Private Schools Value Top Athletes Most

[Anonymous]

THIS THREAD IS ABOUT LOCAL PRIVATE SCHOOLS, NOT COLLEGE!! START YOUR OWN COLLEGE THREAD.

[Anonymous]

Except that one reason why local private schools value top athletes is for their potential to be recruited for admission to many of the top colleges. Totally relevant to this thread.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:1) people need to get off the idea that the athletes are lesser students

2) people need to understand the sports, and particularly football, foster broader community spirit than any other activity

3) colleges need to fill slots, that includes staffing teams. if they have the choice between the A student with 1500+ and a lineman and the same student who isn't a lineman, guess which one they are going to take?

they are lesser students more often than not so why do we need to get off that idea?

colleges do need to fill spots and in your example, it's more likely that they would take the lineman with a B+ average and 1300 SATs over the A student with 1500+ who did non-athletic activities.

“Recruited athlete”? What does that mean? My kid met the coach and then went to the school and decided to keep playing her sport, which she played at a national level and they had a spot in her position. Was she recruited? She didn’t get anything, but time with three programs in order to decide which to go with. She also spent time on her own understanding her department, major and career services of what she is interested in.

Have worked now for 25 years and met, hired and mentored many people in my field. If I want something done on time, correctly, a d someone that responds well to feedback (ie thanks coach, will fix that up), I’d absolutely go with a smart former athlete. So many sports for so many different types of people!
Depends on the school. The ivies and similar get plenty of linesman with A avg and 1500+ SATs. Unless you are Olympic caliber or nationally ranked in the top 200, sports prowess isnogoing to help much + top grades and SATs.

This is just wrong. There is actual data from admissions at Harvard and 90+% of recruited athletes have academic ratings so low that they would have been rejected if they were not recruited.

Where is the actual data from admissions? Is it from the lawsuit?

data from the lawsuit, analyzed here:

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26316/w26316.pdf

The best line from the paper:

"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."

Most kids have a round a 1% chance. That's what happens when tens of thousands of students, thousands of whom have academic records that are virtually indistinguishable, apply to one school.

you understand the difference between 0.1 and 1%? These academic records are not 'virtually indistinguishable' - that's the fallacy. They are distinguishable, but for athletes, they don't matter.

You're assuming that anyone other than the plaintiff's expert thinks there is a difference between Kid A with a 1500 and a 3.87 UW GPA and Kid B with a 1550 and a 3.95. All of those schools are very open that there is a baseline and then they fill out classes.

again with the fake comparisons. you make stuff up in a pathetic attempt to make the difference seem small.

the numbers, the real numbers from the lawsuit, don't lie. it's harvard's own academic ranking.

And they disregard it because there is no data to suggest that the kids they pass over for the lax players will be any more successful as graduates or any larger donors down the road. The evidence actually suggests that the athlete is the better bet.

no evidence on that point, but we agree that it's harvard's right (really any school's) to admit any student they want.

we should all just stop pretending that these students have the same academic records and are great athletes. They're great athletes with minimally acceptable academic records that would otherwise not get them a second look.

PP, its just unfair that you cast these aspersions unchallenged because, for some self-serving reason, you need to believe it. Maybe some recruited Athletes are just solid students and not GREAT students, but some recruited athletes are also really great students too.

My DC was recruited for his nationally ranked athletic ability. True. But, he also got a 36 on the ACT, which I think only 2,500 or so HS students out of the 3 million who take the test annually achieve. He had a 94% HS average in all AP classes to include: AP BC Calc, AP Chem ( scoring a 5 as a 10th grader ), AP History, AP Physics, AP CS. He also got his pilot's license when he was a Junior in HS. He was also editor of his HS yearbook and co-captain of his robotics team, which was Nationally ranked

And he was not alone in his class. There were kids who were stronger students than him, who also were great athletes and who were the Valedictorian.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:NCS sends their top 10% to the ivies or similar.

I thought it was usually higher than 10 percent at NCS (and STA too).

No. They don’t. The only schools that consistently send the top 20% to ivies or similar in this area are the magnets like TJ and Blair. STA sends the top 10% as does GDS and Sidwell.

This thread suggests otherwise.
https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/645/933424.page

People exaggerate and lie. There are very few schools in the USA that consistently send their top 20% to ivies and similar. Most everyone else at a decent school, public or private send the top 10%, no more.

I spent some time and did the math some years ago. Sidwell and GDS send about 15% to Ivy+Stanford/MIT.

Given that no one goes to MIT from Sidwell...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:we should all just stop pretending that these students have the same academic records and are great athletes. They're great athletes with minimally acceptable academic records that would otherwise not get them a second look.

