<p>Yes, Marite, it proves something, just not anything that we were arguing about.</p>
<p>Curious:</p>
<p>You relieve my mind. There I was thinking my S's existence had been rendered meaningless in the space of one CC post!</p>
<p>Here are some articles brought up through google:</p>
<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/articles/Printable.asp?ID=8861%5B/url%5D">http://frontpagemag.com/articles/Printable.asp?ID=8861</a>
<a href="http://www.ephblog.com/archives/002305.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.ephblog.com/archives/002305.html</a></p>
<p>
Why should it? Thus far my D's existence has done nothing to dispel the belief that all students admitted with below 25% range SAT scores are legacies, athletes and URMs.</p>
<p>I guess the tongue-in-cheek nature of my comment did not come through. Back to existential angst!</p>
<p>Calmom: You are right. Your D and my S (and his chums) exist only in a sort of anecdotal penumbra.</p>
<p>Yes, the data mentioned in these articles sounds consistent with things I have read elsewhere. About a 200 (out of 1600) point advantage to URM's and about a 50 (out of 1600) point advantage for a legacy. I ahve also read that the recruited athlete preference is close to the URM preference in magnitude although unlike the URM and legacy prference the advantage conferred tends to vary dramatically with the athletic prowess of the candidate and the sport in question.</p>
<p>I never argued that "all" of the bottom 25% were URMs, legacies, and recruited athletes. Even if I had the fact that a thousand members of these groups were not in the bottom 25% says nothing about who is in the bottom 25%. You guys would fail an elementary logic course.</p>
<p>At least we don't fail the humor test.</p>
<p>Well, calmom claims that her D is one "who is in the bottom 25%" and is neither URM. legacy, or recruited athlete.
The total number of admits at HYP in a given year is 4,400 or so. A quarter would be 1,100. So knowing that 1,000 URM, legacies and recruited athletes were not among the 1,100 would be significant!</p>
<p>Here is another article on recruited athletes.</p>
<p>It does not make me worried about the overall quality of Harvard students.</p>
<p>Sorry, for not keeping Calmom's sons stats in my head, that is not what the post says but ok. So he is in the bottom 25% and not in one of those groups is that right calmom? And as the Gilda Radnor character from the old saturday night live shows used to say "sorry I forgot to laugh."</p>
<p>I didn't mean a thousand at a single school. I meant a thousand such examples.</p>
<p>I'm not worried about the overall quality of the Harvard student body either. Someone has to fill up the bottom of the class. I think the process is unjust to the academically superior students who are passed over for these just above average scholar athletes.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>I think the process is unjust to the academically superior students who are passed over for these just above average scholar athletes.<<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>If that's what you are worried about why are you singling out Harvard? The stereotypical "dumb jocks" who play varsity but were admitted with substandard qualifications and cannot keep up with their classmates in the classroom are stock characters at nearly every major and a lot of minor colleges all across the country.</p>
<p>Harvard is just an example. It came up when someone argued that scores of 700 were sufficient inoder to get into the most selective colleges. One thing led to another as it does on these threads.</p>
<p>"I think the process is unjust to the academically superior students who are passed over for these just above average scholar athletes."</p>
<p>Whoa!
