Ivy legacy and athlete

[Anonymous]

I was a legacy at the best university in America. I was rejected. However, I was accepted by three other Ivies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What would be reasonable SAT score for Ivy athletes that public/people are okay with and stop complaining about?
Did Harvard trial reveal grades and SAT scores of their athletic recruits? I suspect that the stats are pretty high, but maybe not.
Given recent varsity blue scandal, admissions dean and coaches will likely be scrutinized and looked at closely of their athlete recruitment processes and SAT/gpa of their recruits in court.

They did a study on this. From the study:

"Recruited athlete admits are universally weaker than non-ALDC admits on these ratings. This is not surprising, given that we know athletes are stronger on the athletic rating. But for some race and rating combinations, the differences are striking. At most, 28% of white athlete admits receive a 2 or higher on the academic rating. In contrast, 89% of white non-ALDC admits receive a 2 or higher on the academic rating. 78% of Asian American non-ALDC admits receive a 2 or higher on the extracurricular rating, while at most 12% of admitted Asian American athletes receive a similarly high extracurricular rating.
In many cases—and in contrast to LDC admits—recruited athlete admits are weaker than non-ALDC applicants."

" To make this more precise, consider a white, non-ALDC applicant who has only a 1% chance of admission. If this applicant were treated as a recruited athlete, the admission probability would increase to 98%. Being a recruited athlete essentially guarantees admission even for the least-qualified applicants. A similar calculation, but in reverse, emphasizes the advantage athletes receive. An athlete who has an 86% probability of admission—the average rate among athletes—would have only a 0.1% chance of admission absent the athlete tip"

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Can you account for the advantages legacy admits have before they even apply?

If you don't believe, have your kid not mention where you and your spouse got undergrad degrees from. Just as an experiment. Come back and report your findings.

Nah! I know you don't have the balls.

If your kid isn't a legacy, guess what, it's your fault not anyone else's. You're the one who didn't get admitted.

How about you take some advantage you've gotten through your work, like your ability to fund your kid's SAT tutor or travel team, and voluntarily give that up and see how that works?

As I said, you have no balls. Then simply admit "legacy" is a leg up. Even to admit that you should have some balls, albeit of small size. The question is do you have any balls at all?

Legacy is a huge leg up, my kids will happily use it and, at my alma mater, have a 7x greater chance of being accepted.

Just as your kids will use whatever lesser advantages you can confer upon them.

Just don’t complain to management after they are rejected.

I won't have to. They were admitted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many people here complain that legacy kids and athletic recruits have unfair advantage in admissions. It's well known legacy kids have higher acceptance rates, but aren't they usually competitive applicants?
Why don't Ivy league schools just disclose the average grade and SAT scores of legacy and other applicants and show that legacy kids have higher (or equal) stats?

Here is an interesting article about Ivy athletic recruit from NY times from a while ago. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/sports/before-athletic-recruiting-in-the-ivy-league-some-math.html
Athletic recruits are not the only kids who spend significant hours for sports and other extracurricular activities. Kids with state or national level music or other extracurricular activities spend similar amount of time for these activities as athletes but they generally have much better stats. Is it that hard to recruit athletes with reasonable SAT (say, above 1400) and competitive athletic level? I understand that it might be tough for football or basketball, but for other sports, don't they have enough kids who meet both these academic and athletic threshold?
I also wonder if most Ivy league athletes already have competitive SAT (>1400) and grades (>3.7-3.8?), but people assume that athletes have lower stats based on some kids that they know. What would be the academic threshold for Ivy athletic recruits that people in general wound agree that it is reasonable?

I think many people underestimate the time that team sport athletes spend training. I was a runner in high school, so I could run as much as was useful for me to do (up to about 70 miles per week) in 90 minutes per day plus a long Saturday run. Also, outside of XC season, most of my runs were on my own at a time that worked for me. Meets were a time suck, but were pretty infrequent. I also swam, which was more time consuming with two a days and long meets, but still manageable.