LOL, most recruited athletes I knew at Stanford were getting higher grades in our classes than someone like me who was admitted for "only" for academic reasons.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Why aren't Amherst and Swarthmore similar to Ivy matriculations? And I didn't even include Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, or the service academies, which bumps the total number to over 60 (i.e., about top 20 percent).

Ok, Horton is great similar to all the very top elite private schools. A hidden gem that no one’s ever heard of outside the DMV. We can add Amherst and Swathmore and Bowdoin, etc. to make it to top 20%

I don't even have a connection to Holton! They just happened to be a school that publishes exact matriculation numbers that you can find through Google. Anyway, either you or a different PP used the term "Ivy or similar," not me. Holton had 63 graduates matriculate in a four year period to Ivy League schools plus Stanford, MIT, UChicago, Duke, Hopkins, Northwestern, the service academies, Amherst, and Swarthmore. Which of these schools aren't "similar" in your view? And if you want to take out the two top SLACs in Amherst and Swarthmore, the total is still 60. So the point remains that, on average, 15 Holton graduates each year (about 20 percent) are going to the so-called best of the best colleges. And looking at the class of 2020, six of them (i.e., less than half) were recruited athletes for the schools I'm counting.

Given the available evidence with Holton, I have no reason to think that those touting comparable matriculation numbers for Sidwell, GDS, or the Cathedral schools on DCUM are lying or even exaggerating.

Girls schools tend to do better than coed schools. Looks like Holton is very transparent about where their students go which is very impressive in itself. Looks like it is the DC version of Brearley. Nice. Sidwell, GDS et al, I stick by the top 10% for the ivies and similar meaning Stanford, MIT, UChicago, and add in Williams and Amherst for SALCs. And still waiting to hear what sport got someone in the bottom third at a private in the DMV into an Ivy. None of these schools are sport powerhouses and not anything like Div I where real future pro athletes go. Getting into these schools have gotten so much harder bc as pp pointed out, kids are competing against some very talented and academically excelling kids from other countries.

[Anonymous]

Okay, to be clear, I’m not saying that athletes don’t make good students or are less qualified. I don’t even care whether colleges make allowances for athletes or not. for all I care, colleges could earmark the seats and scholarship funds that would go to athletes and provide them to other categories of applicants who might not get in on pure academics. for the ones who would get in on pure academics, there’s nothing lost.

It’s not about the college acceptances. It is what a drain on resources sports and athletic departments are to schools and universities. The vast majority are money losers, meaning they get subsidized by the general fund. Things that could go to student aid or teachers salaries, but instead go to state of the art dining halls only athletes get to use, or to coaches salary, which are higher than the head of school/university president.

Again, I am in favor of sports in general. I just think they should be outsourced to outside leagues not affiliated with the schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Except that one reason why local private schools value top athletes is for their potential to be recruited for admission to many of the top colleges. Totally relevant to this thread.

exactly. If top universities disbanded their athletic departments, HS could/would too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:we should all just stop pretending that these students have the same academic records and are great athletes. They're great athletes with minimally acceptable academic records that would otherwise not get them a second look.

LOL, most recruited athletes I knew at Stanford were getting higher grades in our classes than someone like me who was admitted for "only" for academic reasons.

THIS....

I remember my Freshman year in college there were always a few people in my dorm or in my classes who, knowing I was a scholarship athlete, assumed I " had taken a spot in the freshman class " somehow undeservedly from someone else who was more deserving because I just could not have the academic cred too....

Until grades were posted on the wall outside of our 250 person lecture hall and there was my grade standing out by its out of state SS #.

Suck it !

[Anonymous]

Except that, for many of us non-athletes, watching intercollegiate athletics up close and the school spirit associated with it (when done responsibly, which isn't necessarily the case everywhere) can add so much to the undergraduate experience.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:1) people need to get off the idea that the athletes are lesser students

2) people need to understand the sports, and particularly football, foster broader community spirit than any other activity

3) colleges need to fill slots, that includes staffing teams. if they have the choice between the A student with 1500+ and a lineman and the same student who isn't a lineman, guess which one they are going to take?

they are lesser students more often than not so why do we need to get off that idea?

colleges do need to fill spots and in your example, it's more likely that they would take the lineman with a B+ average and 1300 SATs over the A student with 1500+ who did non-athletic activities.

“Recruited athlete”? What does that mean? My kid met the coach and then went to the school and decided to keep playing her sport, which she played at a national level and they had a spot in her position. Was she recruited? She didn’t get anything, but time with three programs in order to decide which to go with. She also spent time on her own understanding her department, major and career services of what she is interested in.

