@prof2dad - whatever Times article JCK is quoting here is incorrect.
Three of those are club sports (crew, water polo, sailing) at Amherst. Squash is a varsity sport with perhaps some admissions preference.
https://www.scribd.com/document/338225739/Amherst-College-athletics-report#from_embed <-recent report on Athletics at Amherst
Interesting catch, @OHMomof2 – Surely Amherst isn’t giving admission preference for club sports.
While I agree that recruited athlete is the strongest and most prevalent “hook” in college admissions, I find it odd to refer to it as “affirmative action”, which has a different historical meaning.
I don’t know if there is any truth behind this, but I have heard that competitive club sports like water polo have admission preference at schools like Cornell and Columbia. Those club teams are very good, and often win league championships and tournaments. Supposedly, they are club, and not NCAA, because of title 9 and the whole boy-girl balance thing. Like I said, I don’t know if that is true. One person told me that.
@sherpa - Amherst explicitly says on their crew team page that they have no admissions pull at all. I assume it is the same for other club sports.
Lacrosse, football, hockey, tennis, squash, soccer, volleyball, etc are varsity sports there though. With the possible exception of football, the varsity sports favor those with the $ to pursue the sports, trainers, etc prior to college.
The report I linked above goes into great detail about the different athletic bands for varsity sports and who gets admissions help and who doesn’t, and the socioeconomic differences between athletes and non-athletes at Amherst. The college commissioned the report two years ago.
My son got accepted to Amherst, and I’m sure it was his distance running ability that got him in. He decided not to go there, though.