My kid has academic stats similar to what you mention, and was a national level player of a team sport in high school. The schedule was brutal. The high school team had summer league, fall league and a winter season. Each of these school seasons included team practices and as many as 3 weekday games per week and weekend tournaments. Team practice was not nearly as efficient as my XC practices because it involved a fair amount of standing around while the other unit ran plays or standing in line waiting to go on full court drills. The schedule for varsity players n non-game days was lifting or homework from 3:30-6:00, practice from 6:00-8:00 and individual training after practice. Kids were frequently in the gym until 10:00 PM, and sometimes they'd schedule skills work with a trainer at 6:30 AM. Regular season away games involved team meal before, a bus ride, warmups, game, changing after, a bus ride back to school and then getting home. For an 8:00pm game, this would be 4:00-11:00pm. JV kids had earlier games so ended up missing their last couple of periods several times a week for months.

Spring was offseason training for school plus club season, with out of town tournaments every other weekend. Club season and summer league overlapped, so there were a lot of games. Also, kids were expected to lift weights and be in the gym developing skills on their own. Every kid that I knew would pretty much immediately fall asleep whenever they were not moving -- in the car on the way to/from club practice, bus on the way to/from games, between games at tournaments, in the bleachers before school practice, etc.

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meh - show me a top flight musician or kid who does research and they spend this much time on their activity (and probably do other stuff as well). This isn't some unusual time commitment.

Wow -- so your "kid who does research" does that research from 4:00-10:00 or 11:00 4-5 days a week and most weekends during the school year AND does other stuff as well? That's outstanding! Just curious -- which extra-curriculars are available between midnight an 6:30 AM?

[Anonymous]

There is almost no chance for an Ivy legacy with 4.0/1600 SATs to get rejected in early action/decision. On the other hand, they reject most of the valedictorians and half of the applicants with perfect scores. You can't say the legacy is undeserving, just that it is a lot easier for the legacy to be high achieving, regardless of whether the parents are megabucks Wall Streeters or middle-income academics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many people here complain that legacy kids and athletic recruits have unfair advantage in admissions. It's well known legacy kids have higher acceptance rates, but aren't they usually competitive applicants?
Why don't Ivy league schools just disclose the average grade and SAT scores of legacy and other applicants and show that legacy kids have higher (or equal) stats?

Here is an interesting article about Ivy athletic recruit from NY times from a while ago. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/sports/before-athletic-recruiting-in-the-ivy-league-some-math.html
Athletic recruits are not the only kids who spend significant hours for sports and other extracurricular activities. Kids with state or national level music or other extracurricular activities spend similar amount of time for these activities as athletes but they generally have much better stats. Is it that hard to recruit athletes with reasonable SAT (say, above 1400) and competitive athletic level? I understand that it might be tough for football or basketball, but for other sports, don't they have enough kids who meet both these academic and athletic threshold?
I also wonder if most Ivy league athletes already have competitive SAT (>1400) and grades (>3.7-3.8?), but people assume that athletes have lower stats based on some kids that they know. What would be the academic threshold for Ivy athletic recruits that people in general wound agree that it is reasonable?

I think many people underestimate the time that team sport athletes spend training. I was a runner in high school, so I could run as much as was useful for me to do (up to about 70 miles per week) in 90 minutes per day plus a long Saturday run. Also, outside of XC season, most of my runs were on my own at a time that worked for me. Meets were a time suck, but were pretty infrequent. I also swam, which was more time consuming with two a days and long meets, but still manageable.

My kid has academic stats similar to what you mention, and was a national level player of a team sport in high school. The schedule was brutal. The high school team had summer league, fall league and a winter season. Each of these school seasons included team practices and as many as 3 weekday games per week and weekend tournaments. Team practice was not nearly as efficient as my XC practices because it involved a fair amount of standing around while the other unit ran plays or standing in line waiting to go on full court drills. The schedule for varsity players n non-game days was lifting or homework from 3:30-6:00, practice from 6:00-8:00 and individual training after practice. Kids were frequently in the gym until 10:00 PM, and sometimes they'd schedule skills work with a trainer at 6:30 AM. Regular season away games involved team meal before, a bus ride, warmups, game, changing after, a bus ride back to school and then getting home. For an 8:00pm game, this would be 4:00-11:00pm. JV kids had earlier games so ended up missing their last couple of periods several times a week for months.

