Ivy legacy and athlete

[Anonymous]

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

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

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

And? They will still do well in their classes and earn a degree.

So could all the kids with 1560 SAT scores that got rejected. Hey if it doesn’t matter to you, it doesn’t matter to you. Just pointing out the accurate barometer here. Athletes are simply less qualified academically.

You are right, I don't care and I don't have an athletic kid. Your barometer doesn't matter because you and others who care about this do not run admissions at these schools. The school sets the barometer and doesn't see 1450 as less qualified because admissions doesn't evaluate applications that way, you do.

1450 being the 25th percentile WAS set by the school. I didn’t set it there.

As for being less qualified, I think the schools think that as well because they take fewer applicants at that score and with respect to athletes they almost never take non-athletes with the same academic profile. Athletes might be minimally qualified but they are, on this standard, less qualified.

I have two friends that work in admissions at 1 Ivy and 1 top 20 school. I was told that there is a general consensus of what is the baseline for qualified and as you noted 1450 is in the 25th percentile, which probably represents the floor. Kids are not ranked by who is more or less qualified if they fall within the range of qualified applicants. This is why a 1560 SAT student can be rejected. Other factors, e.g., GPA, hooks, ECs, etc. determine if someone gets in. The 1560 can be in the same group as the 1450, both are in the "qualified" pool. Many people on this board want to argue that the 1560 is more academically qualified and should be admitted over the 1450. My point is that Ivy league admissions don't evaluate "qualified" and rank students in that way in determining admittance.

I just told my son that he is not getting into Stanford just because he scored 1550 on the SATs. It doesn't work that way. You have to have a hook (e.g., athlete, legacy) and/or do something extraordinary beyond being a highly qualified student (academics).

Fair enough, SAT/ACT scores are not an independent data point, however, Harvard literally ranks all applicants on a 1-5 scale on academics. It's not a binary yes/no question. On that overall academic ranking, athletes rank lower and athletes with significantly lower academic rankings are admitted at a rate many, many times higher than non-athletes. So, I don't know how you can argue that they are not on the academic side, less qualified.

I don't disagree that they are less qualified academically. I'm pointing out that doesn't matter to Harvard because they are considered at least minimally qualified (above the baseline) and in the end, earning a degree is all that matters. Harvard is not admitting kids that will do poorly. Admissions knows that 1450s will do fine.

[Anonymous]

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Sigh. It doesn’t even occur to you that once you do the basic research in the lab that you need to work for hours afterwards analyzing the data? You’re really that dense? Your kid spent lots of time on his or her sport. Good for them. But it isn’t some unique commitment and it isn’t intrinsically better or harder than the commitments other kids make to other activities or combinations of activities.

Wow - so high school students are commonly spending 25-35 hours a week during the school year doing research? Really? If I were running a lab, I certainly wouldn't let high school interns spend that kind of time. The kids I know working at NIH or doing the Kirsten internships at the National Cancer Institute certainly aren't putting in close to those hours. Which lab exactly is allowing this to happen?

You just don’t get it. Kids routinely spend 25-35 hours a week in one extracurricular (from the lab standpoint if you go teo to three hours after school and then work in the weekend at home it’s 25 hours easily - especially if I include commuting and travel time as you do for sports) or a combination of them. What makes your kid’s commitment better and more valuable? I actually respect what your kid did, you’re the one who denigrates the work that other kids put in

The point is that two to three hours after school on school nights is about half of what team sport athletes are spending. And athletes ALSO have tournaments on weekends that generally take the whole day. When the varsity practice schedule came out at my kid's school his senior year, the first day of practice (a Saturday) had 7 hours of team activities, and this was a month before games and tournaments got started.

I'm not denigrating kids who do other things -- in high school I did two individual sports, plus extra-curriculars like debate, model UN, forensics, etc. I was able to do all of that pretty well (multiple varsity letters, state champ in debate, etc.) and spend far less time than my kid on his one activity. My point is that the demands that coaches in sports like basketball and football make on kids are wildly unreasonable. A tiny fraction of the tiny fraction good enough to play DI sports will someday play professionally, but coaches encourage all kids on their teams to train like they are trying to get to the NBA, NHL or NFL. It's absurd, and it makes performing well academically very, very hard. I point it out because so many people in discussions of Ivy admissions bemoan "special treatment" for athletes and discuss athletes as if they were stupid, when in fact they are spending what I think is a lot more time than most people realize on their sport.

[Anonymous]

Fair enough, SAT/ACT scores are not an independent data point, however, Harvard literally ranks all applicants on a 1-5 scale on academics. It's not a binary yes/no question. On that overall academic ranking, athletes rank lower and athletes with significantly lower academic rankings are admitted at a rate many, many times higher than non-athletes. So, I don't know how you can argue that they are not on the academic side, less qualified.

