“Second, in my view this serves to perpetuate the myth of the undeserving dumb jock who took precious Buffy’s spot. But the truth is in the details.”
The details are that most Ivies allocate 13-15% of their seats to a group of kids that (by definition) overall/on average work out to a below average group of students based on the AI stats. That’s what a hook is after all.
Those schools do similar things for URMs, which I understand. That’s the stongest hook there is.
They also do it for legacies, which I also understand. Also about 10-15% of the class Although this hook is much weaker and so the stats of this group are typically average or slightly above average as a group.
They also do it for development cases. We all think this group is quite small. But the hook is quite powerful here.
After allocating that many seats for that many hooks, that means the debaters and cellists are quite unlikely to get a break on stats. They have to be average, but more likely above average as a group. While the Ivy athletes and the Ivy URMs are pretty smart as a group (maybe in the top 10% or so of all HS graduates), the cellists and debaters are probably going to be more like top 1%-ers.
Given all that, I’m still kind of surprised that the Ivies put as much emphasis on athletics as they do. Especially since the Ivy sports are (intentionally so to the credit of the Ivy League) pretty low level and/or obscure. Yale ice hockey and Princeton lacrosse being extremely rare exceptions. Oh and fencing, squash, crew and sailing too!
I just find it curious, that’s all. And even more curious when you get to the very selective D3 schools like Williams and Amherst.
FYI, my 26 ACT friend’s kid actually turned Harvard down for a spot at a scholarship D1 program. The Harvard coach was stunned – his quote “but NOBODY turns down Harvard…” : )
It is normal to have free tutoring (and faculty office hours) at colleges and universities. The question is who is the tutor. Anyway, almost always, going to faculty office hours is likely to be more productive than seeing some UG peer tutor that athletics (or an administrator) hired.
Tutoring can be all over the map. For example, for a while at my school, for evening help, they used an online, peer-tutoring consortium, which included community colleges. Although all the tutors were trained, I have no reason to believe that the community college peer tutor in, say, writing would be much help with a senior philosophy paper.
The fact that Williams fields approximately 30 teams between male/female accounts for why 40 percent of students participate in athletics.This is a testament to these NESCAC schools wanting to provide these activities for their student body. These schools are going after the most athletic as well as academic students they can attract. Alabama U fields about half as many sport teams as do these DIV 3 schools.
Very few of these student athletes have GPAs or test scores lower than the average accepted student. Like others have said, my son was flown into New York for super days for both job and internship interviews and some were specifically for athletes only. All were from only target schools but the fact that he was an athlete and still able to maintain high grades is looked upon very highly in the job hunting process.For these student athletes, in any of these top tier schools, to put in the time commitment and still maintain their academics is a testament to their abilities and preparation over their entire lives.
To imply that these athletic students are lacking in their resumes is just not the case.
It’s seems amazing to me that this is still a discussion:
To answer the OP's question....of course not
For those of you even still asking the question as to why colleges or more specifically why YOUR college has athletics or recruits athletes...pretty simple, ask your administration. They can tell you exactly why it benefits the school. Do you really think all these colleges don't know exactly what they are doing? That it's not a winning proposition for the school?
Here is just a short article regarding the matter. It’s from 2010 but still relevant.
@mamalion One thing you might consider about the bling at public school big sports programs is whether or not that’s funded by the university’s general fund – or by the revenue generated by the big name sports and their endorsement deals. My local big time college FB team earns in high 8 figures annually which it 1) takes care of itself and 2) funds about 80% of the other athletic teams. Its coach is the highest paid state employee – but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to how much money this team makes.
Even for teams that aren’t huge $ makers, you can easily imagine one school’s Hockey Alumni network putting up a campaign to refurbish the locker room or a weight room.
I have to buy my sons cleats, wameup jackets etc. The team does fund raisers. Sports are not a money maker but rather a club type social activity, with the few public exceptions we see on tv (Duke basketball, etc). I like the idea my kid would rather go to the gym than play video and drinking games. I dont consider him taking up a spot, in fact he was asked to tutor other kids next semester. He knows non-athletes dropping out who can’t handle the work.
