<p>" in my opinion athletes shouldn’t be allowed to be drastically lower in academics (generally the teams are supposed to average to be within one standard deviation of the average for the school) than other students and still bbe recruited for admission while everyone else has terrible chances. Why should a student who has put little demonstrated effort into their education be handed access to the resources of such a high caliber academic institution rather than the student who has worked diligently and consistently in school in order to have just a chance at admission?"</p>
<p>So don’t apply to schools that offer admissions boosts and / or scholarships to athletes, if you feel that strongly. I have one kid at a school that offers athletic scholarships (not that my kid has one!) and one kid that doesn’t. It would be hypocritical for me to moan that schools shouldn’t offer athletic scholarships and send my one kid to that first school. If I truly felt that way, then I should have voted with my pocketbook and not had the kid apply. </p>
<p>Funny too that a lot of students who look down their noses at the athletes on campus nevertheless attend all the games and are more than happy to brag when their teams do well…</p>
<p>“Because they need a 12% black population and a 15% hispanic population thanks to dee-versity.”</p>
<p>Oh, the ubiquitous URM post. As if a URM waves his/her magic URM wand and - POOF - he/she is admitted to an Ivy League school.</p>
<p>But seriously, you never know the backstories of these applicants. My son, who by the way is an URM, “only” had a 32 on his ACT. He wasn’t val or sal, but did have a 3.96 UW and 5.0 W (5.2 scale) GPA. He chose to take several classes that weren’t weighted; so, he never would have been able to Val or sal at his school. My son managed to maintain his grades while going through a horrific family situation that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy (not that I have any enemies ) Was the friend who was mentioned any more qualified than my son? I doubt it. My son applied SCEA and was accepted. At the time of his application, he had won some state and local music awards, but nothing national. My son held no real leadership positions to speak of (not his style). I would say that he was a spiky music applicant. He did submit a music supplement. BTW- after his acceptance, my son won a national classical music scholarship that is only awarded to 20-25 people a year and a Superior Musicianship award at the Berklee Jazz Festival. Obviously, the AO saw something in my son that made him think that he would be a valuable member of the Class of 2017. I personally think that he was spot on! ;)</p>
<p>Also, my son’s friend, who is also an URM, was accepted at Harvard as a recruited athlete. He, BTW, had “only” had a 34 on his ACT. </p>
<p>Both my son and his friend are thriving at their respective schools. \m/ </p>
<p>Wut?
First off, they care about providing a great education, not providing “brand name power”. </p>
<p>Secondly, why does it matter if Caltech doesn’t provide “brand name power” outside STEM? People go there because of it’s reputation in STEM, (hint Cal TECH), not because of their foreign language program or history program.</p>
<p>As for limited appeal, since Cornell was raised earlier in this thread, for people admitted to both colleges, 72% chose Caltech. Compared to UC Berkeley? 69% chose Caltech. Wow. How limited.</p>
<p>Lastly, if you have actually been to Caltech and talked to the students and professors you would know that it is a very desirable place.</p>
<p>No. There is nothing wrong, nor hypocritical, with complaining about one aspect of a college (athletic scholarships) and deciding to allow your child to apply because on the whole it is the best fit for them. Unless of course you think that your child should only apply to a school that is perfect and has nothing about it that you would “moan” about.</p>
<p>Okay I’m really sick of the “Ivy League is an ATHLETIC conference” argument. </p>
<p>Well, it just so happens that every school in said “athletic conference” ranks in the top 16 schools, and half of those schools take up the top 4 spots in the nation. Like it or not, the term “Ivy League” has evolved into “top schools.” It’s MUCH more than an athletic conference, and every time it’s used it has a connotation of prestige and authority for a reason.</p>
<p>Are you saying the Ivy League is NOT an athletic conference. I would agree that people should also add that it is a Northeastern Athletic conference if they want to be more precise:</p>
<p>Definition according to wiki: “The Ivy League is a collegiate athletic conference composed of sports teams from eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States.”</p>
