<p>_42, you have forwarded two hypotheses which I also have entertained, and still find highly plausible.</p>
<p>The issue of low engineering giving is something I discussed with an MIT alumnus, and the reply I heard is that, for whatever reason, it often takes engineers longer to establish themselves in their careers, or at least for them to feel that way. Once established, however, they do get around to acknowledging their debt to their college, and contribute generously. If that is the case, then the low giving rate simply reflects a lagging factor and the statistics does not convey a fair picture; the total contributions over a lifetime may be the same or even higher. Does this agree with your perception of what occurs at Stanford?</p>
<p>The issue of minorities is intriguing. The minorities you are referring to is, presumably, Asian Americans. To the extent that this population concetrates relatively more in engineering, perhaps we are only talking about a delay in donations. There certainly are individual Asian Americans who have donated generously; Princeton has its Wu Hall, MIT has its Tang Hall, and recently Berkeley received the most generous donation in its history from an Asian whose name I don't have. As America become more multicultural, and Stanford appears to lead the way among the top schools in welcoming minorities, this issue needs to be closely watched. I know anecdotally that in development offices, the lower giving rate of alumna graduates is already causing alarm, given the increasing proportion of females in the college population.</p>
<p>This is not a Harvard vs Princeton thread, but I think that in the minds the students who choose Princeton over Harvard, the perception of higher undergraduate focus and happier students signaled by higher alumni giving rate likely factor into their decision. I believe Harvard recently started a campaign to get their graduating seniors to donate just $25 expressly for the purpose of getting their graduates into the habit of giving and expressing thanks. Harvard IS doing something to correct its 4th-place alumni giving rate.</p>
<p>(Brown is the poorest of the Ivy League, poorer even that Williams, a much smaller LAC. In the recent past they had to give up need-blind admissions for several years. It is hardly a model for Stanford.)</p>
<p>The admissions department would certainly cut slack for people on national teams, but they'd also favor people who can make the Stanford varsity. Your best intercollegiate sport seems to be cross country. I'm not very familiar with the sport, but I assume that there are standard distances, and, therefore, standard times. You can compare your best times with those at the lower end of the Stanford team and see where you stack up. More importantly, you could contact the cross country coach and ask if he/she would talk to you for a few minutes. You could then ask about the possibility of making the team. If y'all hit it off, and, more importantly, if you are competitive with their runners, the coach will contact the addmissions office for you. Short of a call from Bill Gates or Stanford's president, there's no more effective call.</p>
<p>Stanford is perhaps the best at recruiting the very smart, very athletic students, which means that you really would have to be very good to get the coach's attention. This is similarly true at schools such as Northwestern, Duke, Vanderbilt, Rice and Tulane, which are mid size private schools that compete against the biggest public universities around. All of these schools have their excellent sports, though all struggle to compete in football, which requires many more players than a cross country or golf team and where the percentage of academically gifted 5 star football players is small.</p>
<p>The athletic standards are generally lower (though the enthusiasm can be equivalent) at comparably academic schools such as the Ivies and the Williams/Swarthmore/Amherst group of schools. This can give the very good athelete a significant break at a school that is otherwise very tough to get into.</p>
<p>Stanford's great, but so are these and many others.</p>
<p>Sorta. Is it not obvious that the Ivy League give's "scholarships" to students by recruiting those who have incomes which fall under "demonstrated need." You're precious Ivies do it through the back door, as opposed to Stanford, who does it more and is more up-front about it, and, not being in the Ivy League, able to do it as much as it pleases.</p>
<p>The Ivy League has decided to compete athletically in a way that is similar to Swarthmore, Haverford, and Amherst. This leads to a few sports being competitive nationally but the majority of sports simply not being competitive with Division 1 schools. The sports that are competitive are ones in which the average athlete comes from an affluent household (e.g., tennis or lacrosse) or can be trained (e.g., crew). </p>
<p>The Ivy League and other athletically uncompetitive schools do trade acceptances for athletes (I've met some strikingly unacademic athletes from Ivy league schools) and makes a very clear effort to recruit limited-income kids to whom it does indeed grant full scholarships.</p>
<p>I am less concerned about the money that goes to the athletes but the preferential treatment given to athletes. At the Universities of Michigan or Texas, a few hundred athletes is a drop in the bucket. At Amherst, athletes are a significant chunk of the freshamn class.</p>
<p>What is clear is that the Ivy League will admit athletes that are well below, standards-wise, what would one would expect from a Harvard or Yale matriculant. Students who would have trouble getting into UCLA.</p>
<p>Sure, Stanford gives them scholarships, and the Ivy League doesn't, directly. The real problem is not the scholarships but admitting substandard students for the sake of athletics. 1200, 1300, whatever, they wouldn't deserve to be there if they couldn't dunk a basketball or throw a football. </p>
<p>The Pac-10, Ivy League and various D3 LAC's all do that, unfortunately.</p>
<p>The Ivy league is often quite good at hockey also. Some paticipants will spend a lot on it but it is not necessarily a sport of rich demographics. Some schools get the benefit of international recruiting, i.e. Canada and Northern Europe.</p>