Your blanket statements are wrong and insulting. At least qualify what you are saying. Not all athletes are academically less-qualified. I know, because I have kids who graduated at the top of their high school classes, and with honors from their Ivy schools. They were athletes, and others on their teams were equally well-qualified and were equally successful in college. Please don’t paint everyone with the same brush.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Fair enough, SAT/ACT scores are not an independent data point, however, Harvard literally ranks all applicants on a 1-5 scale on academics. It's not a binary yes/no question. On that overall academic ranking, athletes rank lower and athletes with significantly lower academic rankings are admitted at a rate many, many times higher than non-athletes. So, I don't know how you can argue that they are not on the academic side, less qualified.

Your blanket statements are wrong and insulting. At least qualify what you are saying. Not all athletes are academically less-qualified. I know, because I have kids who graduated at the top of their high school classes, and with honors from their Ivy schools. They were athletes, and others on their teams were equally well-qualified and were equally successful in college. Please don’t paint everyone with the same brush.

You are right. This is speaking of the entire athlete group. Your kids, I'm sure, are wonderful.

[Anonymous]

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Sigh. It doesn’t even occur to you that once you do the basic research in the lab that you need to work for hours afterwards analyzing the data? You’re really that dense? Your kid spent lots of time on his or her sport. Good for them. But it isn’t some unique commitment and it isn’t intrinsically better or harder than the commitments other kids make to other activities or combinations of activities.

Wow - so high school students are commonly spending 25-35 hours a week during the school year doing research? Really? If I were running a lab, I certainly wouldn't let high school interns spend that kind of time. The kids I know working at NIH or doing the Kirsten internships at the National Cancer Institute certainly aren't putting in close to those hours. Which lab exactly is allowing this to happen?

You just don’t get it. Kids routinely spend 25-35 hours a week in one extracurricular (from the lab standpoint if you go teo to three hours after school and then work in the weekend at home it’s 25 hours easily - especially if I include commuting and travel time as you do for sports) or a combination of them. What makes your kid’s commitment better and more valuable? I actually respect what your kid did, you’re the one who denigrates the work that other kids put in

The point is that two to three hours after school on school nights is about half of what team sport athletes are spending. And athletes ALSO have tournaments on weekends that generally take the whole day. When the varsity practice schedule came out at my kid's school his senior year, the first day of practice (a Saturday) had 7 hours of team activities, and this was a month before games and tournaments got started.

I'm not denigrating kids who do other things -- in high school I did two individual sports, plus extra-curriculars like debate, model UN, forensics, etc. I was able to do all of that pretty well (multiple varsity letters, state champ in debate, etc.) and spend far less time than my kid on his one activity. My point is that the demands that coaches in sports like basketball and football make on kids are wildly unreasonable. A tiny fraction of the tiny fraction good enough to play DI sports will someday play professionally, but coaches encourage all kids on their teams to train like they are trying to get to the NBA, NHL or NFL. It's absurd, and it makes performing well academically very, very hard. I point it out because so many people in discussions of Ivy admissions bemoan "special treatment" for athletes and discuss athletes as if they were stupid, when in fact they are spending what I think is a lot more time than most people realize on their sport.

I don't see why we insist on curving athletes for the time they spend on their non-academic activities and no one else. I don't agree that the time they spend on their sport so far outstrips what other kids spend on their sports, or working after school jobs, or any other meaningful things they do outside of school. So your kid has practice every day and a game on the weekend - big deal. My kid spent 3 hours practicing for his run of the mill sports and spent 7-12 hours every Saturday in the fall running (very slowly) at cross country meets. You don't see me whining for lower standards.

Your kid (and you to an extent) made a choice to spend this much time on the sport. It has a cost on the academic side. Now you're asking for and, I would point out, getting an accommodation for this voluntary sacrifice that others don't get and then have the audacity to claim that your kid is the only one who deserves it. Perhaps the real answer is that your kid has spent too much time on the sport.

[Anonymous]

I think we should have some catchall threads on the College and University Discussion Forum, like "Your Athlete [Legacy Child][URM Child] Brings Nothing Special to Elite Universities and Does Not Deserve to Have an Admissions Advantage Over my Non-Athletic, Asian or White Child Who is Superior to Yours in Every Way." And then we could funnel all the repetitive discussions that crop up on most threads here to those catchalls so that we don't have to keep having the same tedious conversations over and over again. College Confidential does this with posts related to race in college admissions to avoid this problem, and the moderators remove any race-related posts in other threads with a reminder that posters should use the thread dedicated to race for those topics.

What do you think?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think we should have some catchall threads on the College and University Discussion Forum, like "Your Athlete [Legacy Child][URM Child] Brings Nothing Special to Elite Universities and Does Not Deserve to Have an Admissions Advantage Over my Non-Athletic, Asian or White Child Who is Superior to Yours in Every Way." And then we could funnel all the repetitive discussions that crop up on most threads here to those catchalls so that we don't have to keep having the same tedious conversations over and over again. College Confidential does this with posts related to race in college admissions to avoid this problem, and the moderators remove any race-related posts in other threads with a reminder that posters should use the thread dedicated to race for those topics.