Spring was offseason training for school plus club season, with out of town tournaments every other weekend. Club season and summer league overlapped, so there were a lot of games. Also, kids were expected to lift weights and be in the gym developing skills on their own. Every kid that I knew would pretty much immediately fall asleep whenever they were not moving -- in the car on the way to/from club practice, bus on the way to/from games, between games at tournaments, in the bleachers before school practice, etc.

\\

meh - show me a top flight musician or kid who does research and they spend this much time on their activity (and probably do other stuff as well). This isn't some unusual time commitment.

Wow -- so your "kid who does research" does that research from 4:00-10:00 or 11:00 4-5 days a week and most weekends during the school year AND does other stuff as well? That's outstanding! Just curious -- which extra-curriculars are available between midnight an 6:30 AM?

It’s not just the time commitment, but also the physical toll on the body. My DS can barely walk after practice, is constantly icing, and falls asleep as soon as he sits down. Push your body to the absolute limit and then try studying calculus.

[Anonymous]

My DS is not athlete at an Ivy, but I agree with the fact that athletic recruits spend significant amount of time for training, travel and tournaments.
So the question is what is reasonable academic expectation for athletic recruits. Isn’t 50-100 points lower SAT than average SAT in a Ivy League school reasonable? If ivy athletes have high stats like people claiming in this forum, why do so many people complain?
SAT 1400-1450 is probably pretty easy to obtain without tutoring

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids attend a Holton/NCS type school in a different city. Legacy or athletic recruiting accounts for about 75% of the school's Ivy league admits each year. The athletes are smart and their parents have $$ to do private tutoring but the school and coaches also encourage athletes to take grade-level classes (not honors) so they can have the high GPA and good index # (A in grade level > B+ in honors). Bc the school is considered academically rigorous I gather the Ivy leagues consider that good enough.

It’s hard to devote hours and hours to sports and keep up your grades. Parents of athletes don’t have secret meetings about this. They’re planning their schedules carefully so they can succeed, period.

Good grief!

[Anonymous]

The amount of special consideration and treatment sports parents demand defies belief.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What would be reasonable SAT score for Ivy athletes that public/people are okay with and stop complaining about?
Did Harvard trial reveal grades and SAT scores of their athletic recruits? I suspect that the stats are pretty high, but maybe not.
Given recent varsity blue scandal, admissions dean and coaches will likely be scrutinized and looked at closely of their athlete recruitment processes and SAT/gpa of their recruits in court.

I don't know what would please some people. A score of 1450 is at the 95th percentile. That is a great score. Someone at the 95th percentile is beyond the minimum needed to do well at any Ivy.

[Anonymous]

I agree. SAT 1450 is about the threshold people need to stop complaining.

[Anonymous]

A lot depends on the sport. I'm sure the swimmers' stats are very high. Probably other sports too, but swimmers' GPAs are often highest among NCAA athletes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A lot depends on the sport. I'm sure the swimmers' stats are very high. Probably other sports too, but swimmers' GPAs are often highest among NCAA athletes.

Rowers too. Basically any non helmet sports have high GPAs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What would be reasonable SAT score for Ivy athletes that public/people are okay with and stop complaining about?
Did Harvard trial reveal grades and SAT scores of their athletic recruits? I suspect that the stats are pretty high, but maybe not.
Given recent varsity blue scandal, admissions dean and coaches will likely be scrutinized and looked at closely of their athlete recruitment processes and SAT/gpa of their recruits in court.

I don't know what would please some people. A score of 1450 is at the 95th percentile. That is a great score. Someone at the 95th percentile is beyond the minimum needed to do well at any Ivy.

At most ivy league schools, a 1450 is around 25-30th percentile

[Anonymous]

I read from another forum that Cornell soccer commit had SAT 1160 with GPA of 3.6. Is this true? Does this happen only at Cornell or does other Ivy also lower their standard this much? If this is true, it is ridiculous.