<p>Regarding whether a student is qualified to matricualte in general, athletics is a hook, similar to music and other hooks. There is a certain amount of leeway most schools provide for those that have certain hooks to fill out a well rounded class.</p>
<p>It's a truism, but the elite schools are looking for a well-rounded class of specialists, not a well-rounded class of well-rounded people.</p>
<p>Athletes perform an additional function beyond pr for the school. Many of them really are less academic than the average acceptance. Along with a few other well-defined subgroups on campus, they offer themselves up as the bottom 30% of the class. This allows the "academic" admission to maintain a good GPA which he/she wil use for med/law/grad school. The less-academic kid won't be attending Harvard law School, but he/she will go off and get a good job.</p>
<p>Of course, there are plenty of athletes who are also really smart, and I am impressed when someone can do two things very well with limited time, but the averages (SAT, etc) are clear. As is the reality that someone can make an Academic All American team for football with about a 3.2 gpa</p>
<p>Byerly, I have to agree with the others and say that your criticism of Stanford athletics is now getting offbase. Sure, the Ivies don't pay their athletes and Stanford does, but so what? Like other people have pointed out, the issue on the table is whether it's easier to get into a particular school if you're a recruited athlete, and the truth is, ALL schools, whether Stanford or the Ivies, will lower their academic standards to get an athlete they really want. For the purposes of this discussion, what does it matter if Stanford then directly pays the athletes that it does bring in? What matters is whether it was easier to get admitted in the first place if you are a recruited athlete, and the answer is 'yes', whether that school is Stanford or an Ivy. </p>
<p>Let's be honest. The average academic quality of the recruited Harvard football players is not going to be as high as that of the average Harvard student. I have no doubt that they're strong academically, just not to the level of the average Harvard student. You can't tell me that the fact that the Harvard football team really wanted them didn't have something to do with their admissions decision.</p>
<p>well, not EVERY athlete on an elite school's athletics roster is below average. just today, i read in the LA Times about a quarterback who has a 4.74 GPA with 5 AP's in his senior year and is on track to be class valedictorian. sounds similar to the typical HYPS applicant profile doesn't it? his EC? being a really good quarterback... good enough to get the attention of ivy league recruiters.</p>
<p>A guy can smoke 3 packs of cigs a day and still live to be a 100, but what are the odds? He doesn't "prove" that smoking is safe. The fact is, we know that smoking is dangerous because we know that the average smoker lives far shorter lives than do nonsmokers. That's what averages are all about.</p>
<p>From the point of view of a Duke or Stanford, there's not a varsity athlete on the MIT or Caltech campus, so where would the tuition dollars go? </p>
<p>Okay, now surprise me and point out that Caltech has a great cross country team or something...</p>
<p>Well, of course they don't have amazing sports teams. They sacrifice the possibility of having top-notch sports teams for a more pure meritocracy. Academics always come first.</p>
<p>Division 1 sports are a more pure meritocracy than is the academy.</p>
<p>Success in later life is not proportional to one's SAT score.</p>
<p>Regardless of how you define success.</p>
<p>MIT and Caltech are science versions of Reed, Chicago, and Swarthmore just as Duke and Stanford are non-eastern versions of the Ivy League. Attempts to link MC with HYP does not conform to the reality of who applies and who attends.</p>
<p>We invest the greatest amounts of narcissism into the smallest of differences.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Not ALL schools lower their standards for athletes. Neither MIT nor Caltech do, and I'm sure there are others.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Come, now. Don't you think that's being a little naive. The truth is, even at MIT or Caltech, amazing sports skills are helpful in admission, and can compensate for minor academic deficiencies. Let's face it. Even at MIT, a guy with a 1590 SAT but who's a sports superstar will probably have a better chance of getting admitted than a guy with a 1600 SAT but no EC's. </p>
<p>Look, ALL of the top schools do this. The question is HOW MUCH. I agree that MIT and Caltech do it very little. But let's not kid ourselves into thinking that they don't do it at all.</p>
<p>I don't believe that the students at Caltech and MIT are all that similar to the students at the Ivies as well as the rest of the mid size elite private universities. The admissions committees at these latter schools annually choose a bunch of subsets of students. All are bright, but the really good math students are a very small number at any of these schools. There are also a fairly small number of outstanding students from all the rest of the disciplines. When I say outstanding, I mean someone who is likely to go on and get a top-notch PhD in that subject (or something of the equivalent). They are also choosing significant chunks of the class from subpools, such as athletes, alumni kids, underrepresented minorities, local kids, geographically underrepresented students, rich kids, etc. While there may be a pecking order among high school students (which varies from town to town and from city to city), the admissions process is so filled with uncertainity that there really isn't a predictable difference between students from any schools in the top dozen of US News. EXCEPT I'd differentiate Caltech and MIT from the rest of the pack, not because they are worse but because they are different. Harvard students might also be a bit more different, at least different in being more likely to have a really interesting hook. But having looked at hundreds and hundreds of applicatiosn over the years (actually thousands and thousands), there just isn't a recognizable difference amongst the entire Ivy League, Stanford, and, yes, even Duke.</p>