<p>When you realize how few spots the Ivies offer, and how many exceptional kids graduate from high school each year, it it easier to understand why perfect kids get rejected. </p>
<p>Expand one’s net of schools you apply to - even if you are perfect, or your kid is perfect. Maybe applying to a school that isn’t quite so covered in Ivy will offer that perfect student a full tuition scholarship. It’s something to consider when applying. </p>
<p>Being the parent of a student athlete at a Div 1 school (not an ivy), it’s always fun to see when people get agitated about athletics and the role of admission for this group. </p>
<p>There is a wide range of student athletes. Those who play in revenue generating sports, and those that don’t. Those who play football or basketball are often given a little more leeway in the admissions decisions than other sports. The athletes that I know all had to have some pretty stellar academics to get in the door - and most competed in their physically demanding and exhausting sport 20-30 hours a week during the school year, as well as year round - in addition to AP’s, leadership, etc. </p>
<p>If a student can’t meet a certain GPA and testing threshold for MANY schools, including Ivies, they aren’t accepted. </p>
<p>It seems the OP is complaining primarily about how he and his cohorts feel lied to about the importance of grades and SAT scores. Indeed, this aspect of the application is considered the most important by many people. Consider for a second what the first question from a non-Ivy applicant is, upon discovering you are applying to an Ivy; invariably, it is something along the lines of “Oh really? What are your SAT scores and GPA?”</p>
<p>This is a pervasive myth. The fact is that academic stats are at their most helpful in the beginning of the decision process. As the process continues, they become less and less important.</p>
<p>Let me explain.
Here’s the best way I’ve ever had it described to me.</p>
<p>All Ivy applications start in the Reject pile. Those that have good enough “stats” or have something else that makes up for it (athletics?) are pulled out of the Reject pile and put in the “Consider” pile.
Everyone else stays in the Reject pile.</p>
<p>Assuming you make it into the Consider pile, from that point on your decision is based primarily on your essays, extra curricular, character evaluations, etc…</p>
<p>All your “stats” do for you is get you out of that Reject pile. You’re at the starting line.
Now what?</p>
<p>Hopefully this makes it easy to see why your friend did not get accepted. He surely got out of the Reject pile at all of those schools, but then after that obviously it wasn’t enough.</p>
<p>If anything, I’d say the effort is to find something great about each kid. Where the recipe fails is that there is so much misunderstanding about how the CA serves you- or not. (Look at this thread, where OP and a few others don’t understand pages of explanations That sets some kids, even top performers, at a liability.) </p>
<p>Not at all; I’m saying that the Ivy League is much more than an athletic conference. Those who use that argument are suggesting that people are worrying about getting into just an “athletic conference,” but there’s a reason why the term “Ivy League” has all the buzz around it that goes way beyond it being just an athletic conference. They’re downplaying the fact that the Ivy League as all the top schools in the US, and the reason for people making “Ivy League” synonymous to “most prestigious schools in the nation” is because of that very fact.</p>
Ivy League is not synonymous to “all the top schools in the US” or “most prestigious schools in the nation.” If one were to make a list of the top 8 colleges in the united states by any measure (academics, prestige, any published ranking, study faculty ratio, graduation rate, best engineering program, lowest acceptance rate, most desired by students, or anything else) that list would not be composed of only the 8 ivy league schools. The ivy league colleges are all excellent schools, but there are also many other excellent schools that are not part of the ivy league. </p>
<p>My bad, that was poorly worded. Let me rephrase that, then: **Every school in the Ivy League is in the top 16, and half of those in the Ivy League comprise the top 4 schools in the nation **. All I meant was that Ivy League is general and short-term for “top school.” It’s a linguistic phenomenon to equate Ivy League to “most prestigious schools,” and it’s understandable why.</p>
<p>The Ivy League is an athletic league with eight top colleges/universities They are NOT the Top 8 schools. Geez, there are about 10 other schools that could be named in the same breath as them: Berkeley, MIT, CalTech, Williams, Chicago, Stanford, Northwestern (which was considered for the Ivy League), UVa, Michigan, UCLA, US Naval Academy, West Point (also once considered for the Ivy League). I’ll probably get slammed for omitting an obvious top college.</p>
