<p>danas:</p>
<p>So, the girl was val but intellectually uncurious. That has nothing to do with her being an athlete. It had to do with what it takes at that school to get grades that are high enough to be a val, with or without sports.</p>
<p>I think there are all sorts of minds that reflect intelligence. Intellectual curiosity is one model, yes, but there are people who are dogged in the pursuit of achievement, and that reflects intelligence too.</p>
<p>I am one of those who are intellectually curious, so much so that sometimes I can just feel the eye rollling. My dad used to call us "sewers of incidental information." I certainly don't fault people whose intelligence leads them in a different direction and expresses itself in a different way. Most of those folks are more successful than I am.</p>
<p>danas: I am sorry that your daughter is not enjoying her roommate. Why not just chalk it up to a difference in personality or style.</p>
<p>Just today I saw DS for his birthday. He was telling me about his canoe orientation trip, which he adored. There were a very tight group of ten students who all slept under the same tarp with only sophomore group leaders.</p>
<p>He commented that one or two of the girls, as he still calls them, found him weird (he can be a bit zany.) I asked what she was like and he said, "I don't know, elegant I guess." And I was quite proud of him for attributing a desirable trait to her, even though she didn't quite "get" him. Enough other kids did, so he was fine. We don't all click with each other, but I don't think we'd want to turn that into a hierarchy.</p>
<p>Mythmom's posts make great sense. Being unable to engage a roommate in interesting conversation may be more about the "style" of Dana's daughter. Maybe the roommate is doing an "internal" eyeroll because Dana's D just rubs her the wrong way. It doesn't mean the roommate lacks intellectual curiosity. Going for math help shows good common sense. I'd sure hope my own children would do so if they felt the need.</p>
<p>As for time commitments with different activities -- yes, musicians can be involved in many, many hours each day. It really varries. In a non-audition orchestra, some kids obviously leave their instruments in their cases all week! Others are devoting hours to practice, lessons, theory classes, and other performance commitments & competitions. </p>
<p>The weakest cross country runner on a no-cut team is usually not even brought to all the meets. Not only do the top runners put in more road miles, they are devoted to gym workouts & have overnight travel for big events.</p>
<p>hawkette, I appreciate your understanding of the situation and that I am as strong a supporter of collegiate athletics as you will find, especially at the types of schools we are discussing. </p>
<p>The AI 171 is at the lowest end of a very small band that is not available to all Ivies. There is no doubt however that there are many, many Ivy athletes who fall into what I said before: SAT's in 1100's class rank in top 20%. This is true at all eight schools. It is also true that the classes of athletes are full of valedictorians with 1550's. In fact, the banding mandates it. Though most strictly applied in football, where hard bands are used, it it applied to the general group of all recruited athletes. </p>
<p>Football players at Yale, hockey stars at Harvard, wrestlers at Cornell, basketball players at Princeton, other discreet groups of athletes depending on a school's emphasis may populate the lower end of the overall academic spectrum. They are balaced by women's golf, men's cross country, women's fencing, etc. but you will still find most of the athletes well within what any of us believe to be in the heart of the incoming academic profile. </p>
<p>Non-Ivies (except similar but lower bands at Patriots) do not suffer these standards and Duke, Stanford, Georgetown and, yes, Notre Dame can admit all the way down to NCAA qualifiers. And they do. It's easier, perhaps, for the two premier non-Ivy schools that seek to compete at a high level of sports to "tuck away" some of those admits as Harvard used to do pre-AI with hockey players, but Duke and Stanford have chosen to make those broadest leaps in basketball, where it need tbe done far less. </p>
<p>Duke football is uncompetitive. Stanford, stemming from a football hotbed and with a less tenuous national academic reputation, pushes the envelop a little harder on the gridiron and ends up as a middling school in its conference. </p>
<p>Notre Dame, a school whose reputation rose from the American prairie on receivers' outstretched fingers, and whose distinguishing characteristic to most is its football team, feels aggrieveed to is core with its recent failures. How it responds will be an interesting test of the university and its mission. My guess: the football gets better and the "special" standards for who is permitted a Notre Dame education fall further. Cf. Duke for a similar analogy.</p>
<p>Wow! I feel as if I've been educated about college sports by a master or mistress (weak isn't it?) as the case may be. I like the part about ND establishing its rep on its pass receivers outstretched fingers. Good stuff.</p>
<p>redcrimble,
I second mythmom's compliment on your imagery about the ND receiver. I always enjoy your word choices and usually the thinking that your words convey. </p>
<p>With regard to ND and other top privates vis-</p>
<p>I regret my posts on this thread yesterday. They were petty and small. If the worst thing about a roommate is that you find your "interesting conversations" elsewhere, that's small potatoes. This is a nice girl with devoted parents, from what I can tell.
