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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Why do athletes get a huge "hook"?  [/quote]

As it pertains to a school like STA, [b]being a top athlete is a clear differentiator[/b] when the assumption is that all boys admitted to STA likely meets the 3.9 - 4.0 academic / 90%+ SSAT threshold.
A scholar who is also a high level athlete in a given sport will almost always have an edge. That's just the way it is. I'd prefer that to a boy getting admitted just because Dad went to STA decades ago.[/quote]

Oh my word!  As the parent of more than one STA boy, and as someone who's been on the Close for over a decade, I'd say there's a lot of unreliable information being spun out on this thread.  A lot of mythologizing too.  Let's be clear, not every boy at STA is a high-level athlete.  In fact, most of boys at STA aren't "high-level athletes" by anyone's measure.  Many of the boys, but not all of them, enjoy playing sports, but they like lots of other things too.  Some folks here seem to think that STA has recently dedicated itself to becoming a sports factory for high-level athletes.  That's simply not true.   Athletes don't get a huge hook relative to any other talent -- it's part of the mix for sure, but not the trump card.  STA admits and values boys who are math whizzes AND boys who are composers or painters AND boys who are poets AND boys who are great lacrosse players.  Ask anyone who knows a class at STA -- the class is filled with a wonderful mix of kids.

And it's definitely not true that "all boys admitted to STA meet the 3.9 - 4.0 academic/ 90%+ SSAT threshold."  Many STA boys do meet those thresholds.  But some STA boys, and certainly a fair number of STA's relatively small number of high-level athletes -- have qualifications below those metrics.

Bottom line: just like many other strong schools around here and elsewhere, STA brings in lots of different kinds of boys -- the admissions team does a wonderful job of assembling for each class a group of boys who bring different strengths to the table.  That mix of backgrounds and interests is an important part of what makes STA a nice place to go to school.

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