<p>"If he wants to be a PE teacher, fine (there's no money in coaching). However, other doors will be open to him even if he does not have the best GPA or take the hardest courses."</p>
<p>Half the students, athletes or no, are going to end up in the bottom half of the class anyway. So why shouldn't they be ice hockey players?</p>
<p>How Admission Decisions Are Made: An Introduction
<a href="http://www.petersons.com/common/article.asp?id=1031&sponsor=1&path=ug.gs.advice%5B/url%5D">http://www.petersons.com/common/article.asp?id=1031&sponsor=1&path=ug.gs.advice</a></p>
<p>i'm glad curious14 bought "the game of life" by shulman and bowen that i recommended...it is good reading for you all if athletics and admissions interests you...</p>
<p>colleges and universities are complex organizations that have complex priorities. they make decisions based on these priorities. sadly, many of these priorities are related to financial considerations that need to be made, as tuition revenues do not come close to providing an operational budget that would allow the school to function. athletics bring in a lot of revenue for many schools (though at the dIII level and at many privates, they could be losing money for the school!). there is a very good reason why notre dame stadium has a capacity of over 80,000...</p>
<p>schools that are not need-blind (and by far, most schools are not need-blind) do have to think about a family's ability to pay when making admissions decisions - it is a sad, financial truth in higher education. it also reflects our priorities as a society (but, of course, this is never an argument made - the argument is usually "this school has a $1 billion endowment and is being greedy," which exposes the arguer's ignorance about finances in higher education, but that's another subject for another thread i guess). when there are limited resources - like with need-based financial aid - hard decisions have to been made - like who in the "needy pool" to admit. these decisions will usually come down to institutional priorities. thus, if a school like hamilton has diversifying the racial make up of its campusas a priority, qualified under-represented minority students are going to be admitted before qualified eastern european immigrants from new york city. is this necessarily "fair"? well, that's a debate we could all have. is this decision one that hamilton wants to have to make? probably not - they probably would want to admit both groups of students, if they had the resources. but if diversity in the classroom at a small school like hamilton is a goal and resources are tight, decisions are going to be made which prioritize achieving that goal.</p>
<p>about athletic "tips"...</p>
<p>many of you have been talking about the nescac schools (hamilton, williams, amherst, wesleyan, bates, etc...,) and how athletic tips work at these places. from what i can recall, the "tips" work in very, very clear ways at these schools because they use what we in admissions call a "slot system." basically, there are different academic bands - the highest is similar to what someone else called an "academic admit," wherein the student being recruited is exceptional academically and would likely be a strong contender for admission as compared to the rest of the applicant pool (top 10% of their class, 1400+ sat scores, etc...,); the middle band of recruits are strong academically but need the "tip" to get in (slightly weaker academic profile, though still strong students, but "weaker" relative to the applicant pool); then there is the low band, wherein, basically, the coach says "take him/her" and the admission office has to - these students typically wouldn't have even gotten a second read in the admissions process and are typically far below the academic profile of the admitted class. </p>
<p>each coach gets a certain number of slots within each band; the number of slots per band depends on the size of the team they coach, in addition to the institutional priority given to the team and whether or not the team is in dire need of new bodies or just annual maintenance. thus, a large team like football is going to have more slots than say tennis, which carries a much smaller roster and probably less priority. the bands are pretty well-defined with respect to rank in class and standardized testing - therefore, a coach knows which student he/she is able to get in if he/she gives a slot to them. usually, teams have many (sometimes unlimited) highest-band slots - there's usually no question that if a student falls into that band and the coach wants them that they are going to get in. with the middle-band slots, coaches have to be much more judicious, as many of their recruits are going to fall into this band and there are only a limited number of slots available in this band. however, if the coach identifies a recruit as a middle-band and wants to use that slot on that recruit, they will typically be in. with the lowest-band recruits, it is a similar situation, although typically there are fewer slots in this band than in the others.</p>
<p>other schools don't use slots - the admissions office simply knows that the coach is very interested in the student and this is one of the many considerations that is discussed when talking about the individual student in committee. the ivy league has their "ivy index" that they use for athletic recruits. and at some schools, a student just has to hit a minimum gpa and sat mark and they are in. it all depends on the school, the conference they may play in, and what their individual policies are. nevertheless, athletic "tips" can be a big factor in the decisions on some students.</p>
<p>Adofficer:</p>
<p>
[quote]
As one admissions officer recalled for Stevens, “they’d be very expenseive, just as expensive as the multicultural kids, but we couldn’t take them.”