I know there are those exceptions, the avg to below avg student getting into Princeton for LAX,
but that’s not their entire LAX team, and try to find similar stories on other teams, you wont find many. But those few abuses we see and hear about, dominate people’s thinking.
“I know there are those exceptions, the avg to below avg student getting into Princeton for LAX,
but that’s not their entire LAX team, and try to find similar stories on other teams, you wont find many.”
Y’all doth protest too much.
Based on the AI system used by the Ivies, we KNOW that the Princeton lax team, year in and year out as an aggregated group, is allowed to be BELOW AVERAGE as compared to the overall enrollment at Princeton.
The kids are not dummies, and not every lax kid is below the Princeton average. And we know that the Princeton average is not a low bar. But the team works out, in fact, to be below Princeton’s average. Which is the whole point of the AI system that the school’s have developed. And which the schools are very open/honest about.
While the amount of seats allocated to sports is a bit of a head scratcher to me, it obviously works for the Ivies. The Ivy League brand is one of the strongest in the entire world, even though most people don’t know that it is actually just an athletic conference and nothing more. Cheers!
In a sport that I follow - the best player on Princeton team completed BS in Engineering and the best player on Yale team did premed. The best player on Dartmouth team will work for Evercore and the best player on Brown team will work for Goldman Sacks. These are all pretty impressive individuals.
“Especially since the Ivy sports are (intentionally so to the credit of the Ivy League) pretty low level and/or obscure.”
My son is an Ivy baseball player. Many kids get drafted out of the Ivy into professional baseball every season, and this year will be no exception. Kyle Hendricks of the Chicago Cubs, one of the best pitchers in the National League this year, was pitching at Dartmouth a few years ago.
With all due respect, that isn’t what a hook is. A hook is an attribute that meets a school’s institutional need, be it athletic skill, donor money, ethnic diversity, or whatever goal they (not you or me) determine important.
Admit it or not, many applicants who benefit from possessing these desired attributes are extremely well qualified.
Take the student I mentioned upthread, who was very well qualified, with an AI above Princeton’s mean, and who graduated with Latin honors in a STEM major. Was he admitted because of his grades, test scores, or nationally recognized community service? No! Without his hook, he was just one of many well qualified applicants who might or might not have been admitted. His hook, that is, the fact that he had an attribute that met one of Princeton’s institutional needs, is what got him in the door. That’s what a hook is after all.
Sherpa – all hooks are not created equal. We all know that. And the studies tell us which hooks are the strongest (AA #1, recruited athlete #2, Latino #3, Legacy #4). The stronger your hook is, the more leeway you get on other aspects. None of this is disputed by the schools by the way.
Which means that the legacies (overall as a group) are going to need/have higher stats than the groups whose hooks are stronger. They are probably about average stat-wise or slightly above. And that’s exactly what the data shows what happens.
And the unhooked kids (or, if you prefer, the kids whose hook is cello or debating) will (as a group) have even higher stats. Their stats are going to be above average, plus they also have to bring the debate or cello skill.
“My son is an Ivy baseball player. Many kids get drafted out of the Ivy into professional baseball every season, and this year will be no exception. Kyle Hendricks of the Chicago Cubs, one of the best pitchers in the National League this year, was pitching at Dartmouth a few years ago. Not low level - not obscure.”
And Yale’s Ron Darling certainly had a great career pitching for the Mets. But come on.
The NCAA website lists 300 D1 baseball programs.
At the end of the 2016 season, the top Ivy League baseball team in the country based on RPI was Princeton at #108.
Followed by Columbia #182, Yale #212, Dartmouth #226, Penn #234, Brown # 237, Harvard #239 and Cornell #251.
As conferences go, the Ivy and the Patriot Leagues are pretty much the bottom of D1 college baseball. Which (to the credit of those leagues) is the point.
@northwesty, forgive me, but it is quite obvious you do not understand how it works. First, we do not know that the Princeton LAX team is allowed to be “below average”. What we know is that all recruited athletes at Princeton must in the aggregate fall within one standard deviation of the mean AI over the last four classes. You can’t extrapolate from that general rule and then try and apply it specifically. Certainly, if Princeton admits one LAX kid with a 26ACT they will require a number of kids (probably most of the rest of the dozen or so recruits they have) with 33s or 34s to off set that one extraordinarily low admit. That’s how it works.
