Obviously you have never played sports.
The answer to your query is that people would participate in sports for the same reason other people play the piano, or participate in community theater. Because there is intrinsic value in the activity.
“I disagree 100%. Kids who like sports like sports. Kids do all sorts of activities that do not lead to advantages in college admissions.”
The existence of large sports programs in high school and college is certainly odd and pretty much limited to the U.S. But in the U.S., that combination is very strong and long standing.
At colleges, there’s many different kinds of sports programs that are totally different animals – LSU vs. Harvard, D1 vs. D3.
At the lower levels, it is mostly about participating in a student activity (like glee club) and not about professional sports careers or making money for the school. But at the selective schools (Ivies, NESCAC etc.) it has always been surprising to me how many of the very precious seats those schools allocate to fill up their numerous team rosters. Because filling up the rosters (by definition) means you are forced to cut your academic standards by some amount.
Those schools don’t give glee clubbers breaks on their academic stats because they don’t have to. Because they don’t keep score at glee club concerts. But since they do keep score at field hockey games, you are forced to recruit for field hockey talent somewhat at the expense of academics. While you don’t need to have a national championship field hockey team, you do need for the team to at least be respectable and competitive. You can’t put out a squad that loses every game 15-0.
I think this comment says much more about the attitudes of you or your neighbors than it does about anything else.
90% of kids play sports because they enjoy it and they like their teammates. Only a small minority of parents and/or kids are so college obsessed. There’s a reason why former athletes disproportionately go on to be leaders after as adults. Mens sana in corpore sano.
Lots of people (including kids) play sports because they like to (just like any other extracurricular activity), not because they have any dreams of athletic scholarships or even going pro.
@arsenalozil You mentioned that you played soccer in college. Well then you know it’s the most popular sport in the world and there are tens of thousands of kids who play 15-20 hours a week – and they’re not looking at getting into the local team or an American university. You can’t imagine dancers, pianists, equestrians, artists, video gamers for whom 15 hours is nothing for them?
My son decided to skip senior year track because the post season conflicted with his IB exams. Guess what? He still runs 10-15 hours a week. Because he loves to run and enjoys running the local road race circuit - which I imagine he will continue throughout college.
The idea that any extra curricular activity (sports, music, whatever) should only be pursued if there is a potential financial return involved seems really quite peculiar to me.
On the largest team in the largest sport in the Ivy, football, there can be no more than a four year average of fifteen kids per class whose academic stats are below the average of the preceding four incoming classes. The remaining fifteen recruits a class all must have stats above the average. These are Band 4 kids. The sixty kids total on campus at any point in time who have objectively lesser academic stats are divided into three further bands. About half of the sixty will have GPAs and test scores within one half of one standard deviation of the average GPA/test scores of matriculants in the preceding four classes. That is Band 3. These are kids who have shown extraordinary ability in a particular endeavor which requires a great deal of time and committment and who have stats just slightly below the average. There will be a like number who are most likely better football players but whose grades and test score put them between one half and one standard deviation below the average. That is Band 2. There can be no more that two kids a class, or a total of eight on campus, whose grades and test scores are greater than one standard deviation below the average. These are Band 1 kids. For those eight kids, their stats must still put them within two standard deviations of the average stats of the four preceding classes. These Band 1 kids are extraordinary athletes, generally Power Five conference level players. And again, we are talking about a maximum of eight kids total on campus at that level.
Numbers in other sports are harder to define because they are not subject to the strict band system that football uses. But generally speaking, at least half of the approximately 200 kids per class (each school admits a different number, with a theoretical maximum of 215 I believe) who are admitted as recruited athletes will have stats above the median of the four preceding classes by league rule. So there is maybe a hundred kids per class who are athletes with stats somewhat below average. The vast, vast majority of that hundred will have stats that are pretty darn close to the average and similar to Football’s Band 3. There are something less than ten kids a year admitted to any Ivy whose academic stats put them more than one standard deviation from the median of the four preceding classes. It is just how the numbers work.
I would bet all the money in my pockets that there is a similar sliding scale for kids who shows a like level of talent with the cello, pen or paint brush that is simply not as well publicized or defined. That is what holistic means, right?
Some kids won’t do anything that won’t help in college admission. Others just do what they enjoy. And sometimes they enjoy being part of a team, even if there is no college “payoff” for it.
“Too many athletes” question aside, I do think they should not let them fill up slots in highly impacted majors unless they earn the spot.
Define earn. Because unless you are saying that the only appropriate model is the Cal Tech stats only model, then at some point a school is going to have to make judgments on the value of things the applicant has done outside of the classroom.
Other countries seem to have no shortage of athletes. I don’t think it’s all about getting college scholarships. Nevertheless there are some parents who are counting on them. We had an acquaintance at the gym who thought his kid would get a hockey scholarship until he got injured junior year. Ooops. Another friend had a son who suddenly junior year was running track times that made him recruitable and suddenly instead of just looking at the SUNYs they were looking considerably further afield and uni’s were courting their kid instead of vice versa.
I think the elite schools have way too many athletes, cellists, debaters, RSI and TASP participants, published authors, published researchers, children of movie stars, and development candidates.
I think schools should be looking for only one type of kid, which, just coincidentally is exactly the type mine is. 