"The Price of Admission" has influenced my thinking about athletics at the elites, though. There are some unintended consequences to Title IX.</p>
<p>"At most of the Div I schools I've looked at, the graduation rates for football players (putting aside the sports that attract more academically inclined students), and after accounting for those who turn pro, are actually higher, in some cases significantly higher, than their race/econonomic class cohorts who do not play football at the same school."</p>
<p>But what does this actually mean? It could mean that extra academic support is given to athletes. I certainly recall that when I was in college, it was generally thought that athletes tended to take "gut" (easy) courses, and that they might get extra slack from professors if they were known to be sports stars. In other words, when we say that the lower-stat athletes can "do the work," we may or may not be talking about the same work other students are doing.</p>
<p>Of course extra academic support is given to Div 1 athletes! They essentially work a full-time job and take a full corse load at the same time. I think the brightest students at any school would need a hand staying on track when classes and professor office hours often have to be missed for long distance travel. Scheduling study groups with friends is virtually impossible with the time commitments of these athletes, so the resource center for scholarship athletes becomes their alternative to the organic kind of connections most students make. </p>
<p>Yes, some schools like Michigan & Texas are notorious for eliminating their otherwise high standards for their footbal team. But redcrim, your prediction will not come true at ND. (Their dismal season is due to poor recruiting before Weis. Only a handful of seniors are on the team.) Look at the superstars who are turned away for being academically unqualified. The coaches can't even begin a dialog with an athlete before he or she is cleared by admissions. Look at the majors of ND football players. It's not kinesiology or undeclared juniors. History, engineering, business.....real majors. 5th year players are all graduates who are enrolled in graduate studies. No exceptions. No junior college transfers are allowed. We all seem to praise holistic admissions, where a kid's circumstances are taken into account when deciding to relax standards a bit. Why can't athletes be in that category? Typically the lower stat athlete admitted to ND is a kid from humble circumstances. The track record of these athletes achieving a real degree, a turn-around in socio-economic standing, and impressive careeers & lifelong charitable giving habits speaks to how smart the decisions to drop down a bit in stats turned out to be. Look at the Jordan Hall of Science for evidence of what football brings to all ND students. The football team put the school on the map, yes. And I don't think George Gipp spent much time in a classroom. But the pride is more tied to the remarkable growth of a University that existed because ethnic Catholics weren't welcome at the elite universities, so the Holy Cross priests took it upon themselves to develop their own elite U.</p>
<p>
[quote]
"At most of the Div I schools I've looked at, the graduation rates for football players (putting aside the sports that attract more academically inclined students), and after accounting for those who turn pro, are actually higher, in some cases significantly higher, than their race/econonomic class cohorts who do not play football at the same school."</p>
<p>But what does this actually mean? It could mean that extra academic support is given to athletes.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It can also mean that "regular" kids of similar socioeconomic status often have to drop out because of finances, but this group of kids has less problems because of their scholarships. That is, maybe the reason for their higher graduation rates does not have to do anything with academics of work ethics...</p>
<p>danas: Good for you! We all have those meanie-petty moments. I'm glad I haven't written all of them down. It's such a drag when the smoke clears and I wonder how I could have said/done some of the things I have.</p>
<p>It's nice to read friendly, mellow postings. CC can be way harsh.</p>
<p>thoughts on Hamilton's academics, career prospects/strengths?</p>
<p>HerbDC: Why don't you (a) search (it's been discussed lots), or (b) start a thread about it (if you still have questions after reading past discussions)? Your question has nothing to do with this thread, and derailing it (again) isn't the way to go.</p>
<p>re. Hamilton-- seems like a nice school on paper, but way under the radar these days and to agree with previous posters, somewhat random topic for this thread???</p>
<p>honestly dont; hear much about this place in my fast track, eastern private school mecca–except in nostalgic references to the official preppy handbook circa 1980.</p>
<p>Yo! This thread is TWO YEARS OLD.</p>