Amherst College Paper Article on Athletic Recruiting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Every school has a budget. Money is allocated each year across many areas, including sports and other non-academic activities. Families have often endowed these programs in perpetuity, never having participated themselves, whether it be the concert hall, a pool, a hockey rink, etc. Why? Schools need well-rounded students. Schools need lessons beyond the classroom. Guess what? They are right.

None of these is a good justification for giving athletes a backdoor into the university. Athletes already get a holistic boost for being athletes, why isn't that enough for them?

These schools want to field teams which are elite and well beyond competitive. Doing so requires participation in the quest for talent because athletic talent combined with academic talent is a rare commodity and leaving to chance the ability to form a competitive team isn’t an option for these schools.

that's right - it has nothing to do with athletics making the students better people, as if it did, there would be little reason to choose to recruit for some sports but not others, or indeed recruit if any sport but not other valuable extracurriculars like music or debate.

But then the question is, why such a huge emphasis on a maximally competitive team for certain sports but not others, or even for other extracurricular activities like music or esports? You don't see schools giving likely letters or giving nearly as much weight to letters of support from the music director or the coaches of club teams or the esports coach.

Yes, I think the gripe is so many spots are allocated to sports, most of which generate little enthusiasm on campus. If there was some degree of equity with other, equally enriching and demanding, programs, that gripe would be vastly lessened.

The gripe is about scarcity and people preferences. There has never been a single applicant pool, there are multiple pools based on institutional priorities. Athletics is often seen as a large pool at small elite schools and one which has an admissions bar which few can meet which drives resentment because this pool is taking seats from their preferred pools.

The athlete pool gets a special separate admissions process. No other pool is based on an EC.

Why deny this?

I’m not denying it at all. And, that doesn’t change the truth regarding my comment one bit.

You can whine about “fairness” all you want but athletics have been institutional priorities at these schools for roughly 150 years and that is not changing. The “little three” rivalry was voted top 10 in college sports rivalries in the past year. Your preferences do not matter. And, the gripe is still about scarcity as we do not see people complaining about Athletic recruiting at Towson for example.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just don’t understanding spending so much time and money on sports that you will never play again after college.
Tennis and golf? yes
lacrosse and field hockey? No

You would understand if you had a child who absolutely loved her or his sport and being part of a team. Mine wanted to take his chances on being able to play varsity baseball in college, and he is beyond excited that he's going to have the chance to do just that. There is joy in living in the moment . . . not everything needs to have a long-term payout.

Some people will never understand. A sport can become an identity, a sport field can feel like a second home, teammates can be life long friends and family.

You realize musicians can feel that way about the orchestra and theatre kids about performances, right? You act like sports is so special, and it's just not. ESPECIALLY at Amherst, where most teams are mediocre at best and games little attended. Michigan? Sure, we get it. But there athletes take up a much smaller percentage of admissions slots. That's why no one is griping about it.

Sports isn’t special at Amherst? Might want to guess again.

https://www.telegram.com/story/sports/college/2025/08/28/usa-today-the-little-three-top-college-sports-tradition/85847275007/

https://10best.usatoday.com/awards/best-college-sports-tradition/

Amherst didn’t make the NESCAC volleyball tournament this year for the first time in the history of the NESCAC. I expect a couple extra recruits and renewed focus on athletic excellence this year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just don’t understanding spending so much time and money on sports that you will never play again after college.
Tennis and golf? yes
lacrosse and field hockey? No

You would understand if you had a child who absolutely loved her or his sport and being part of a team. Mine wanted to take his chances on being able to play varsity baseball in college, and he is beyond excited that he's going to have the chance to do just that. There is joy in living in the moment . . . not everything needs to have a long-term payout.

Some people will never understand. A sport can become an identity, a sport field can feel like a second home, teammates can be life long friends and family.

You realize musicians can feel that way about the orchestra and theatre kids about performances, right? You act like sports is so special, and it's just not. ESPECIALLY at Amherst, where most teams are mediocre at best and games little attended. Michigan? Sure, we get it. But there athletes take up a much smaller percentage of admissions slots. That's why no one is griping about it.

Sports isn’t special at Amherst? Might want to guess again.

https://www.telegram.com/story/sports/college/2025/08/28/usa-today-the-little-three-top-college-sports-tradition/85847275007/

https://10best.usatoday.com/awards/best-college-sports-tradition/

Amherst didn’t make the NESCAC volleyball tournament this year for the first time in the history of the NESCAC. I expect a couple extra recruits and renewed focus on athletic excellence this year.