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Diversity in the classroom is a good idea, and if I were on the adcom of Hamilton College, I might have made the same decision. What threw me, however, is the idea that URMs are "multicultural" as opposed to Eastern European immigrants.</p>
<p>This seems to me to suggest that URMs are so unintegrated into mainstream American society and culture that they can be considered "multicultural" and that Eastern European countries have cultures so similar to that of the United States that they have little to offer culturally, and that all the students who came as immigrants have to offer are hardship stories and financial needs. At the same time, never mind that Eastern Europe is not homogeneous. It covers many countries with their own distinct histories, languages and cultures. My son, for example, had a Serbian classmate while down the road there was Bosnian Muslim family displaced by war. One of the boys had been hit in the face by shrapnel and needed reconstructive surgery on his nose. Two years after coming to this country, he still had nightmares. But he was bright and won a scholarship to a private school. He is now in college.
The term "multicultural" used to distinguish URMs from Eastern European immigrants strikes me as historically (remember Communism in Eastern Europe) and culturally uninformed. I can only hope that this is an unfortunate choice of words rather than a reflection of the speaker's cultural awareness.</p>
<p>
[quote]
but if diversity in the classroom at a small school like hamilton is a goal and resources are tight, decisions are going to be made which prioritize achieving that goal.
[/quote]
The problem is that diversity in the classroom is explicity defined by race and ethnicity (e.g., section B2 in the Common Data Set is "Enrollment by Racial/Ethnic Category.") As eastern Europeans are generally caucasian they may be multicultural but they ain't diverse.</p>
<p>But if you want true diversity in the classroom, put a Serb and a Bosnian Muslim in a classroom. Although the two sets of kids did not attend the same school, they lived within a few blocks of one another. We knew them both and their parents (the father of the Bosnian Muslim was still in Bosnia, in the army) and we felt like ping pong balls listening to their different versions of the conflict. Their opinions and their experiences were much more divergent than anything my son's African-American friends had to offer, being born and raised in our district.</p>
<p>^^Sorry, no can do. There is no box to check for "Serb" or "Bosnian Muslim". No category on the pie chart, either.</p>
<p>"Charity" begins at "home" too.</p>
<p>^^ But the adcoms are not trying to check boxes, are they? :) They're supposed to build a class. There's not box either for pre-med, oboist, quarterback, etc.. but they do consider those aspects of applicants.</p>
<p>^Are we discussing charity or multiculturalism? I thought it was the latter.</p>
<p>
[quote]
athletics bring in a lot of revenue for many schools (though at the dIII level and at many privates, they could be losing money for the school!). there is a very good reason why notre dame stadium has a capacity of over 80,000...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>If I recall many if not most D-1 football programs don't make money, (at least on paper) but because successful sports teams are highlighted and profiled on TV it is worth the invesment. Seeing a sports team on TV and being successful is a media bonanza and one that is a lot less expensive than putting on ads. Now, there are outlets such as College Sports TV, ESPNU, The Big Ten Network, the Fox Networks, etc, with more to come. That type of exposure ties significantly to enrollment and alumni giving among other things. Joe college student wants to identify with a winner and the more X university is plastered on the tv, the more the interest grows. Sports are a huge marketing engine accross the board.</p>
<p>
[quote]
^Are we discussing charity or multiculturalism? I thought it was the latter.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Within this context, I don't think you can't separate the two. Multiculturism can be a broad term, but as it applies to US admissions in general, it probably applies to domestic URM's. Many from this group are in the lower quintiles of income and wealth, and if a particular institution wants to amp up those mumbers, there will be a higher cost associated to doing so, hence the term "charity."</p>
<p>Ad Officer,</p>
<p>Do you think that the method of admitting recruited athletes results in an artificial appearance of a larger bias or preference for these students, as measured by Shulman and Bowen, than actually exists. Let me explain. S&B measure the advantage as a percent increased likelihood of admission. I am assuming this is calculated by taking the ratio of the athletes admitted over athletes applying and dividing that ratio by the ratio of total students admitted over total students applying. If athletes are given an informal assessment before applying so that many know that they will be accepted or rejected and make their applications based on this knowledge then the percentage of athletes admitted in the formal process will be artificially higher than that for other students who dont get this insight prior to applying. I realize that even if this is true it does not explain the trend line over the decades but I thought there might even be shift over the years in the way in which colleges have provided this information to recruited athletes that could explain the trend line too. What do you think?</p>
<p>madville:</p>
<p>The adcom considered the cost of poor immigrants to be the same as the cost of poor URMs. But only the latter were described as "multicultural." Which is what I object to. Not to charity, beginning at home or elsewhere, but to the myopic view that URMs are multicultural (!) while people born and raised in different countries aren't.</p>
<p>URM's aren't multi cultural? When is the last time you looked at a census report? I'm no adcom, but I would imagine that even among domestic URM's there are very few spots, so that among immigrants, that piece of the pie is going to be much smaller. I think that adcoms put a greater emphasis on home grown multiculturism and rightly so. As for the term only being applied to one group as opposed to the other is just a matter of semantics.</p>