For anyone interested, this is considered something of a defining volume on the subject:
“I would bet all the money in my pockets that there is a similar sliding scale for kids who shows a like level of talent with the cello, pen or paint brush that is simply not as well publicized or defined. That is what holistic means, right?”
Nope. People say this all the time, but it is not true. Have you ever read the Bowen book referenced above? It refutes your surmise persuasively.
A kid with a 33-36 ACT who is a talented cello player gets in over a kid with a 33-36 ACT who is not a talented cello player. Whereas the talented athlete with a 29-32 ACT gets in over a kid with a 33-36 ACT who is not an athlete.
That’s the whole point of the AI system in the Ivies. The average of the entire football team is allowed to be one standard deviation below the average of the whole campus enrollment. The Ivies (to their credit) go to the statistical trouble of measuring and limiting the extent to which the athletes as a whole on each team may fall below the overall stats. They don’t do this for glee club or the student newspaper.
FYI, the Ivy AI system used to apply only to football and hockey. It now applies to all teams.
@arsenalozil REALLY?? The only reason to spend time like that is for scholarship $$$?? I have one child who has been a very successful competitive figure skater. No scholarships in sight-- I think it has been awesome for her in so many ways.
By “unless they earn it” I mean you are admitted, but you have to then apply to impacted majors on your own merit, without a coach pushing the app.
What schools give athletes priority into impacted majors, as opposed to requiring them to meet whatever usual academic selection criteria those majors have for all students?
Again, define talented. Too often people assume that the talents exhibited by their own progney or children they may know are equivalent to the talents exhibited by recruited athletes. My point is that there is a qualitative difference between a kid with the talent to play D1 football and a kid who is a locally exceptional cellist. My premise is that kids who show themselves to be in the top 1% or so nationally in their cohort in any activity are provided a “bump” by admissions. As I said above, the kids I know personally in the bottom two football bands but particularly the Band 1 kids, which is what most people complain about, are all kids who had legit offers at big time schools. So we are talking about exhibited talent at some fraction of the top 1% in the country. That’s pretty rarified air.
I have read both books by Mr. Bowen and his daughter (I believe). I have also read quite a lot of criticism of his methods and obvious biases. One of my favorites was a line to the effect that “Mr Bowen uses statistics like a drunk uses lamp posts, for support rather than illumination”
My description of the band system in place in football above is accurate and current.
I am very familiar with the AI system. It originally applied to football, at which point your statement above was generally accurate. It was then slightly modified to the current band system for football, a slightly different band system for men’s hockey and basketball, and applied to all varsity sports in general. Currently the rule as to all sports other than those listed above is that the average AI of all recruits in a given class must fall within one standard deviation of the average AI of the four preceding matriculating classes.
Yeah, I think that would be a fair process, as long as the criteria for admission to a particular major is objective.
I don’t know if this is what @HRSMom was referring to, but Penn is widely believed to use admission to Wharton as opposed to CaS as a “hook” in recruiting.
Nice line, and one that could be said about any statistics based position. As in “Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics”. But total Ad Hominem, and would not be necessary if the author had a reasonable contrary position.
Non-sequitur, I knew Dr. Bowen slightly – spent a few weeks in China with him in the late 90s. He was a wonderful man and wrote me a personal letter afterwards, which unfortunately I did not make a copy of and was destroyed in my office on 9/11. So forgive me if I get a little white-knightey – even though I don’t 100% agree with his position in the book.
This says more about how"athletics/sports uber alles" mentality is prevalent in many areas of our society than anything else.
This doesn’t necessarily apply outside the US as shown in the case of the UK where the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge in the late '00s mentioned how most British undergrad/grad students don’t have the same levels of donation despite having many sports teams and wealthy alums…and the vast majority of alums who donate…especially generously to British Universities tend to be foreign grad students(mostly non-athletes)…especially those from North America, Asia(East & South, and the Middle East.
On the flipside, National Taiwan U and other top ROC(Taiwan) universities don’t allow for athletic or other holistic hooks for admissions and yet, their alumni associations are just as active and generous when it comes to fund raising for their alma mater and from my observation, the bonds between alums and the alumni associations tend to be just as strong or even stronger than what I’ve seen of some elite American universities…including the Ivies.
The level of bond among their alums is also much more personal and organic whereas the alumni associations/alumni get-togethers in many respectable/elite private colleges/Us here feels much more akin to being at an impersonal corporate networking event.
In that respect, my public magnet HS alums get-togethers are closer to that of what I’ve observed of my aunts’ alumni gatherings for their elite ROC undergrads than what I’ve observed of alum gatherings for my own undergrad or those of Ivy/peer elite alum friends when they’ve invited me along.
It’s also ironic that in many societies I know of where admission is “rack or stack” by college admissions, that the physical fitness levels of the AVERAGE population…especially traditional aged HS/college students are much HIGHER than the AVERAGE here in the US.
A large part of this is not only the encouragement of playing sports as an EC no different/special than other EC activities so non-athletically inclined kids are encouraged to participate, but also the fact some of those societies have mandatory military service obligation/civil defense* training from middle school onward to prepare prospective students for their service obligation period.
- ROC(Taiwan) up until this year and South Korea with the exception of those who achieved a notable individual athletic performance at the international level(I.e. Olympics).