Except NESCAC sports games are little followed or attended so...

[Anonymous]

Amherst's Faustian deal with progress, like many other liberal arts colleges, is slowly destroying it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just don’t understanding spending so much time and money on sports that you will never play again after college.
Tennis and golf? yes
lacrosse and field hockey? No

You would understand if you had a child who absolutely loved her or his sport and being part of a team. Mine wanted to take his chances on being able to play varsity baseball in college, and he is beyond excited that he's going to have the chance to do just that. There is joy in living in the moment . . . not everything needs to have a long-term payout.

Some people will never understand. A sport can become an identity, a sport field can feel like a second home, teammates can be life long friends and family.

You realize musicians can feel that way about the orchestra and theatre kids about performances, right? You act like sports is so special, and it's just not. ESPECIALLY at Amherst, where most teams are mediocre at best and games little attended. Michigan? Sure, we get it. But there athletes take up a much smaller percentage of admissions slots. That's why no one is griping about it.

Sports isn’t special at Amherst? Might want to guess again.

https://www.telegram.com/story/sports/college/2025/08/28/usa-today-the-little-three-top-college-sports-tradition/85847275007/

https://10best.usatoday.com/awards/best-college-sports-tradition/

Amherst didn’t make the NESCAC volleyball tournament this year for the first time in the history of the NESCAC. I expect a couple extra recruits and renewed focus on athletic excellence this year.

Except NESCAC sports games are little followed or attended so...

They have their own sports network and the little three rivalry finished at number six in a national vote. It would seem that you are likely incorrect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Amherst's Faustian deal with progress, like many other liberal arts colleges, is slowly destroying it.

What exactly are you trying to say?

[Anonymous]

Amherst bit the hand that fed it for many years. Oberlin is another that comes to mind. They bet on change; they bet on academic social engineering instead of pushing forward a highly academic liberal arts education to prepare its students to be leaders in literature, the arts, science, and law. Who cares if an athlete gets to Amherst more easily than a civilian student, when the institution itself undermines itself? There are far better places to send your child than here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Recruited athletes get a huge thumb on the scale because of the American money-generating sports culture. Not because it builds character.

It is what it is. Why do the parents of these students push back on this? Why pretend it’s so hard to get special treatment? You and your kid benefit from this. You win!

Why pretend?

We do win.

Some of us have All-American, near-perfect GPAs, 1450 and higher SATs, AP/IB-loaded-up kids who are not better than yours; they just serve a function for Amherst and other schools.

Amherst and its competitors could easily fill a class with Indian and Chinese students that would run academic circles around all of us. That is your competition and threat. Not some kid you see as being less than yours because they played lacrosse at Deerfield.

You can't have everything both ways, can you?

This.

My kid spent 20+ hours a week since 6th grade in their sport and won a national championship junior year with a similar profile.

Not going to feel bad if a high-academic D3 school feels that’s a bigger hook EC-wise than the club someone else’s kid started in high school or some internship.

[Anonymous]

Malcolm Gladwell on recruited athletes at Harvard:

The chapter opens with a livestream of a Harvard women's rugby game that six people are watching in which Harvard beats Princeton 61 to 5. You go into how this team was created, starting in 2013. In short, the coach is flying all over the world recruiting players who come from pretty specific upper-class circumstances. And you write that this is the way of many sports at Harvard, which happens to have more Division I sports than any other school in the country. Harvard has way more student-athletes than, say, the University of Michigan. And so you argue that the reason they're spending all this money flying around the world to populate sports that most colleges don’t have has to do with a tipping point — specifically with avoiding a tipping point. Can you describe your argument as to why Harvard is doing something that seems peculiar from the outside?

Malcolm Gladwell: Two things are going on. They're going to extraordinary lengths to recruit athletes who are good at sports that almost no one plays — fencing, rowing, rugby, on and on — not just the big ticket ones like football and basketball. And the second thing that they're doing is in order to ensure that these athletes will get into Harvard, they are giving these recruited athletes an admissions break that is enormous. Basically, they have an affirmative action program set up in place for students who excel at a specific number of sports. If you ask them why would they do those two things, the answers they give are completely unconvincing. They're bullshit. They can't even come up with a good line. They're like: “Well, it's sort of good for school spirit,” or basically versions of that, which make no sense. So you’re compelled, if you want to explain this phenomenon, to come up with a more convincing reason why they're doing it, and my argument is that a school like Harvard is powerfully incentivized to maintain a certain kind of privileged culture. It's the basis on which their exclusivity and their brand value rests, and to do that, they would like to maintain a certain critical mass of wealthy, privileged, largely white — not exclusively — kids, and it's very difficult to do that if all you're doing is picking the smartest, because the overlap between rich and smart is limited. So you’ve got to create a mechanism to get rich kids in the back door, and sports is the mechanism.

