I feel like we don't talk enough that top LACs are 40%+ recruited athletes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m not American so I don’t understand this phenomenon. I can understand big state schools where having a big football team
might draw money or attention to school. Why would a SLAC care if someone fences or sails?Is it a way for well off but academically mediocre students to get in? Or do these students have the same qualifications as the non-athletes? Doesn’t it hurt the schools reputation as an academic-centered college? Sorry lots of questions.

They care because the athletes donate a lot more money than other groups over the years and as a whole tend to be more successful career-wise. That’s really why they do it: the athletes donate back to the schools in ways other groups don’t.

If the athletes at SLACs are as qualified as non-athletes, not sure why their being “recruited” would matter in terms of alumni engagement and donations.

Wouldn’t someone that was accepted, tried out, made the team be as attached to their school and an engaged donor as anyone?

I haven't seen data that supports the notion that families of athletes are more likely to donate.

There is data that successful D1 sports programs make schools money, but those aren't LACs, with the exception of outliers like Davidson.

It interesting that the highly ranked private schools that don't consider legacy status are primarily D3, either LAC (eg Amherst, Bryn Mawr, Carleton, Pomona, Wesleyan) or university (eg MIT, Caltech, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon).

https://www.collegekickstart.com/blog/item/selective-institutions-that-don-t-consider-legacy-status

[Anonymous]

Swarthmore .. from 2003 .. this isn't a new problem

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/26/opinion/choosing-athletes-over-students.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m not American so I don’t understand this phenomenon. I can understand big state schools where having a big football team
might draw money or attention to school. Why would a SLAC care if someone fences or sails?Is it a way for well off but academically mediocre students to get in? Or do these students have the same qualifications as the non-athletes? Doesn’t it hurt the schools reputation as an academic-centered college? Sorry lots of questions.

They care because the athletes donate a lot more money than other groups over the years and as a whole tend to be more successful career-wise. That’s really why they do it: the athletes donate back to the schools in ways other groups don’t.

And athletes tend to be from richer families, which is more likely why they have more money to donate and earn more. It’s a good way to affirmative action the rich which is good for the business of college.

(Sorry, replied to wrong post.)

I haven't seen data that supports the notion that families of athletes are more likely to donate.

There is data that successful D1 sports programs make schools money, but those aren't LACs, with the exception of outliers like Davidson.

It interesting that the highly ranked private schools that don't consider legacy status are primarily D3, either LAC (eg Amherst, Bryn Mawr, Carleton, Pomona, Wesleyan) or university (eg MIT, Caltech, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon).

https://www.collegekickstart.com/blog/item/se...nsider-legacy-status

[Anonymous]

Wesleyan

http://wesleyanargus.com/2022/10/06/separated-spaces-rethinking-dining-hall-divisions/

a divide between athletes and non-athletes that was so deeply ingrained in the culture that the dining hall itself was divided into rooms based on this distinction, as if the division was promoted by the school itself. Arriving on campus in the fall, I almost immediately noticed this in most sectors of social life, including in the dining hall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:do people need help googling?

Amherst:
https://amherststudent.com/article/bridging-amhersts-athletic-divide/

The divide is deeply harmful to both types of students. Athletes, seen as less intelligent by many non-athletes, can lack academic confidence, which may partly explain why while 49 percent of non-athletes write senior theses, only 16 percent of varsity athletes do.

Oh please, there are always going to be some whining student who doesn’t like athletes just like there are always some whining Dcumers who don’t either

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a very tired topic. Parents without athletes hate the recruited athlete hook. We get it.

But there are so many needless slots set aside for weird exclusive sports. It's blatant backdoor affirmative action for pampered rich white kids who couldn't cut it otherwise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Swarthmore .. from 2003 .. this isn't a new problem

https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/26/opinion/choosing-athletes-over-students.html

Note that the NYT 2003 article states "But they are cause for concern at small colleges, where the Bowen-Levin book counted a quarter of the men and a fifth of the women on campus as athletes, more than half of them recruits."