Who are you to decide just who is "academically superior"? You think it's TEST SCORES that determine a level of superiority? Well then, the colleges don't exactly agree with you. And according to at least one admissions officer on CC, scholar athletes are no longer "just above average," regardless of your opinion.</p>
<p>"someone argued that scores of 700 were sufficient in order to get into the most selective colleges."<br>
Don't know who the Someone is, but he or she is correct. There's no "minimum" requirement. Everything is evaluated in relation to everything else. It is not uncommon for an application to be barely at, or even below the 25% of the median range in one SAT section, yet above the 75% in another SAT section, while yet offering an impressive array of well-articulated accomplishments. </p>
<p>Oh and by the way, test scores are NOT an indicator of "academic superiority." The kind of <em>student</em> you are is an indicator of academic superiority: achievement in the high school curriculum, because it is over time & because it is the classroom environment, as opposed to a single sitting, one-shot performance; academic achievement off-campus, where available (extra courses & related academic activities, contests, awards); academic potential as described by teacher recommendations; the difficulty of the high school curriculum, etc.</p>
<p>
[quote]
why are you singling out Harvard? The stereotypical "dumb jocks" ... are stock characters at nearly every major and a lot of minor colleges all across the country.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Harvard is one of very few places where people of a highly intellectual orientation can live and study among a large group of true peers. It is one thing to admit affirmative action candidates into this pool; this has advantages as well as disadvantages. But the presence of a critical mass of athletes, while they are no longer socially dominant as in high school nor represent quite the same cultural baseline, is not just a dilution of the intellectualism but a kind of counter-culture representing everything from which the smart kids thought they had emerged upon entering college. So there is a certain degree of resentment of the recruited athletes among many non-athletes, even if their presence makes it easier for everyone else to get higher grades.</p>
<p>I don't mean to speak for the other poster in this, but there is a reason why this is more of an issue at Harvard than at a Big 10 football school (or at least, the issues are different).</p>
<p>
[quote]
But the presence of a critical mass of athletes, while they are no longer socially dominant as in high school nor represent quite the same cultural baseline, is not just a dilution of the intellectualism but a kind of counter-culture representing everything from which the smart kids thought they had emerged upon entering college.
[/quote]
Siserune, I strongly disagree. I know too many top students who are also top athletes to buy this argument. In fact, I gave birth to one. At her school, the group of tippy-top students is comprised of at least 75% athletes -- some at Div 1 recruitable talent levels. I know several who will undoubtedly attend Ivys & elites in a few years because they will achieve near perfect stats, state-wide athletic recognition, and also are fortunate enough to come from wealthy families who can afford the tab. Nobody meeting these girls would EVER resent their presence at an elite institution.</p>
<p>Once again, we face the issue of overlaps and assumptions. One one side are those who think that the bottom 25% is filled with legacies, URMs and jocks and on the other are those who know of students who can be both legacies/URMs/jocks and score at the top 25%.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>But the presence of a critical mass of athletes, while they are no longer socially dominant as in high school nor represent quite the same cultural baseline, is not just a dilution of the intellectualism but a kind of counter-culture representing everything from which the smart kids thought they had emerged upon entering college.<<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>Oh, please. The elitism is getting just a little too deep here. Do the Harvard undergrads sit around on Olympus and sip nectar with the gods? Do they constantly think such lofty thoughts that it's a shame or an injustice if they get sullied by presence of the riff-raff beneath them? </p>
<p>One thing I've learned about Harvard from having a kid there for the past three years is that it's a college. An American college. With everything that implies: college kids of every sort doing foolish college-kid things. Many of the kids are wittier than you commonly find at some other schools, and they tend to be very hard-working, but the whole enterprise is not fundamentally different.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Oh, please. The elitism is getting just a little too deep here. Do the Harvard undergrads sit around on Olympus and sip nectar with the gods?
[/quote]
LOL! Some posters do take their perceived need for academic peers to the extreme. And jock/URM/legacy and smart are not mutually exclusive. Plenty of overlap at schools of all levels.</p>
<p>The lower 25% of my college helps me not go insane. If everyone was as crazy as the top 25% I would not be able to survive, I would have transfered by now. I have no problem with them letting in "academically inferior" people because in most cases they're actually as smart as a good portion of the so called academically superior bunch of admitted students, and they're actual people I like to hang out with and have fun with.</p>
<p>Now, as far as the original topic goes, I'm not exactly sure how it all dissolved into a question of legacies, URMs, and athletes, but two of those groups do not represent a group of "privledge." So I'm a bit confused how recruited athletes and URMs even got dragged into a question on privledge. As far as legacies go the main thing to consider is that legacies will often seem as qualified if not more so than the average student. To come from privledge means you have opportunites to gain an edge everywhere, grades, SATs, elite private high schools, etc. So although their tests scores might be on average lower than the rest of the student body, their whole application may still be amazing. You can't not admit a student based on test scores alone, and you can't not admit them because you think their application was affected by their income bracket. Need blind goes both ways.</p>