So if you're going to let in tennis players, the only way you could ever get a DI or even a DIII slot on a tennis team at an exclusive school is you had to have played junior tennis. There's just no way around it. In order to play junior tennis in America right now, you need to be spending, at minimum, thousands, in some cases, well over 100-grand a year. So right there, by saying I will set aside special spots on my sports teams and give enormous admissions breaks to really good tennis players, what I'm saying is I'm going to guarantee that a certain number of rich kids will always be at Harvard. That's what it's about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Amherst bit the hand that fed it for many years. Oberlin is another that comes to mind. They bet on change; they bet on academic social engineering instead of pushing forward a highly academic liberal arts education to prepare its students to be leaders in literature, the arts, science, and law. Who cares if an athlete gets to Amherst more easily than a civilian student, when the institution itself undermines itself? There are far better places to send your child than here.

Got it, I’m not a fan of the Biddy Martin era.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Malcolm Gladwell on recruited athletes at Harvard:

The chapter opens with a livestream of a Harvard women's rugby game that six people are watching in which Harvard beats Princeton 61 to 5. You go into how this team was created, starting in 2013. In short, the coach is flying all over the world recruiting players who come from pretty specific upper-class circumstances. And you write that this is the way of many sports at Harvard, which happens to have more Division I sports than any other school in the country. Harvard has way more student-athletes than, say, the University of Michigan. And so you argue that the reason they're spending all this money flying around the world to populate sports that most colleges don’t have has to do with a tipping point — specifically with avoiding a tipping point. Can you describe your argument as to why Harvard is doing something that seems peculiar from the outside?

Malcolm Gladwell: Two things are going on. They're going to extraordinary lengths to recruit athletes who are good at sports that almost no one plays — fencing, rowing, rugby, on and on — not just the big ticket ones like football and basketball. And the second thing that they're doing is in order to ensure that these athletes will get into Harvard, they are giving these recruited athletes an admissions break that is enormous. Basically, they have an affirmative action program set up in place for students who excel at a specific number of sports. If you ask them why would they do those two things, the answers they give are completely unconvincing. They're bullshit. They can't even come up with a good line. They're like: “Well, it's sort of good for school spirit,” or basically versions of that, which make no sense. So you’re compelled, if you want to explain this phenomenon, to come up with a more convincing reason why they're doing it, and my argument is that a school like Harvard is powerfully incentivized to maintain a certain kind of privileged culture. It's the basis on which their exclusivity and their brand value rests, and to do that, they would like to maintain a certain critical mass of wealthy, privileged, largely white — not exclusively — kids, and it's very difficult to do that if all you're doing is picking the smartest, because the overlap between rich and smart is limited. So you’ve got to create a mechanism to get rich kids in the back door, and sports is the mechanism.

So if you're going to let in tennis players, the only way you could ever get a DI or even a DIII slot on a tennis team at an exclusive school is you had to have played junior tennis. There's just no way around it. In order to play junior tennis in America right now, you need to be spending, at minimum, thousands, in some cases, well over 100-grand a year. So right there, by saying I will set aside special spots on my sports teams and give enormous admissions breaks to really good tennis players, what I'm saying is I'm going to guarantee that a certain number of rich kids will always be at Harvard. That's what it's about.

Gladwell also says to not go to highly selective schools, if you want to take his advice here are you taking it there as well?

That aside, Gladwell is spouting nonsense in this case. He used tennis as an example. Harvard started competing in tennis in 1928, a time when they were hardly worried about not enough rich people. The vast majority of athletic programs at the schools in question far predate any concerns regarding ‘full pay’ but there could be a class element involved, especially for certain sports like sailing.

The second largest D1 sports program is Ohio State which doesn’t exactly align with Gladwell thesis.

The largest D3 program is …..wait for it, MIT. Do you actually believe that they are chasing wealth?

