<p>^ Yes, but a student does not have to be as good as the best swimmer in history to get recruited.</p>
<p>Pianists need a lot of physical attributes, as well as the ability to hear tones as well as hear and make rhythms correctly.
Fine motor skills and long fingers with a wide open hand-span definitely do make a difference!</p>
<p>Basically in music, in sports, as Hunt said, you need to be born with a bunch of physical and neurological gifts AND THEN you need to work from there…</p>
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<p>What does this even mean? Do most professors really know which student is a development admit? It’s pretty hard to buy that these students were noticeably dumber than the rest of the class, “Gee, Johnny is really struggling - oh wait, I see that his last name is the same as the dining hall’s! That’s why!” </p>
<p>I would guess that your professor friends probably say the same thing about athletes and URMs too?</p>
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<p>The big difference is that the practice is far less openly brazen, less socially acceptable even among many in the truly wealthy class, and is thus…much more well-hidden. Consequently, the proportion of kids admitted under such schemes has sharply dropped. Even those Profs I mentioned above would acknowledge as much…though as they’ve pointed out…the practice wasn’t completely stamped out as of the late '90s at least. </p>
<p>One classmate in one of their classes who is a regular student at Brown also recounted having a freshman roommate who was admitted with SAT scores that would be sub-par for anyone…much less someone attending an Ivy college. Roommate had no reluctance in discussing and sometimes even obnoxiously bragging about how his family’s wealth and connections got him admitted. Not surprisingly, that classmate didn’t care very much for him and made it a point to switch roommates at the end of the first semester.</p>
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<p>Comes out when there’s grade disputes and the wealthy legacy/development admit uses the family name, wealth, and/or connections to threaten the Prof if the grade isn’t changed to his/her satisfaction. A few even had parents backing them up to the point of hiring lawyers to threaten lawsuits because they refused to believe that the -B or lower grade was what they justifiably earned. </p>
<p>Fortunately…Harvard’s admins at least have enough backbone to back up the Profs most of the time…but it does leave a bitter taste when the students most likely to pull this are wealthy legacies/developmental admits or recruited athletes.</p>
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<p>I’m sure all of the top schools have their share of jerks, rich and poor.</p>
<p>Well, if a school really sells admission, what’s wrong with the customer demanding his money’s worth?</p>
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<p>My spouse teaches at an Ivy and this has never happened to her, nor have we ever heard of it happening to anyone else. I suspect this is quite unusual. </p>
<p>It’s difficult to treat hearsay and anecdotal stories as factual evidence of anything. What’s the point? That developmental admits are generally unqualified and when they get into trouble they throw their weight around? I don’t buy it. This is just a tired, old saw - something to make people feel superior to those they really feel inferior to.</p>
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<p>Because attending a college is much like a gym membership. </p>
<p>For one to get the most out of college…the student/customer has to put in a decent amount of his/her own effort…and no amount of money can or IMHO should bypass that important factor. A reason why I strongly disagree with the customer-service mentality of some wealthy/upper-middle class parents who believe that being full-pay == effective purchase of degree with transcript studded with A-level grades…student effort in earning that degree/grades be damned. </p>
<p>A mentality that’s all to familiar to some Profs and TA friends who have taught/are now teaching at many private colleges/universities…including the elites.</p>
<p>As a Yale alum, I’m generally willing to believe any bad stuff about Harvard. I don’t remember anybody during my time that people thought of as a development case. Indeed, I don’t remember anybody who was noticeably unable to handle the work. I’m sure there were some. I do remember some people who were obnoxious about how rich they were.</p>
<p>If people tended to throw their weight around, why graduate with mediocre grades?</p>
<p>Bush gets bashed around a lot here but based on analysis of Kerry’s grades when he ran in 2004, he was no better whatsoever. since he never got elected, no one talks about him. And of course we don’t want to discuss anything related to race based admits at columbia and princeton in the first family do we?</p>
<p>I will note that only one of Bush’s daughters went to Yale. Whether she is the smarter one, I cannot judge.</p>
<p>TheGFG: “Yes, but a student does not have to be as good as the best swimmer in history to be recruited.”</p>
<p>True, but I was discussing whether 10,000 hours of practice would be enough, by itself, to produce a recruited athlete, or scholarship musician. The point I was making was: had Michael Phelps chosen a sport or musical passion that played completely against his natural gifts and attributes, and put the same amount of time and passion into that pursuit, would he have been as successful as he was in swimming? Would he have been good enough to be recruited by a college, or offered a music scholarship? Of course we can’t know, but it is hard for me to imagine Michael Phelps having the same success, or even being recruited, as a sprinter or crosscountry runner, or being offered a piccolo scholarship.</p>
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<p>According to the study, the answer is “yes.” Maybe not as successful (i.e. not #1), but he could be a superior/top performer or expert in any one of those endeavors.</p>
<p>Even though people with a much wider range of body types and sizes can succeed at baseball than at the other major professional sports, and even though practice obviously has a great deal to do with success, there’s still a necessary amount of innate physical talent, specifically eye-hand coordination, without which it’s impossible to succeed at the highest levels: as many failed major leaguers have proven, all the strength, speed, and hours of practice in the world won’t help if you can’t hit a breaking pitch or a 95-mph fastball. And if you’re a pitcher, throwing a 95-mile an hour fastball and having an assortment of great breaking pitches and practicing hours a day for 10 years won’t help if you can’t consistently hit the corners of the plate at 60 feet 6 inches.</p>
<p>Also, Bay, there are many examples of top athletes who were immensely successful at one sport but mediocre or worse at another, even if they devoted equal time to each at the outset.</p>
<p>Btw, swimmers are often excellent runners.</p>
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<p>But the study says the opposite, DonnaL.</p>
<p>Bay, you still haven’t addressed the issue of what happens when a young person dedicates himself or herself to a sport with the intention of becoming a recruited athlete and then is unable to play the sport in college because of an injury.</p>
<p>People get one too many concussions. Or they mess up a knee. And then all chance of an athletic scholarship is lost.</p>
<p>I would prefer to see kids focus on academics as a means of getting into college for just that reason.</p>
<p>Many student athletes pursue the sport with they eye for continuing at the collegiate level, scholarship or not. Should we discourage kids from choosing athletics? I would agree 100% that one should not focus so heavily on one that the academics suffer.</p>
<p>However, I’m rather impressed with the innate motivation of some of the highschoolers I see around me – most destined to never see a dime of college athletic scholarship money.</p>
<p>Bay:“BTW swimmers are often excellent runners.”</p>
<p>True, however Michael Phelps’ body, which gives him a phenominal advantage in the water, would be as big a disadvantage in running. Large, muscular, long torso with disporportionately long arms coupled with disporportunately short legs work against the efficient movements of running.</p>
<p>The study certainly does NOT say that people with a strong propensity for A will excel at B after 10,000 hours of B practice. The study did not attempt to measure innate talent or physical traits at the outset of the practice period. With the exception of a few “tiger mother” situations, it is extremely rare that a clumsy-fingered, tone-deaf child will spend 10,000 hours working on the violin, or that a petite and poorly coordinated child will spend 10,000 hours working on his breaking ball. In other words, the pool of highly practiced people only includes those who were pretty well suited for the activity to begin with. The fact that that population all got very good after 10,000 hours tells you nothing about how others would have fared in the same training regimen.</p>