faculty helps prop up Harvardās continued level of prestige-- and the prestige itself is a driver of undergraduate enrollment. But as to attracting individual students ā I think those who actually consider that will be driven by their own interests. Harvard has Nobelists on its faculty here: https://www.harvard.edu/about-harvard/harvard-glance/honors/nobel-laureates
Iāll let you figure out which ones, if any, actually teach undergrads. (I didnāt find any evidence of that, but I gave up looking after the first few on the list). There is one physicist who is reported on that page to teach a freshman level Harvard Extension classā¦ but the cool thing about Harvard Extension is that anyone can enrollā¦ and the man is almost 93 years old; his name doesnāt show up as teaching any physics courses in the Harvard Extension catalog; and he is listed as āemeritusā elsewhere on the Harvard siteā¦ so I donāt think that whole āundergrads taught by Nobel Laureatesā holds all that much water.
Thatās not to say that Harvardās faculty is in any way deficientā¦ just that I donāt buy into the concept that the Nobel thing is a meaningful incentive driving undergrad enrollment.
@Data10 - I think weāre saying similar things. My full quote (note especially the last sentence) was:
You noted that ~1% of applicants get a ā1ā in any of the three non-athletic categories, that another ~6% get three ā2ās and that this ~7% accounts for ~58% of admits. You go on to say:
My point is that 42% of the applicants are an academic ā2ā or better and, as you say, ~80% of applicants get a ā3ā in personal. That says to me that a large chunk of the non-athlete applicant pool is similarly situated, i.e., ātiedā on two of the three major dimensions (Iām leaving pluses and minuses out of it).
If a legacy in the overlapping group with a ā2ā on academic and a ā3ā in personal gets a ā2ā in ECs, your analysis seems to suggest that that theyāre the equivalent of a non-legacy with three ā2ās, and that both have a good chance of getting in. Conversely, a non-legacy with two ā2ās and a ā3ā may get in but seems to be facing an uphill battle unless thereās some other mitigating factor (like being on the Deanās/Presidentās List).
Ergo, in a relatively high percentage of situations among admissible non-athlete candidates (where thereās a 2-2-3), legacy serves as a functional ātiebreakerā even if it isnāt explicitly used as such in the deliberations by the adcoms. I would guess a legacy with a 2-2-2 is close to a slam dunk. Do you disagree?
calmom, I sort of regret introducing the āNobel laureateā component into the discussion of reasons to select Harvard. It was a shorthand for the overall eminence of the faculty. Some of the Harvard faculty have to teach undergrads! My point was just that some applicants might want to go to Harvard specifically for the excellence of the faculty, or at least they might want to include Harvard in the grab-bag of top colleges to which they send applicationsāeven if they do not like the admissions process itself. I donāt claim that this is a majority of applicants.
My situation in selecting an undergrad school was not really a counter-example to this. I was drawn by the eminence of a particular faculty member (thus proving that at least one student in my lifetimeāmeāhas considered that issue when selecting a university), but I did not anticipate that the majority of the faculty would be similarly eminent. That makes my undergrad school unlike Harvard.
Students who have been lucky enough to experience a vibrant intellectual community in high school may be drawn to Harvard by the quality of the student community there. Students in high schools that only occasionally send students to top colleges probably do not know what they are missing until they get there (if they do), and the quality of the student community may not figure in their decision itself.
Of course there are students who want to go into finance, or who otherwise want the career positioning that Harvard will provide. A legacy student who has had family members at Harvard since 1636 may want to go there for that reason alone. Some, like Rick in Casablanca, may want to go there āfor the waters,ā and later conclude that they were misinformed.
It is quite interesting to me that so few applicants receive academic scores of 1, and so many receive academic scores of 2. Just given the numbers, I have to believe that the 2 group actually covers a pretty broad academic range, but that Harvard admissions doesnāt find it worthwhile to try to differentiate on academics within that group. That could explain a lot.
My D used to swim club for one of the best clubs around. I noticed just a few days ago one swimmer just verbally committed to Harvard. She is a good swimmer, but not Olympics level. Not many are. I asked my D about it and she said this girlās sister plays tennis for Harvard. I am assuming this girl has the stats for Harvard and will be one of the top 1-3 swimmers on the team.
We had another go to Yale a few years ago. But that decision wasnāt made until fall of senior year.
āsometimes, singers, musicians, debaters, kids deeply involved in civic actions and/or a high level of advocacy, etc, do have their own pull.ā
It really is different for athletes vs. everyone else. Thereās no such thing as sending your film to some paid Harvard coach for drama or a cappella. Thereās no Harvard employee to advocate for one community service leader vs. another. If you have great extracurriculars, thatās good for your application, but it is quite unlike being recruited.
My daughters friend with a 35 ACT, 3.9 UW GPA and good enough to be on the team b ball skills ( not a top recruit) and no financial need was told by every Ivy coach that he/ she could gurantee her admissionā¦ period. Hardly a surprise. The biggest āsurpriseā was for the tutor ( mandatory for athletes) sent to her for her math course who was like āYouāre taking what level course and what do you mean you plan to major in math? I need to get you someone elseā. Lol.