What do you think?

The debate is over the value of athletic ability and skill. In Europe and Canada, this is not valued as relates to higher education and is not important to the admissions process. In the USA, it is.

[Anonymous]

Why are people so mad? At least the Ivies have a balanced approach in admissions to their athletes. They care about the whole package. Athlete graduation rates are in the high nineties percentile at Ivy League schools across all sports.

Get mad at Alabama and Auburn, LSU.. The academic bar for athletes at these places are rock bottom. Some of these athletes are also one and done and don’t finish their degree.

[Anonymous]

People overestimate how much of an advantage being a legacy helps to get into Ivy colleges. I went to one of the top 3 Ivies, and my son was turned down when he applied, not even wait listed despite the following qualifications:
1. I had more connection with the school that the average alum, by far: I did extensive alumni work on the school's behalf over many years and was an officer of several important alumni groups. (Working against me was the fact that I was not a significant or regular donor).
2. My son attended a very good local private school in DC and:could not have been a nicer kid, got great faculty recommendations, was a National Merit semifinalist, was in the top 10% or so of his class and the honor society, had great college boards, was a starting athlete on W. Post ranked teams (but not good enough to be a recruited athlete at the college level unless he went D3), and had art/music type recognition that put him at the very top of his class in that area i.e., top 2-3 kids in the class.
I would note that had he been an even better athlete - worthy of being recruited - he would have been admitted in an instant. That's not speculation; it's from the college coach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People overestimate how much of an advantage being a legacy helps to get into Ivy colleges. I went to one of the top 3 Ivies, and my son was turned down when he applied, not even wait listed despite the following qualifications:
1. I had more connection with the school that the average alum, by far: I did extensive alumni work on the school's behalf over many years and was an officer of several important alumni groups. (Working against me was the fact that I was not a significant or regular donor).
2. My son attended a very good local private school in DC and:could not have been a nicer kid, got great faculty recommendations, was a National Merit semifinalist, was in the top 10% or so of his class and the honor society, had great college boards, was a starting athlete on W. Post ranked teams (but not good enough to be a recruited athlete at the college level unless he went D3), and had art/music type recognition that put him at the very top of his class in that area i.e., top 2-3 kids in the class.
I would note that had he been an even better athlete - worthy of being recruited - he would have been admitted in an instant. That's not speculation; it's from the college coach.

Where the legacy would have helped if your kid was top 5% and was being compared with another kid in the region, your kid would have gotten in. This is what we just saw with ED and EA across the region.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why are people so mad? At least the Ivies have a balanced approach in admissions to their athletes. They care about the whole package. Athlete graduation rates are in the high nineties percentile at Ivy League schools across all sports.

Get mad at Alabama and Auburn, LSU.. The academic bar for athletes at these places are rock bottom. Some of these athletes are also one and done and don’t finish their degree.

Because high level athletic ability is not seen as important or valuable to those who value scholarship. And vice versa.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are people so mad? At least the Ivies have a balanced approach in admissions to their athletes. They care about the whole package. Athlete graduation rates are in the high nineties percentile at Ivy League schools across all sports.

Get mad at Alabama and Auburn, LSU.. The academic bar for athletes at these places are rock bottom. Some of these athletes are also one and done and don’t finish their degree.

Because high level athletic ability is not seen as important or valuable to those who value scholarship. And vice versa.

meaning scholarship defined as learning at a high level and not a grant made to support a student's education.

[Anonymous]

" People oversestimate....." here. Observation that mentioned EA and Ed may have been correct. College involved had/has "single choice early action." i have observed other legacies getting in this way since we applied. We did not choose that since son's strategy was to apply early action to several other schools he really liked that were matches or between a match and a reach as opposed to reaches and hope one of those would come thru for him and take the uncertainty out of the application process. It worked in the sense that he got into three of those, UVA, BC, and "X", an even higher ranked school. He then ended up getting turned down at my Ivy and going to X. It's possible he would have gone to X even if he had gotten into my school, and he was very happy there. His getting turned down at my school was ultimately a bigger deal for me than it was for him. He was thrilled with his admission to X.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are people so mad? At least the Ivies have a balanced approach in admissions to their athletes. They care about the whole package. Athlete graduation rates are in the high nineties percentile at Ivy League schools across all sports.

Get mad at Alabama and Auburn, LSU.. The academic bar for athletes at these places are rock bottom. Some of these athletes are also one and done and don’t finish their degree.

Because high level athletic ability is not seen as important or valuable to those who value scholarship. And vice versa.

meaning scholarship defined as learning at a high level and not a grant made to support a student's education.

Actually, lots of us value both. And we know what "scholarship" means. I think you need to get out more.

[Anonymous]

University admissions values both. Really not sure why. I have a strong athlete but I dont think that is important for success in college at all.

I was a college athlete myself. Honestly it is not time well spent with all the opportunities available in college. But it does help in admissions. Unique to this country.