Have worked now for 25 years and met, hired and mentored many people in my field. If I want something done on time, correctly, a d someone that responds well to feedback (ie thanks coach, will fix that up), I’d absolutely go with a smart former athlete. So many sports for so many different types of people!
Depends on the school. The ivies and similar get plenty of linesman with A avg and 1500+ SATs. Unless you are Olympic caliber or nationally ranked in the top 200, sports prowess isnogoing to help much + top grades and SATs.

This is just wrong. There is actual data from admissions at Harvard and 90+% of recruited athletes have academic ratings so low that they would have been rejected if they were not recruited.

Where is the actual data from admissions? Is it from the lawsuit?

data from the lawsuit, analyzed here:

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26316/w26316.pdf

The best line from the paper:

"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."

Most kids have a round a 1% chance. That's what happens when tens of thousands of students, thousands of whom have academic records that are virtually indistinguishable, apply to one school.

you understand the difference between 0.1 and 1%? These academic records are not 'virtually indistinguishable' - that's the fallacy. They are distinguishable, but for athletes, they don't matter.

You're assuming that anyone other than the plaintiff's expert thinks there is a difference between Kid A with a 1500 and a 3.87 UW GPA and Kid B with a 1550 and a 3.95. All of those schools are very open that there is a baseline and then they fill out classes.

again with the fake comparisons. you make stuff up in a pathetic attempt to make the difference seem small.

the numbers, the real numbers from the lawsuit, don't lie. it's harvard's own academic ranking.

And they disregard it because there is no data to suggest that the kids they pass over for the lax players will be any more successful as graduates or any larger donors down the road. The evidence actually suggests that the athlete is the better bet.

no evidence on that point, but we agree that it's harvard's right (really any school's) to admit any student they want.

we should all just stop pretending that these students have the same academic records and are great athletes. They're great athletes with minimally acceptable academic records that would otherwise not get them a second look.

PP, its just unfair that you cast these aspersions unchallenged because, for some self-serving reason, you need to believe it. Maybe some recruited Athletes are just solid students and not GREAT students, but some recruited athletes are also really great students too.

My DC was recruited for his nationally ranked athletic ability. True. But, he also got a 36 on the ACT, which I think only 2,500 or so HS students out of the 3 million who take the test annually achieve. He had a 94% HS average in all AP classes to include: AP BC Calc, AP Chem ( scoring a 5 as a 10th grader ), AP History, AP Physics, AP CS. He also got his pilot's license when he was a Junior in HS. He was also editor of his HS yearbook and co-captain of his robotics team, which was Nationally ranked

And he was not alone in his class. There were kids who were stronger students than him, who also were great athletes and who were the Valedictorian.

It’s bc their kid got rejected/waitlisted. I hear this a lot almost always from parents of outstanding students who got rejected or waitlisted at an Ivy. Example, 1570 SAT, straight As, top 2% from a well regarded very large public hs, etc but not an athlete. Good artist, excellent pianist, editor of year book, etc whatever…. so when they hear about some kid who got accepted who is an athlete, they go ballistic even worse than their kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Okay, to be clear, I’m not saying that athletes don’t make good students or are less qualified. I don’t even care whether colleges make allowances for athletes or not. for all I care, colleges could earmark the seats and scholarship funds that would go to athletes and provide them to other categories of applicants who might not get in on pure academics. for the ones who would get in on pure academics, there’s nothing lost.

It’s not about the college acceptances. It is what a drain on resources sports and athletic departments are to schools and universities. The vast majority are money losers, meaning they get subsidized by the general fund. Things that could go to student aid or teachers salaries, but instead go to state of the art dining halls only athletes get to use, or to coaches salary, which are higher than the head of school/university president.

Again, I am in favor of sports in general. I just think they should be outsourced to outside leagues not affiliated with the schools.

For private schools, their excellent facilities especially their sports facilities attracts families. If you are paying $50k+ a year, you expect a certain level of amenities. Also, it amazes me the rabid loyalty of alumni on how well the sports teams are doing even though they attended 50+ yrs ago - it brings them in and donations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1) people need to get off the idea that the athletes are lesser students

2) people need to understand the sports, and particularly football, foster broader community spirit than any other activity

3) colleges need to fill slots, that includes staffing teams. if they have the choice between the A student with 1500+ and a lineman and the same student who isn't a lineman, guess which one they are going to take?

they are lesser students more often than not so why do we need to get off that idea?

colleges do need to fill spots and in your example, it's more likely that they would take the lineman with a B+ average and 1300 SATs over the A student with 1500+ who did non-athletic activities.

