Amherst College Paper Article on Athletic Recruiting.

[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.

Quoting Gladwell these days, after all that has come out about his books and him, is a sign of profound ignorance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

OK. isn't that the point that bar hasn't been lowered? So merit took over?

[Anonymous]

This was said a few pages back, but I agree with a PP that colleges recruit athletes in order to have "normal" kids They aren't focused on athletes for money or racial reasons, they just don't want a bunch of nerds on campus.

[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?

You assume my kid is not an athlete. Only nerds with nerdy kids could possibly see the imbalance in college admissions, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

OK. isn't that the point that bar hasn't been lowered? So merit took over?

The student who is not a recruited athlete has to clear a higher academic bar because they don’t get the benefit of the hook.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

OK. isn't that the point that bar hasn't been lowered? So merit took over?

The student who is not a recruited athlete has to clear a higher academic bar because they don’t get the benefit of the hook.

Nope! Sports is considered as another EC. https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/10/08/ug-admissions-athletics

[Anonymous]

Recruited athletes - even those in crew or lacrosse or whatever, and have no chance at all at making a living at their sport - tend to do very well with corporate recruiting, especially finance and consulting and Wall Street generally. And colleges like that.

It might be because these students know discipline, hard work, and teamwork. Similar to how the ROTC students tend to be highly valued. Those are good skills and reflect well on any individual. And our American social universe tends to really value athletes in particular.

A 100 or 200 points on an SAT test is a small thing compared to the value these student athletes bring to a collage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

OK. isn't that the point that bar hasn't been lowered? So merit took over?

The student who is not a recruited athlete has to clear a higher academic bar because they don’t get the benefit of the hook.

Nope! Sports is considered as another EC. https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/10/08/ug-admissions-athletics

It will be considered another EC. It has been a hook for years and years. Good for CalTech.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

OK. isn't that the point that bar hasn't been lowered? So merit took over?

The student who is not a recruited athlete has to clear a higher academic bar because they don’t get the benefit of the hook.

Nope! Sports is considered as another EC. https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/10/08/ug-admissions-athletics

My kid spoke with the MIT and CalTech coach for baseball.

MIT coach said you need sky high SATs, top grades, rigorous classes...but baseball can essentially be your only EC and Math championships and what not aren't relevant.

CalTech coach said you need sky high everything, Math championships (yes, please), published research (yes, please), other stellar ECs (absolutely)...and by the way, we hope you can play baseball at a decent level.

There is a reason why the CalTech baseball team counts a 10 win season (and 30 losses) as an incredible season, and the basketball team famously hasn't won a conference game in like 20 years.

[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.

Most of these teams have been in place for far too long for that thesis to work. Some sports, tennis, golf, squash, fencing are very Asian heavy which also hurts that hypothesis.

Caltech does recruit but they don’t care if they win and put almost zero effort into it. The Ivies, NESCAC, UAA, and schools like JHU and MIT very much care about winning and that is what explains the differences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

OK. isn't that the point that bar hasn't been lowered? So merit took over?

The student who is not a recruited athlete has to clear a higher academic bar because they don’t get the benefit of the hook.

Nope! Sports is considered as another EC. https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/10/08/ug-admissions-athletics

My kid spoke with the MIT and CalTech coach for baseball.

MIT coach said you need sky high SATs, top grades, rigorous classes...but baseball can essentially be your only EC and Math championships and what not aren't relevant.

CalTech coach said you need sky high everything, Math championships (yes, please), published research (yes, please), other stellar ECs (absolutely)...and by the way, we hope you can play baseball at a decent level.

There is a reason why the CalTech baseball team counts a 10 win season (and 30 losses) as an incredible season, and the basketball team famously hasn't won a conference game in like 20 years.

This aligns with our experience as well. My kid was offered recruiting support at MIT and also talked to CalTech. They quickly ruled CalTech out after watching them play. They weren’t at the level of the JV team at my kids High School.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

OK. isn't that the point that bar hasn't been lowered? So merit took over?

That doesn’t mean there weren’t applicants who cleared the academy bar at a higher level who were denied because a less able athlete was recruited

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

OK. isn't that the point that bar hasn't been lowered? So merit took over?

It really isn’t about merit and it never has been about merit.

If you read the thread along with some of the links that posters have left it is well established that most of these teams athletes at these schools academically look like any other student on campus. The Amherst article says straight up that athletes are evaluated using the same rubric as everyone else.

It is also well known that AOs at most of these schools say 80% or so of the applicant pool is qualified though only say 10% get accepted which means that for every acceptance there are say 7 kids who qualify based on merit but who don’t get accepted due to lack of space.

You can add all of the athletic spots back to the pool and a few might get lucky but more likely your kid still doesn’t get in. And in return for than minor change in practice the schools end up with a class that basically looks the same. Why would any school do this? Effectively zero upside for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The article was anti recruiting athletes. As an experiment Amherst should just forgo recruiting athletes and fill all of their varsity sports with walk-ons. I suspect that they would lose very game, Donations would plummet, and school spirit would die.

You think Amherst donations depend on the performance of the Amherst baseball team? Yeah ok.

Or the Amherst squash team?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also every so often these slac schools use sports to increase their chances of gettting a top student.

My kids has 1580 SAT, 4.7 GPA, and will have 15 AP courses after senior year. Great leadership in a few different other areas besides the sport. Great service. Definitely a narrative. Ivy legacy.

But the kid wants to play the sport so it is looking like NESCAC or UAA league as not good enough to play at the Ivy.

It’s rarer…understand the NESCAC and UAA coaches think the same as Ivy coaches. They want to win games and will probably use their influence on the 1350 kid they really want and may tell your kid they have a roster spot if they are accepted on their own.

It almost counts against you if you are too strong on your own.

Good point. Though I wouldn't say high stats count against you per se, just that coaches will prioritize superior athletic talent over stats. That's exactly how this works. If you're not among the most competitive recruits, you're just one of the many high stats kids applying.

It can work against you. If you don't need them, you might drop the team as a freshman. They won't pull for you like they would pull for a kid that needs your influence to graduate on time..