More fundamentally and understanding I am not a math wiz, but it is mathematically impossible for all students not in your top 3 hooked categories to be above average. One, because blacks, athletes and latinos do not make up half of any given class and two because some not insignificant number of admits will fit in both the athlete and Latino, or black or legacy hooks for that matter.
More fundamentally, and echoing what @postmodern said, a huge percentage of athletic admits in the Ivy and NESCAC for that matter fall within the normal statistical distribution of the class. That is precisely what the AI system is designed to ensure. This includes a large number who are above the median as well as a large number below. To say that athletes admitted with stats within say a single deviation from the mean (virtually all of those admitted below the mean) are undeserving of admission is to say that the skill, dedication and effort demonstrated by being a recruited athlete counts for nothing, or at least less than the “regular” admit who gets in to Princeton with a 31ACT, is the president of a couple high school clubs and has a really cool story to tell about being a national master in chess.
And yes, Ivy sports are not the SEC or BIG. But they ain’t small time either. Last year, Harvard had 8 kids at the NFL scouting combine. Princeton has 3 alum from the last five years on active NFL rosters. I believe there were 15 or so Ivy alums total on NFL rosters this year, which would put the conference above most D1FCS conferences. An Ivy alum pitched in the World Series this year. In other sports, Ivy athletes routinely compete for national championships. So yeah, it’s not Ohio State, UCLA or Alabama. But there are not a lot of people who can compete at that level. Certainly showing that ability is “worth” at least as much as the traits and skills exhibited by every other admit below the 50% line for stats in any given class.
Some cynics may point out that this might be more due to the anti-intellectual/anti-nerd* mentality prevalent in US society at large and how many athletes who were hired because they reflected the values/preferred “look” of the hiring managers/bosses hiring them who were likely athletes and anti-nerd in orientation themselves.
Several HS classmates and I saw this mentality in action in corporate America and ibanks we’ve worked for. I was fortunate in that my bosses/supervisors didn’t have this mentality and athlete hires were given no breaks in the hiring/promotion process above and beyond non-athletes…especially nerds.
Academically high achieving non-athletes.
That’s what the coaches may say to parents/public, but that’s not necessarily the reality.
After establishing a rapport with an Ivy Prof I had for a summer course who had taught at HYP for 20+ years up till the time I took his/her class in the late '90s, s/he recounted how s/he was strongly pressured by higher admins and coaches to provide higher grades than merited for athlete and legacy/developmental students assigned to his/her class who weren’t happy with the mediocre/failing grades their work actually merited.
While s/he held his/her ground, there was strong pressure which engendered understandable resentment about the special treatment those groups received from his/her firsthand observation and the fact admission hooks for such students even existed.
Athletes at Stanford University score in the bottom quartile in admission stats: SAT and GPA.
However I would argue it’s far harder for an athlete to get into Stanford than a non-athlete. Simone Manuel and Ledecky are the world class athletes, gold medal winners and college undergrads… that’s the caliber of athlete a school like Stanford and Berkeley are looking for.
do their grades and SATS measure up to other students at Stanford?.. no. they excel at a world class level in disciplines that add diversity to the university.
Stanford is in the most competitive D1 conference in the nation and is competing with the likes of UCLA, USC, and Berkeley… far larger schools and still manages to win more team and individual national championships than any other school in the nation.
If you want merit based admissions with zero consideration for athletics you always have Caltech. Most schools fall somewhere in between.
@northwesty - I agree that not all hooks are equal, but disagree about their relative impact. I believe that athletic recruits and development cases are the most favored, for the simple fact that they gave an individual within the university advocating specifically for them. If you have 10 applicants, all academically qualified, and all of them either supported athletes, supported development cases, or random minorities, you can be sure the development cases and athletes will be admitted, but not all of the minorities.
Also, before you generalize too much about weak Ivy League athletics, check out NCAA fencing and you’ll find that the Ivy League is the strongest in the country, with no other conference even close.