I have no problem with recruited athletes and admissions. They are talented - plain and simple. Just like dancers, musicians, artists, and singers, they are committed and practice day in and day out. They work on mechanics, memorize playbooks, and execute what they have learned. They are performers, on a field or court, that many students like to come to watch. They provide events (entertainment) that allow many to unplug, relax, and communicate face to face with friends. They provide an outlet for laughing, for cheering, and for sharing a tailgate before walking to an event. They help build solidarity. It seems on CC that those that arenāt athletic or have no appreciation for athletics, donāt always understand the value that sports and athletes bring to a university. But the sports industry is huge and growing. It provides thousands of opportunities and I am just thankful that the collective intelligence at a place like MIT gets it.
http://www.sloansportsconference.com/about/
If you arenāt a sports person, you wonāt get it. I am one, and I see its value every day. I would rather spend a day watching baseball, an incredibly cerebral game not unlike chess, than watching an opera.
I donāt know if my son was an academic 1, but I do know that one of the CS professors called him up after he was accepted to talk to him about the department. I was pretty surprised, but it seems to me likely the the admissions officers were intrigued enough about his essay that they probably passed it on to the prof to see what he thought. Heād taken AP Comp Sci as a freshman, but after that his activities in CS were pretty self-directed, except for one summer course at Columbia, which was still aimed at high school students. We couldnāt find anything university level he could do at the time. My kid wasnāt looking for Nobel Laureates, but he did want to go to the best CS department he could get into and Harvard still looked better than his safety schools.
For heavenās sake, DB and Data, have you ever heard an adcoms speak of regression coefficients and predictability? Itās so odd to try to apply quantitative principles to an essentially quaitative process.
And Hanna, Iām referring more to the Vendler letter, āeager to harborā more than just the next kid planning on med school or IB. No, not English profs going out to observe high school poets, though one can imagine some being encouraged. We already know talented musicians, intending to continue playing, can get pull from the music faculty, regardles of major.
Although it looks like Harvard itself does so, by assigning numerical scores for each of several aspects of each applicant in initial reading.
^and in determining an AI
But that doesnāt make this a mathematical matrix that dominates decisions. In the final forming of the class, we know priorities like geo diversity and so on play a large part.
And numbers such a 1-x only simplify the subjective reaction.
I say often that some try to make this all hierarchical, whoās ābetter,ā has āhigherā this or has āmoreā whatever. There will be academic "1"and ā2ā kids whose other ratings (again, the subjective response to whatās presented,) will sort them out, not in. And, there is commentary, as well.
As UCB mentioned, adcoms at Harvard and others convert a combination of holistic criteria in to a quantitative 1-6 rating across several categories, as well as an quantitative overall 1-6 rating. They may not speak in terms of āregression coefficientsā, but that does not mean decisions are not predictable based on quantitative factors, including the adcom ratings.
Other groups at Harvard do use these quantitative metrics for analysis, including regression coefficient analysis to insure a reasonably of predictability and consistency. In the lawsuit, representatives from both Harvard and the SFFA (plantiff) are able to explain the majority of the variance in Harvard admission decisions, through a quantitative model. And representatives both parties, also believe such regression coefficients are key to determining the merit of the lawsuit. Instead they disagree on various details of their respective models.
If Harvardās internal ratings of applicants are not well correlated with Harvardās admission decisions, then there is a problem with Harvardās admission methods. Sure itās not a perfect correlation where Harvard simply adds up the scores and admits everyone below a threshold. Of course there are additional factors that relate to some unhooked 222ās being admitted and others being rejected. Harvardās regression coefficient analysis suggests LOR and interview (including how adcoms convert LORs to a 1-6 quantitative scale) are a key factor beyond how they are used to assign the main ratings, while geo diversity plays a much smaller part.
I donāt think itās meant to be a linear, mathematical sequence. I think itās an internal coding system, meant to provide a quick reference as to the admission readersā impression of the student. All of the super high-achievers here on CC with boatloads of APās, perfect GPAās, and super high test scores would fall into that ā2ā category ā¦ with ā1ā meant to note only the students who had done something academically extraordinary. Iām speculating, but I think that would mean something above and beyond the usual high school experience.
And that pattern may hold true for other scoring areas as well. Which would explain why a ā1ā would be used to designate an athletic recruit ā it doesnāt mean that the student is a better athlete than all the 2ās, itās just a way of coding the file to indicate that this athlete is one that has been selected by a coach to fill a position on an Ivy League team. (Because, Iād assume, there are probably some exceptional athletes who happen to play positions in sports that donāt need filling at the time.)
Thereās a difference between coding and quantifying. Thatās why the number ā5ā can be used for students in hardship situations that would prevent participation in ECās. Not because Harvard admissions thinks that for ECs, 4>5 ā just because they set up a coding system where the number ā5ā is used to signify some sort of special case.