The average of 1/5 and 1/4 is 22.5%; let's assume that by "more than half" they mean something like 60%. So 60% of 22.5% would be 13.5%. So basically this is in line with the data from the Washington Post article and almost the same as the top 30, D1 private university figure from that article of 12%. Again, there's no empirical evidence supporting that at top LACs 40% of the students are recruited. The real number on average is about 1/3 of that, or low to mid teens. There are outliers like Davidson (24%), but even at those the number is going to be far lower than 40%.

[Anonymous]

The college sports thing makes absolutely no sense. If someone is really athletic maybe they should go into the military or some other survival-type job. Meanwhile, going to university should really be more for intellectual pursuits, instead of playing mindless ball and doing keg stands.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The reason we don't talk enough about the fact the top LACs are 40% recruited athletes is that it's simply not close to being true.

I have looked at every link at this thread. Not one backs up the claim.

As many on this thread have already pointed out, one may be on a varsity team without being recruited for it. For the LAC haters who prefer D1 universities, this may be a novel concept, but it's actually pretty common at LACs. My son was told by six different LAC coaches they would welcome him to their team if enrolled, but that he would not be recruited. That was fine for us. He likes the comraderie and exercise of being on a competitive team, but was still able to get into top LACs. He is a walk-on athlete at Carleton and regularly competed against other colleges even in his first year.

It is far less likely that a student will walk on to a D1 team, let alone play. One of the main advantages of LACs is that *for some* it is easier to pursue their interests. Interested in continuing with varsity sports but not a recruited athlete (let alone a D1 recruited athlete)? Go to an LAC. Interested in summer research but don't want to compete with grad students? Go to an LAC. Our same child got a paid research job working one on one with a professor upon his first request.

Yes, there was a link in the thread to a Williams page stating 33% of their students play varsity sports. Besides the fact that Williams probably has the highest ratio of teams to students, that doesn't mean 33% of those athletes were recruited. As the xfactoradmissions article mentions, 20-50% of college athletes are walk-ons. That number will be closer to the low end for D1 and closer to the high end for D3.

Perhaps the most useful link in the thread was the one to the Washington Post article. There have been several citations of the percentages from the table of varsity athletes, but that's actually not the most relevant part of the article. The most helpful part for our purposes is the discussion after the table that actually talks about how many students were recruited at each school that chose to disclose those numbers. There were three private D1 schools ranked in the top 30: Duke, Brown, and Yale. (Large publics are obviously going to have much smaller percentages of athletes.) There were four LACs ranked in the top 30: Davidson, Colgate, Richmond, and CMC. One can divide the numbers of recruited athletes by the numbers of first year students at each school to get the % of recruits. For the three private D1 universities, that number comes to 12%. For the four LACs, that number comes to 16%. Note however that Davidson is an outlier, both in terms of the percentage of recruits and the fact that it is one of the few LACs that chooses to compete against D1 schools in all the major sports they offer. If excluding them, the percentage of recruited athletes for the remaining three drops to 13%.

I hope this helps.

Selingo supports the SLACs allocating 40% of incoming class to athletes theory. So they all get in regular admission,’and then the remaining 60% favors the URM, First Gen, legacy (for some). So basically if you are non athletic Asian or white, the slots for your demographic is wafer thin.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/books/review/selingo-korn-levitz-college-admissions.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

I see no mention of the theory in that article. I see no mention of any estimate of recruited athletes at LACs, in fact.

I read the book. That was just references to the book.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a very tired topic. Parents without athletes hate the recruited athlete hook. We get it.

But there are so many needless slots set aside for weird exclusive sports. It's blatant backdoor affirmative action for pampered rich white kids who couldn't cut it otherwise.

Why can someone only be one thing in your eyes? If they are an athlete they are automatically assumed to be only that, as opposed to perhaps an intellectual peer who also happens to have spent a large amount of time devoting themselves to a sport and got good at it, along with having a high aptitude for academics. I find your attitude naive and tired.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a very tired topic. Parents without athletes hate the recruited athlete hook. We get it.

But there are so many needless slots set aside for weird exclusive sports. It's blatant backdoor affirmative action for pampered rich white kids who couldn't cut it otherwise.

