<p>The reason why is because the Ivy League will stoop only so low on the academic side in order to land the blue-chip athletes. I’m sure the Ivy coaches recruit and compete very hard to try to attract and fund the athletes who can perform both on the gridiron and in the classroom. But for the few such kids that exist out there the Ivies must compete with other higher-profile programs, such as Stanford, Duke, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, etc., that also place a premium on academics, plus can offer flat out scholarships instead of uncertain promises of need-based aid to be determined some time after their parents submit their FAFSA paperwork.</p>
<p>It seems that underlying this is a resentment – how come the “better” student doesn’t get in, because the kid who isn’t such a good student but who is a great quarterback gets in. But there’s a real simple solution to that. You can put your money where your mouth is and not apply to such schools. After all, if they’re horribly watering down their applicant pool with all those “non-deserving” athletes, then you really don’t want your kid going there, do you?</p>
<p>As someone who doesn’t really value athletic life a lot, I get the “resentment,” but I wasn’t willing to put my money where my mouth was and foreswear my kid applying to a school that does offer athletic scholarships and likely relaxes the standards somewhere. So I really don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to complaining about it, as I could have insisted he not apply. But I thought the whole school was worth it, and the presence of a handful of athletes who “might not be as good” isn’t really all that important to me. Anyway, I think whining about it about the Ivy or similar school level misses the point. The real shame of athletic recruiting isn’t the 3.5 kid who gets into Stanford or whatever. It’s the big state school powerhouses who are recruiting kids who can barely read, and who can still barely read when they graduate. THAT’s the scandal, not the 3.5 kid into Stanford.</p>
Many years ago there was a high draft pick from a big-time football school who was really struggling in the pros … the team eventually figured out one big issue was the player was illiterate. He had not graduated from college … however had been in college for 3-4-5 years … stayed eligible (so had reasonable grades) … and progressed academically … and couldn’t read. That is crime.</p>
<p>The NCAA, in theory, has enacted a whole bunch of programs to improve the academic performance of student athletes … however the incentive is still there to work around the rules as much as possible. The basketball one-and-down rule really opens this can of worms … for a player planning to go pro as long as they keep themselves eligible in the fall they can totally blow off their spring semester and finish their one year of playing college hoops.</p>
<p>I am not really sure what you’re getting at. I find this website entertaining and educational, and occasionally I have time to participate in discussions. I don’t really have an overriding “point” beyond that. </p>
<p>Are you asking what my point is in wanting colleges to release less misleading data? Do I really need to explain this on a college admissions message board? For one, maybe people will stop running around telling anyone who will listen that scoring a 28 on the ACT only very slightly reduces one’s possibility of admission to Brown University.</p>
The ones who can barely read frequently do not graduate from college. Some colleges have ridiculously low graduation rate among recruited athletes for popular sports. For example, UConn men’s basketball had an 11% 6-year graduation rate last year. Florida and Georgia Tech were also below 20%. The overall national average is 68%. However, colleges that recruit academically academically qualified students were all at 90+%. This includes Stanford, Notre Dame, and Ivies.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how close your back of the envelope calculations will get you. Why should you have to do any calculations at all though? And why should a much less clever and well informed general public have to do the calculations? Is that an unfair question? The colleges could very easily provide the information. </p>
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<p>If this is directed at me then you have misread my posts (if not then please disregard). I am not harping on athletic recruiting at all. The point is not to complain about athletic recruits, the point is that they are evaluated and admitted outside the normal applicant pool yet their data is conflated with the overall applicant pool… for what purpose?</p>
<p>The “really dumb jock” is less likely going to be drafted professionally these days because it’s now understood that these folks can’t learn the complicated schemes and plays, etc, that are now required. </p>
<p>There’s some kind of standardized test that football players are given before the draft and the scores are very telling. A very talented college player with a low score often doesn’t do well in the pros…and the pros are realizing that.</p>
<p>good NCAA programs now have sophisticated academic centers with tutors, classrooms, and everything else that an athlete can need to succeed with his studies. </p>
<p>Schools with chronically bad graduation rates (minus early pro drafts) should be penalized with a lowered scholarship number. Athletes should not use all their eligibility and still not have a degree.</p>
<p>*And why should a much less clever and well informed general public have to do the calculations? * I think it’s pretty clear that, even on CC, most people don’t understand much about competitive admissions. I question why someone needs an athlete versus non-athlete breakdown, other than idle curiosity. We’re talking about complex institutions that prioritize their own needs. What’s Joe Q Public going to do with that info?</p>
<p>Hey, I’m going to speak up in favor of idle curiosity. It’s one of my primary drivers.</p>
<p>But I think it’s kind of nutty to focus on athletic recruiting at the Ivies. They’re about the last place where this is a major problem, other than places that don’t recruit at all.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone here demands or “needs” anything. Idle curiosity is good enough for me. That and calling out the notion that a 28 on the ACT is not much different than any other score when it comes to Brown admissions.</p>
<p>Preferring to see more relevant and useful admissions data from these schools seems like an utterly bizarre position to have to defend on a college admissions message board. I admit that I don’t get it.</p>