I’m not going to say for privacy purposes but it is an Olympic sport, not one of the more popular team spo


Depends on the school. The ivies and similar get plenty of linesman with A avg and 1500+ SATs. Unless you are Olympic caliber or nationally ranked in the top 200, sports prowess isnogoing to help much + top grades and SATs.

My dd has two friends verbally committed to a top Ivy from her academically rigorous private. One has top grades in honors classes. The other is on the bottom third of her class.

Really? That’s amazing. The top privates in the DMV sends their top 10% to the ivies and similar. A bottom third getting in? Did they donate $$$$$?

Verbally committed means both girls are athletes. No other hooks.

What sport? I know several athletes that were actively recruited by Ivies: what they all had in common were that they all had great grades, 1500+ SATs and they were nationally ranked in their sport usually the top 50 in the country for individual sports like cross country and within the top 200 for lacrosse. I have never heard of someone who did not poorly academically being recruited for any sport.

Well, you have now. And I know plenty of kids who scored well below 1500 and attended an Ivy for lacrosse. Quite common among Baltimore private school recruits, most of the kids commit prior to have taken the SAT and then just care about meeting the minimum. But the athlete who was in the bottom third of the class is not a lacrosse player.

Recently, all the lacrosse players I know had 1500+ SATs, great grades too but they didn’t go to Ivies- they went to Duke and Hopkins on a full ride.

Lol, definitely not true for most lax recruits at top 10 schools, not even close.

Yeah, these boys are from tippy top prep schools which recruits for lax to play in high school and they did get a full ride:)

Ivies don’t give athletic scHolarshIps and there are very few full rides in college lacrosse (I’ve had 3 family members play d1 in recent years) especially on the men’s side.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:we should all just stop pretending that these students have the same academic records and are great athletes. They're great athletes with minimally acceptable academic records that would otherwise not get them a second look.

LOL, most recruited athletes I knew at Stanford were getting higher grades in our classes than someone like me who was admitted for "only" for academic reasons.

Same for crew, at the Ivy DH attended, the best students were on the crew team. Considering how hard they train, at least twice a day morning and evening, it was amazing. Athletes who attend Ivies have excellent time management and discipline.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1) people need to get off the idea that the athletes are lesser students

2) people need to understand the sports, and particularly football, foster broader community spirit than any other activity

3) colleges need to fill slots, that includes staffing teams. if they have the choice between the A student with 1500+ and a lineman and the same student who isn't a lineman, guess which one they are going to take?

they are lesser students more often than not so why do we need to get off that idea?

colleges do need to fill spots and in your example, it's more likely that they would take the lineman with a B+ average and 1300 SATs over the A student with 1500+ who did non-athletic activities.

I’m not going to say for privacy purposes but it is an Olympic sport, not one of the more popular team spo


Depends on the school. The ivies and similar get plenty of linesman with A avg and 1500+ SATs. Unless you are Olympic caliber or nationally ranked in the top 200, sports prowess isnogoing to help much + top grades and SATs.

My dd has two friends verbally committed to a top Ivy from her academically rigorous private. One has top grades in honors classes. The other is on the bottom third of her class.

Really? That’s amazing. The top privates in the DMV sends their top 10% to the ivies and similar. A bottom third getting in? Did they donate $$$$$?

Verbally committed means both girls are athletes. No other hooks.

What sport? I know several athletes that were actively recruited by Ivies: what they all had in common were that they all had great grades, 1500+ SATs and they were nationally ranked in their sport usually the top 50 in the country for individual sports like cross country and within the top 200 for lacrosse. I have never heard of someone who did not poorly academically being recruited for any sport.

Well, you have now. And I know plenty of kids who scored well below 1500 and attended an Ivy for lacrosse. Quite common among Baltimore private school recruits, most of the kids commit prior to have taken the SAT and then just care about meeting the minimum. But the athlete who was in the bottom third of the class is not a lacrosse player.

Recently, all the lacrosse players I know had 1500+ SATs, great grades too but they didn’t go to Ivies- they went to Duke and Hopkins on a full ride.

Lol, definitely not true for most lax recruits at top 10 schools, not even close.

Yeah, these boys are from tippy top prep schools which recruits for lax to play in high school and they did get a full ride:)

Ivies don’t give athletic scHolarshIps and there are very few full rides in college lacrosse (I’ve had 3 family members play d1 in recent years) especially on the men’s side.

They went to Duke and Hopkins.