Sometimes recruiting benefits one demographic, sometimes it benefits another. I seem to recall Brown reversing its plans to cancel some sports because doing so would hurt diversity. Regardless of how one feels about the topic of athletic recruiting, the evidence does not support the title of the thread; in fact it suggests top LACs are recruiting at about the same rate as top private universities. The universities have a lower percentage of total athletes, but you are more likely to need to be recruited to be able to play D1; walk-ons are more likely at D3, and most LACs are D3.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/11/us/brown-university-reinstates-athletic-programs-trnd/index.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The college sports thing makes absolutely no sense. If someone is really athletic maybe they should go into the military or some other survival-type job. Meanwhile, going to university should really be more for intellectual pursuits, instead of playing mindless ball and doing keg stands.

What does that mean exactly? Colleges shouldn't offer sports? Or colleges shouldn't recruit? I think sports at colleges are valuable. I would rather see a kid manage stress with sports than certain other activities. Learning to manage time, take care of your body, and work as a team are useful life skills. I can see how a D1 team could increase overall stress particularly if you don't plan to go pro, but I think D3 teams are a very different scene. Club sports are sometimes a good alternative, but sometimes are not organized enough to be worth the time investment. As for recruiting, I see the arguments both ways, but there isn't really far greater recruiting at top LACs than at their top private university equivalents. It's a myth hatched from a misconception that athletes at the D3 level can only make the team if recruited; that's more often true with D1 than D3.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a very tired topic. Parents without athletes hate the recruited athlete hook. We get it.

But there are so many needless slots set aside for weird exclusive sports. It's blatant backdoor affirmative action for pampered rich white kids who couldn't cut it otherwise.

Why can someone only be one thing in your eyes? If they are an athlete they are automatically assumed to be only that, as opposed to perhaps an intellectual peer who also happens to have spent a large amount of time devoting themselves to a sport and got good at it, along with having a high aptitude for academics. I find your attitude naive and tired.

Some athletes are certainly brilliant but others are not. Why can't you accept that? Have you ever talked to one of those sports buffs? For example, why would colleges need to offer special wrap-around tutoring and extra-easy majors if every athlete was such an intellectual powerhouse?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a very tired topic. Parents without athletes hate the recruited athlete hook. We get it.

But there are so many needless slots set aside for weird exclusive sports. It's blatant backdoor affirmative action for pampered rich white kids who couldn't cut it otherwise.

Why can someone only be one thing in your eyes? If they are an athlete they are automatically assumed to be only that, as opposed to perhaps an intellectual peer who also happens to have spent a large amount of time devoting themselves to a sport and got good at it, along with having a high aptitude for academics. I find your attitude naive and tired.

Some athletes are certainly brilliant but others are not. Why can't you accept that? Have you ever talked to one of those sports buffs? For example, why would colleges need to offer special wrap-around tutoring and extra-easy majors if every athlete was such an intellectual powerhouse?

I think what you are describing is far more common at certain D1 schools than at D3 ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The college sports thing makes absolutely no sense. If someone is really athletic maybe they should go into the military or some other survival-type job. Meanwhile, going to university should really be more for intellectual pursuits, instead of playing mindless ball and doing keg stands.

What does that mean exactly? Colleges shouldn't offer sports? Or colleges shouldn't recruit? I think sports at colleges are valuable. I would rather see a kid manage stress with sports than certain other activities. Learning to manage time, take care of your body, and work as a team are useful life skills. I can see how a D1 team could increase overall stress particularly if you don't plan to go pro, but I think D3 teams are a very different scene. Club sports are sometimes a good alternative, but sometimes are not organized enough to be worth the time investment. As for recruiting, I see the arguments both ways, but there isn't really far greater recruiting at top LACs than at their top private university equivalents. It's a myth hatched from a misconception that athletes at the D3 level can only make the team if recruited; that's more often true with D1 than D3.

No, sports aren't worth all that extra money. I'd rather have tuition cut in half instead of subsidizing oversize football stadiums and gilded rec rooms for the jocks. Given the massive student debt tsunami it would be much better if colleges only focused on education.

I do agree with you that exercise is healthy for everyone. But you could accomplish that much more cheaply by simply having a couple rec leagues and regular gym facilities.