Remember that football has several times more roster spots than other sports.
I see 9.2% black, averaging the 8 schools and not counting biracial students. Which would make them slightly UNDER-represented and definitely not some driver of diversity as suggested earlier in this thread.
And the NESCAC numbers are even more skewed. In the case of one of them, at least, athletic recruits that are institutional priorities for other reasons - racial or SES diversity, first gen - aren’t even counted against the coach’s quota. Leaving all the quota athletes white, higher income and not-first-gen. IDK if all the other schools do it that way too, most schools haven’t published that level of detail about their programs.
In neither case can we say that athletic recruiting benefits black students. Or minority students at all.
We don’t have SES but I’d guess it’s not helping poor kids either.
Well the FBI is on campus at some of our favorite athletic-based schools and they not there to sample the food in the dining hall or investigate the orchestra. They’re there to root out corruption in college basketball. Note I’m a big college football and basketball fan but this stuff needs to be rooted out.
The specific numbers for each school are listed below, which show 6.9% black, making the 8% black on athletic teams OVER-represented compared to the student body. The CDS, IPEDS, and College Navigator all match the percentages below (when comparing the same years), which all differ from your numbers. I’ve ordered from largest to smallest student population.
Cornell – 6.3% (15k students)
Penn – 7.3% (10k students)
Columbia – 7.5% (8k students)
Harvard – 7.1% (7k students)
Brown – 6.5% (7k students)
Yale – 6.8% (5k students)
Princeton --7.6% (5k students)
Dartmouth – 6.7% (4k students)
I’m not sure why you keep focusing on this slight difference in the overall average, rather than the huge differences in specific sports. The 2 sports that usually get the biggest admission boost both average more than 20% black across the Ivy League – that’s huge compared to the ~7% black student body. While sports like sailing, skiing, and equestrian only have 1 black student across all 3 sports among the entire Ivy League. Black students are essentially non-existent on many teams. When different teams have such huge differences in terms of both ethnic diversity and admission advantages, it’s not appropriate to emphasize the overall average and ignore specific teams.
I don’t know who is making these reports. I looked up my daughter’s conference and it listed one Asian for the entire conference. Is that her? Did she self report? Did the coach do it? Did they take the information off the original school application?
FBI is also heavily recruiting student athletes for internships etc
They are looking for individuals with high self discipline, drive, work ethic, intelligence and those who understand team work.
“The 2 sports that usually get the biggest admission boost both average more than 20% black across the Ivy League – that’s huge compared to the ~7% black student body.”
My broader point is that athletes from all races benefit from an admissions boost for sports. It’s more visible for the blacks but whites, latinos, asians all benefit.
@data10 your data is different. As I look there’s a mix of latest enrolled class and total across the 4 years, and it’s the latter # we’d want. Class of 2020/21 have more than your #s, sometimes by a lot. Columbia and Harvard both in the teens.
We could. The sports that seem to get the biggest crowds/generate revenue seem to have more black students than those that don’t. Why do colleges keep recruiting for “preppy” sports no one watches or follows? That’s an interesting question.
Less selective institutions are pretty transparent about it, adding Lacrosse, say, to attract full pay students: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/04/04/midwestern-liberal-arts-colleges-use-lacrosse-recapture-suburban-students
The Ivies don’t need that, though.
http://web1.ncaa.org/rgdSearch/exec/main
Whatever the student put on the application seems likely, I suppose that’s also how they get their numbers for the CDS, but I’m not sure.
My daughter thought long and hard before checking the Asian box on her application. It wasn’t that she thought it would hurt her admission chances, it’s just that she doesn’t identify with being Asian. At all. She did check it in the end because I suggested it might help the school when reporting statistics.
But she could just as well have not checked it and then it wouldn’t appear in the NCAA statistics. She was not recruited because she is a minority (in fact, the coach was quite surprised when this little Asian kid with the Irish name walked up on the overnight visit!). Her school isn’t short on minorities at all.
It was just a box on the application.
Can we drop the absurd notion that these qualities exist only or even disproportionately in college athletes? I went to class with some div 1a football and basketball players. They may have worked hard in practice, but some literally slept through class or got high between classes. The teams did provide legions of tutors to make sure they met the ncaa minimums.
Where did I say only athletes were of interest to the FBI?
But anyone arguing that these qualities aren’t present in athletes at the Ivies probably haven’t spent much time with them.
And BTW…student athletes at my son’s school do not get special tutors or any special academic support that isn’t also offered to the general student population.
In big time college basketball, maybe football too, the tutors travel with the athletes to make sure they don’t fall behind. Or sometimes the tutors take the tests for the athletes.
Cornell – 6.3% (15k students)
Penn – 7.3% (10k students)
Columbia – 7.5% (8k students)
Harvard – 7.1% (7k students)
Brown – 6.5% (7k students)
Yale – 6.8% (5k students)
Princeton --7.6% (5k students)
Dartmouth – 6.7% (4k students)
Agree with ohmom, those numbers seem low, Yale says it’s freshman class is 11% black with and 10% for all students. Columbia’s numbers are 14% incoming, 9% total. This doesn’t count international students, maybe your numbers do.
Harvard’s most recent CDS at https://oir.harvard.edu/files/huoir/files/harvard_cds_2016-17.pdf shows 7.9% black for first year vs 7.1% for full undergraduate class (matching the 7.1% figure I listed in my earlier post), not a huge difference . When you see numbers that are much larger than listed in the CDS, IPEDS, College Navigator, and publications by the other Ivies; it relates to using a different reporting method from the national reporting standard. For example, if you exclude the standard reporting category, “two or more races”, then the percentages increase. Harvard website publications generally list percent of ethnic groups in admitted class, rather than enrolled class, which again causes the percentage to increase.
There’s an inconsistency then in the numbers, because Harvard’s freshman profile on their website has African American as 14.5%, double your number.
https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics
@theloniusmonk that’s admitted students, not enrolled. As I read it, anyway.
However Columbia says 14% black under the heading “Demographic Information for the Class of 2019” which should mean enrolled students. Just the one class though, still.
https://undergrad.admissions.columbia.edu/classprofile/2019
12% here, for first years: http://www.jbhe.com/features/61_enrollments.html <-2008 though
But “two or more races” and “other” can mess things up a bit also.
If the Ivies are in the single digits, not even high ones, I’m surprised. I thought they were all over 10% like Amherst
student profile usually means enrolled
It says “admitted student profile.” A simple test is to check whether your link is admitted students or enrolled students is to compare the racial percentages listed in your link to the ones listed the profile of the 2,056 admitted students from March (before enrollment decisions were finalized in May) at http://www.topadmit.com/blog/2056-accepted-to-harvard-class-of-2021/ . Note that the race percentages match your link exactly.
If elite schools are viewed as the gateway to the upper class, then why is it surprising that the entrance criteria is biased toward those who exhibit the defining characteristic of the upper class, which is wealth?
After all, it is the gatekeepers that define the admission criteria.
Let’s not forget that standardized testing also introduces a strong economic, cultural and racial bias to the admissions process…
If present SAT is so biased then they should be making the new SAT a pure IQ test to measure raw intelligence. But we all know what the outcome will be. So instead they just watered SAT down so that it measures almost nothing but will still not achieve a level playing field.
It is not possible possible to achieve a level playing field. So unfair. As unfair as that some kids have athletic talent and others do not.