Finally, even if Gladwell thesis held water (it doesn’t), so what. Private institutions are allowed to have and maintain institutional priorities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Malcolm Gladwell: And the second thing that they're doing is in order to ensure that these athletes will get into Harvard, they are giving these recruited athletes an admissions break that is enormous. Basically, they have an affirmative action program set up in place for students who excel at a specific number of sports. If you ask them why would they do those two things, the answers they give are completely unconvincing. They're bullshit. They can't even come up with a good line. They're like: “Well, it's sort of good for school spirit,” or basically versions of that, which make no sense. So you’re compelled, if you want to explain this phenomenon, to come up with a more convincing reason why they're doing it, and my argument is that a school like Harvard is powerfully incentivized to maintain a certain kind of privileged culture. It's the basis on which their exclusivity and their brand value rests, and to do that, they would like to maintain a certain critical mass of wealthy, privileged, largely white — not exclusively — kids, and it's very difficult to do that if all you're doing is picking the smartest, because the overlap between rich and smart is limited.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Recruited athletes get a huge thumb on the scale because of the American money-generating sports culture. Not because it builds character.

It is what it is. Why do the parents of these students push back on this? Why pretend it’s so hard to get special treatment? You and your kid benefit from this. You win!

Why pretend?

We do win.

Some of us have All-American, near-perfect GPAs, 1450 and higher SATs, AP/IB-loaded-up kids who are not better than yours; they just serve a function for Amherst and other schools.

Amherst and its competitors could easily fill a class with Indian and Chinese students that would run academic circles around all of us. That is your competition and threat. Not some kid you see as being less than yours because they played lacrosse at Deerfield.

You can't have everything both ways, can you?

This.

My kid spent 20+ hours a week since 6th grade in their sport and won a national championship junior year with a similar profile.

Not going to feel bad if a high-academic D3 school feels that’s a bigger hook EC-wise than the club someone else’s kid started in high school or some internship.

This is a thread about Athletics at Amherst but it still manages to bring in Indian and Chinese students and how they aren’t “all-American”. Sad. We respect the role athletics play at our alma maters. There are athletes of East Asian and South Asian ancestry at the NESCAC schools. Are they any less American than your kid? Signed NESCAC grad whose parents immigrated from India.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Malcolm Gladwell on recruited athletes at Harvard:

The chapter opens with a livestream of a Harvard women's rugby game that six people are watching in which Harvard beats Princeton 61 to 5. You go into how this team was created, starting in 2013. In short, the coach is flying all over the world recruiting players who come from pretty specific upper-class circumstances. And you write that this is the way of many sports at Harvard, which happens to have more Division I sports than any other school in the country. Harvard has way more student-athletes than, say, the University of Michigan. And so you argue that the reason they're spending all this money flying around the world to populate sports that most colleges don’t have has to do with a tipping point — specifically with avoiding a tipping point. Can you describe your argument as to why Harvard is doing something that seems peculiar from the outside?

Malcolm Gladwell: Two things are going on. They're going to extraordinary lengths to recruit athletes who are good at sports that almost no one plays — fencing, rowing, rugby, on and on — not just the big ticket ones like football and basketball. And the second thing that they're doing is in order to ensure that these athletes will get into Harvard, they are giving these recruited athletes an admissions break that is enormous. Basically, they have an affirmative action program set up in place for students who excel at a specific number of sports. If you ask them why would they do those two things, the answers they give are completely unconvincing. They're bullshit. They can't even come up with a good line. They're like: “Well, it's sort of good for school spirit,” or basically versions of that, which make no sense. So you’re compelled, if you want to explain this phenomenon, to come up with a more convincing reason why they're doing it, and my argument is that a school like Harvard is powerfully incentivized to maintain a certain kind of privileged culture. It's the basis on which their exclusivity and their brand value rests, and to do that, they would like to maintain a certain critical mass of wealthy, privileged, largely white — not exclusively — kids, and it's very difficult to do that if all you're doing is picking the smartest, because the overlap between rich and smart is limited. So you’ve got to create a mechanism to get rich kids in the back door, and sports is the mechanism.

So if you're going to let in tennis players, the only way you could ever get a DI or even a DIII slot on a tennis team at an exclusive school is you had to have played junior tennis. There's just no way around it. In order to play junior tennis in America right now, you need to be spending, at minimum, thousands, in some cases, well over 100-grand a year. So right there, by saying I will set aside special spots on my sports teams and give enormous admissions breaks to really good tennis players, what I'm saying is I'm going to guarantee that a certain number of rich kids will always be at Harvard. That's what it's about.

Gladwell also says to not go to highly selective schools, if you want to take his advice here are you taking it there as well?

That aside, Gladwell is spouting nonsense in this case. He used tennis as an example. Harvard started competing in tennis in 1928, a time when they were hardly worried about not enough rich people. The vast majority of athletic programs at the schools in question far predate any concerns regarding ‘full pay’ but there could be a class element involved, especially for certain sports like sailing.