That was not what was said. What was said is that Brown focuses less on test scores than many other similar colleges as can be seen in how they mark several criteria as more important than test scores in the CDS, their lower 25% percentile test scores than other comparable colleges, their admission patterns in selective HSs, and their acceptance rates for different test score ranges. For example, the Princeton acceptance rates by test score range are closer to the sentiment on CC – the acceptance rate drops to by a factor of 2 or more for each 200 points on the combined SAT. By the time you reach an SAT equivalent of a 28 ACT, acceptance rate is a small fraction of the overall acceptance rate. Brown doesn’t show this pattern. Instead Brown shows a more gradual decline as test scores decrease, with a decent admit rate at a 28 ACT or low 600s on SAT tests. Obviously a larger percentage are hooks in the lower range of test scores than the upper ranges, but that does not explain why Brown shows such a different test score admittance pattern from many similar selective colleges.</p>
<p>Joe Q Public is responsible for himself, but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t help him if you could and it didn’t cost you anything (you might even help if it did cost you a little something). If you don’t help, it’s probably because the cost is too high. What would it cost Brown U, for example, to add a little clarity to their released admissions data, can you tell me that?</p>
<p>How many times a day are 25-75 percentile median test scores mentioned on CC? Obviously they are of great interest to the community; how could such data, more accurately tailored to a specific applicant, possibly be considered irrelevant? If such data were irrelevant, then the currently released data is ludicrous-irrelevant! But we know it isn’t irrelevant because it is mentioned almost constantly around here. </p>
<p>JQP might benefit in many ways, even if they are only ancillary (like tempering a kid’s expectations or helping direct efforts in a more productive direction). At the very least I think it is self evident that more accurate data is better than less accurate data, even if only to satisfy idle curiosity. That this position needs to be defended at all, on a college admissions message board of all places, strikes me as peculiar.</p>
<p>Thank you for your response. My references to your original post went on longer than I intended and I appreciate the more detailed summation of your opinion. </p>
<p>I hope you will note though that the original comment to which I responded made no mention of Princeton or any similar colleges. And also that I never claimed to be responding to anything more than an isolated comment in your message. I took your lack of response as disinterest in that particular tangent, which was perfectly acceptable to me. That I went on to reference said tangent after you had further qualified your original comments was an unintended consequence of my being asked to justify my “point”. I apologize as I’m sure it came across simply as me ranting about you. That was not my intention.</p>
<p>This is a fair point. A lot of potential applicants look at that middle 50% and think, ‘Hey, I’m right there in that middle 50%, maybe I have a chance.’ So they fill out their apps and pay their money, not realizing that at some schools the 25th percentile is pretty much determined by ‘hooked’ applicants, so that being anywhere near the 25th percentile is probably the kiss of death for an unhooked applicant.</p>
<p>i’m not saying this is necessarily true of Brown. And I’m not saying any school should voluntarily step forward and be the first to say, ‘Don’t be a chump; your chances of admission if you’re unhooked and anywhere near our 25th percentile are slim to none, so really, don’t bother.’ They want the application fees, and they want the applications so they can reject more people and therefore appear more desirable. That’s how the game is played, and as long as others are playing it, you can’t blame them for playing along.</p>
<p>But somebody needs to say it, and it would be much easier to say it clearly and convincingly if the colleges provided more detailed information on applications and offers of admission, broken down by factors like state of residence, race, standardized test scores and GPAs (to its credit, Brown does give us more of this than most schools), legacy status, first-gen status, and any other ‘hooks’ including recruited athlete status. It’s not as if the colleges themselves don’t already have this information. That kind of information would allow potential applicants to make more informed decisions about where to apply. But the colleges don’t want that because it might reduce the number of applications they get from hopeful but naive applicants.</p>
<p>First, the school I read for is not well interpreted by what appears in the CDS. Just because it looks detailed and comprehensive does not mean you can assume about the truths to be found in the CDS. I’m saying rigor may be marked higher because it qualifies gpa (can you imagine gpa over rigor? At an Ivy?) - and you say no, something or other and this or that shows it.</p>
<p>Second, who’s to blame for kids thinking that if they fall in the mid-50% they have some great chance, when 20-35000 others are applying. The vast bulk of kids getting past first round are solid A, with rigor and good scores. </p>
<p>Third, folks don’t understand holistic- ok, some do, but most perpetuate myths- more data won’t clarify. Someone has to explain.</p>
<p>And, my point, sorry, is that despite the explanations that do come, people cling to what they think is so. How many times…</p>
<p>And, btw, I am all for idle curiosity- I learn a lot by following all sorts of tracks on CC and elsewhere. Fine. But it is still idle curiosity.</p>
<p>Why can’t it be enough to say, “the bottom quartile is usually athletes and others with some exceptional pull?” Why isn’t it enough to say, “mid 50% isn’t going to get you far when the pool at a most competitive is skewed high?”</p>
<p>Why does it so often boil down to the colleges and their nefarious goals?</p>
<p>Yes, estimating chances based on whether you are in the 50th percentile on test scores means very little when applying to highly selective colleges with single digit acceptance rates. For example, Stanford applicants who have test scores near the 50th percentile of the entering freshman class have an overall acceptance rate of 8-9%. The odds are acceptance extremely low for academically qualified candidates, regardless of whether you split up acceptance rate between non-hook + non-URMs and overall. I think this overall low acceptance rate for academically qualified candidates is going to be the most likely cause of overestimating chances, rather than not considering that hooks are overrepresented on the lower end of test scores.</p>
<p>I think there is an assumption here that is wrong. You are assuming that anyone in the bottom 25% is in the bottom 25% across the board. Someone could have had a bad 9th grade and be 4.0 after that with great test scores, but will have a lower 25% GPA. Or someone with a high GPA and high verbal test scores but low math scores, who wins a national poetry contest… Or an international student with great and interesting everything, but a little bit lower CR/W scores.<br>
I think that its possible for good candidates to have a single piece that is on the lower end, if there is some other part of their application is exceptional. Now being a star athlete or musician, or able to endow a building may all count as enough to be “exceptional” - but I don’t believe that the HPYS schools are filling a full 25% of their incoming classes with students who are unqualified.</p>