<p>The Ivies are only “much more” than an athletic league in that they are all bunched in the Northeast US and the graduates tend to live in NYC, Boston with stints in Washington, DC. In other words, they are found in the nation’s business and political capitals with an inordinate amount of influence. But of those, the only Ivy schools that really catch people’s attention are: Harvard, Yale, and maybe Princeton. Most people can’t even name the 8th school (doesn’t matter which seven schools were named first).</p>
<p>"All I meant was that Ivy League is general and short-term for “top school.” It’s a linguistic phenomenon to equate Ivy League to “most prestigious schools,” and it’s understandable why. "</p>
<p>I agree that people use “Ivy League” as short-hand for “top school” but the OP (and friend) were concerned about <em>those particular 8.</em> And that part I think is weird – why would you assume that <em>those particular 8</em> had some magic dust or opened the door to opportunities that are any more magical than a whole host of top LAC’s and universities?</p>
<p>“I want to get a great education at a top school” seems like a valid road to go down … and in doing so, presumably some Ivy League schools will emerge <em>in the mix.</em></p>
<p>“I want to go to an Ivy League school specifically,” however, screams naivete – assuming that those are some magic highly exalted eight. When they aren’t, unless your entire world is the northeast. </p>
<p>There’s a lot of talk here about “top schools.” It seems to me that “top” just means “hardest to get into.” And those schools are difficult to get into purely because so many people are trying to get into them. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle: prospective students see that School X has the lowest admit rate in the nation, ergo School X must be the most desirable, so they all apply if they think they have any chance because who wouldn’t choose the most desirable school? But this has nothing to do with either the objective quality of the education you can get at School X, nor with whether you, as an individual, will actually be happy there. It’s purely reputation. And if you’re spending four years of your life and umpteen thousand dollars just so you can have the best bragging rights possible, you’re wasting your time and money, because that will not make you successful in life or bring happiness.</p>
<p>Those of us parents who went to college in the 80’s (and maybe later; I don’t know when the current craziness started) frequently have to do some major mental adjustments around the fact that it’s just not possible for our kids, who are at least as impressive as we were, to assume that they’ll get in to the schools we went to. I’m a U of Chicago alum; husband is MIT; our kids have much better grades than we did and yet they’re unlikely to be accepted to either of those.</p>
<p>So what do you do? If you’re me, you look at the fact that if your kids (who are high achievers, very intelligent, with lots to offer) will probably end up going to a school that would have been considered “second tier” when we were students, then that means that plenty of other kids are in the same situation. Therefore those "second tier’ schools are actually well stocked with high-achieving, intelligent kids (including valedictorians, 2400 SATs, the whole works). So doesn’t that make those “second tier” schools actually “first tier?” If students like the OP’s friend, and thousands of others with amazing stats, are “reduced” to attending schools outside the top 20, then the top 20 label simply doesn’t mean much anymore. The best and the brightest young people in our country are now attending the top 50 schools, or wherever you draw that line. If you just let go of the idea that there’s something magic about the Ivies that make them somehow “better” than other schools where the professors are just as good, where there are comparable academic opportunities, and where the student body will be formed of your intellectual peers, then you’ll find this process a lot less nerve-wracking.</p>
) Was the friend who was mentioned any more qualified than my son? I doubt it. My son applied SCEA and was accepted. At the time of his application, he had won some state and local music awards, but nothing national. My son held no real leadership positions to speak of (not his style). I would say that he was a spiky music applicant. He did submit a music supplement. BTW- after his acceptance, my son won a national classical music scholarship that is only awarded to 20-25 people a year and a Superior Musicianship award at the Berklee Jazz Festival. Obviously, the AO saw something in my son that made him think that he would be a valuable member of the Class of 2017. I personally think that he was spot on! ;)</p>