<p>Immigrants are different from internationals. You seem to confuse the two.</p>
<p>URMs may or may not be culturally different from native born Caucasian Americans. Some of the African-American students my S knows from kindergarten are children of professionals, including legacies at Harvard and Yale. Ditto some Hispanics. They are culturally exactly the same as my S. Some of his friends are recent immigrants who did not speak a word of English when they arrived. They are now American citizens negotiating two cultures. </p>
<p>I have no problem with admitting URMs. I have problem with not recognizing that immigrants are multicultural, and often more so than URMs. Because URM status based not on culture but on race and ethnicity. So why should Hamilton adcom officials describe URMs as multicultural in contradistinction to immigrants?</p>
<p>I think I know what you're getting at Marite, I just think the Hamilton adcom was being general in his descriptions maybe. There is very little chance one could be an immigrant and not multi cultural. As for URM's not being as multicultural as immigrants, I don't know. Being an AA, it has been my observations that there are many, many differences culturally between the races, even among those that work, live and study together and are of the same economic class. My children have had the benefit of being in those social circles as well but I have admonished them, "we are amongst the Joneses', but are not the Joneses."</p>
<p>Of course, there are differences among the races, just as there are differences between urban, suburban and rural kids, or kids from different areas of the US. And that is why I support diversity, including racial diversity. It's just that I hope this was more an unfortunate choice of word than a reflection of what the adcom understands about culture.</p>
<p>marite...
i completely understand your assertion or suggestion that "the idea that URMs are "multicultural" as opposed to Eastern European immigrants" is problematic, because i think it is. having as many perspectives in the classroom as possible is great for exposing different students with different life experiences to different ideas - why wouldn't having a recent immigrant to the united states in the classroom contribute to this, right? </p>
<p>as there are relatively few schools that are need-blind with respect to international applicants (there's really only a handful, if that) and most international students are full-paying, i would imagine that a school interested in getting an international perspective in their classrooms could somehow reason that not taking recent immigrants with need is balanced out by having an international student population on campus...and as most of these students are full-paying, the school isn't "losing" anything. this is not my reasoning, but i could see someone making the argument. </p>
<p>with respect to under-represented minority students, and white students, for that matter, one of the things i like to understand when reading a file is how a student identifies with their race or a given culture...it is just interesting to hear about different groups and customs that i may not know much about and how a student feels this is a part of who they are - it is just a neat thing to me. and as madville has pointed out, there are so many cultural differences within each race that, frankly, defining diversity strictly in racial terms is rather narrow - this is why you are now seeing things like the line on the common application that asks the national origin of the student's family under each racial box one can check off. and, drb, a student can check off the "other" box and write in "serb" or "bosnian muslim" - i've seen both, as well as "ashkenazi," "non-black african-american," "white egyptian," and other monikers students choose to use to define themselves under the "other" box.</p>
<p>madville, </p>
<p>many d1 sports programs do lose money...however, others do not - with revenues from ticket sales, commercial deals, sponsors, and licensing the school's name to different apparel companies, it is big business. however, even for schools that have programs which "lose money," athletics still generate tremendous revenues for these schools - former athletes tend to be generous to their alma maters when the development office comes knocking - these revenues aren't necessarily reflected in the athletics part of a school's budget/chart of accounts (and so the programs appear to be losing money for the school), but they do show up elsewhere in the school's budget/chart of accounts and contribute to the overall revenues of a college or university. </p>
<p>curious14, </p>
<p>no, i don't think it results in an artificial appearance of a larger bias...we don't use a slot system at my institution, but we do have conversations with coaches to explain to them exactly how the admissions process works here and how we read applications/select admits, giving the coaches an understanding of who they should be looking for with respect to academic achievement. however, the argument "because the coaches know what kinds of students we are looking for, they are recruiting students who will have a good shot at being admitted" does not fly with me. here's why - we deny academically talented legacy applicants, development cases, and under-represented minority students each year in greater numbers than we do academically talented recruited athletes. also, a slot system (again, not used at my school) is used to basically reserve spots in the class for students who are not as compelling as the general applicant pool. the highest band really doesn't matter all that much as students falling into this band were probably going to be admitted no matter what, simply because of their academic prowess. the other two bands, though particularly the lowest band, are in place to reserve slots in the incoming class for students who the coach knows need the athletics push to get in - it is explicit. this is why a lot of coaches push their lowest band recruits to apply early decision - they know if the kid gets in, they are coming. this is one of the reasons there are now 2 early decision programs at some schools - coaches have a second opportunity to catch a star player through early decision...</p>