The second largest D1 sports program is Ohio State which doesn’t exactly align with Gladwell thesis.

The largest D3 program is …..wait for it, MIT. Do you actually believe that they are chasing wealth?

Finally, even if Gladwell thesis held water (it doesn’t), so what. Private institutions are allowed to have and maintain institutional priorities.

DP. there was a second part to his thesis - the rate of Asians in Ivies vs Caltech.

Caltech doesn't recruit athletes (or not as much) and the percentage of Asians grew. Now stand at: 46%
At the Ivy League there are still some Ivies that are below 30% and Harvard/Columbia is closer to 40%

His thesis is that sports are used to "control" the percentages; To be a top-tier student athlete at a niche sport - the parent is also a participant. The parent needs to take time off, pay for private lessons, camps, etc. They can be "need blind" and auto-filter for rich when they accept niche sports athletes. Which lean towards rich white.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Malcolm Gladwell on recruited athletes at Harvard:

The chapter opens with a livestream of a Harvard women's rugby game that six people are watching in which Harvard beats Princeton 61 to 5. You go into how this team was created, starting in 2013. In short, the coach is flying all over the world recruiting players who come from pretty specific upper-class circumstances. And you write that this is the way of many sports at Harvard, which happens to have more Division I sports than any other school in the country. Harvard has way more student-athletes than, say, the University of Michigan. And so you argue that the reason they're spending all this money flying around the world to populate sports that most colleges don’t have has to do with a tipping point — specifically with avoiding a tipping point. Can you describe your argument as to why Harvard is doing something that seems peculiar from the outside?

Malcolm Gladwell: Two things are going on. They're going to extraordinary lengths to recruit athletes who are good at sports that almost no one plays — fencing, rowing, rugby, on and on — not just the big ticket ones like football and basketball. And the second thing that they're doing is in order to ensure that these athletes will get into Harvard, they are giving these recruited athletes an admissions break that is enormous. Basically, they have an affirmative action program set up in place for students who excel at a specific number of sports. If you ask them why would they do those two things, the answers they give are completely unconvincing. They're bullshit. They can't even come up with a good line. They're like: “Well, it's sort of good for school spirit,” or basically versions of that, which make no sense. So you’re compelled, if you want to explain this phenomenon, to come up with a more convincing reason why they're doing it, and my argument is that a school like Harvard is powerfully incentivized to maintain a certain kind of privileged culture. It's the basis on which their exclusivity and their brand value rests, and to do that, they would like to maintain a certain critical mass of wealthy, privileged, largely white — not exclusively — kids, and it's very difficult to do that if all you're doing is picking the smartest, because the overlap between rich and smart is limited. So you’ve got to create a mechanism to get rich kids in the back door, and sports is the mechanism.

So if you're going to let in tennis players, the only way you could ever get a DI or even a DIII slot on a tennis team at an exclusive school is you had to have played junior tennis. There's just no way around it. In order to play junior tennis in America right now, you need to be spending, at minimum, thousands, in some cases, well over 100-grand a year. So right there, by saying I will set aside special spots on my sports teams and give enormous admissions breaks to really good tennis players, what I'm saying is I'm going to guarantee that a certain number of rich kids will always be at Harvard. That's what it's about.

Gladwell also says to not go to highly selective schools, if you want to take his advice here are you taking it there as well?

That aside, Gladwell is spouting nonsense in this case. He used tennis as an example. Harvard started competing in tennis in 1928, a time when they were hardly worried about not enough rich people. The vast majority of athletic programs at the schools in question far predate any concerns regarding ‘full pay’ but there could be a class element involved, especially for certain sports like sailing.

The second largest D1 sports program is Ohio State which doesn’t exactly align with Gladwell thesis.

The largest D3 program is …..wait for it, MIT. Do you actually believe that they are chasing wealth?

Finally, even if Gladwell thesis held water (it doesn’t), so what. Private institutions are allowed to have and maintain institutional priorities.

DP. there was a second part to his thesis - the rate of Asians in Ivies vs Caltech.

Caltech doesn't recruit athletes (or not as much) and the percentage of Asians grew. Now stand at: 46%
At the Ivy League there are still some Ivies that are below 30% and Harvard/Columbia is closer to 40%

His thesis is that sports are used to "control" the percentages; To be a top-tier student athlete at a niche sport - the parent is also a participant. The parent needs to take time off, pay for private lessons, camps, etc. They can be "need blind" and auto-filter for rich when they accept niche sports athletes. Which lean towards rich white.

CalTech absolutely recruits athletes. I know multiple. But they all meet CalTech’s academic bar.