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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Amherst Early Writes out. Did anyone get one? Letter says 17,500 applicants this cycle, up 2K from last year, which set a record. That means acceptance rate 5-6% versus 7% last year.[/quote]

Well I think this answers the elite question.[/quote]

Does more applicants than enrolled slots make the education elite?[/quote]

A 5% acceptance rate signals an elite peer group, so I’d say yes. Plus the attention to UG pedagogy at SLACs.[/quote]

Why does an “elite” peer group matter to an individual student? When you factor in the 600 athletes of the 1900 enrolled that dilutes the academics.[/quote]

This is how you demonstrate that you don’t understand NESCAC athletics without coming right out and saying it. The average NESCAC athlete is a stronger student than the average student. The recruiting rules pretty much require it. [/quote]

As a parent of a D1 athlete that was recruited by several NESCAC schools, and who had at least 5 teammates that went NESCAC, I can tell you that the standards aren’t as high as you seem to believe.[/quote]

As the parent of a D1 recruit and a NESCAC recruit I can tell you that you are incorrect. Believe what you want but the standards are written, audited, and required. You should actually try a bit of research because there is plenty of materKal out there describing the process and standards.

My NESCAC athlete had a much higher academic bar than my Ivy athlete.[/quote]

The bar was based on ability and need.[/quote]

Not really, she was the top recruit for both NESCACs.

The NESCAC and Ivy athletes are actually the same athlete and currently play on a team in New Hampshire, you can guess the school. The academic bar there was lower than both Williams and Middlebury who also gave her offers. This is a constantly recurring conversation because people don’t want to accept that athletes can also be academically gifted. My kid had a 1560 so it wasn’t going to be an issue anywhere but the NESCAC had a higher standard.[/quote]

I agree with you that the bar is higher at NESCAC. I disagree about the academically gifted part. Usually, athletes match or are just below the mean for the academics of the school, and that varies as widely as colleges do. Of course, there are outliers but that's always true..

So athletes are academically in step with the pool. And places like Amherst or Yale often say, we could fill our class 3x over with our pool. But for athletes - like donors, URM, or any other hooked group - what push them into the accept pile is if they're wanted by a coach.. Plenty of kids with 1560 with impressive resumes get shut out of schools that accept 5 out of 100 kids. [b]My kids went to a high school where a 1500 SAT was the average. 1520 some years. 1560 was very usual.[/b] The difference btw who got into MIT or Williams or Princeton was usually legacy, athlete, Questbridge. Which is not the same as saying they weren't academically gifted. They were. But no more so than the kids who won debate tournaments, placed in science competitions, was second chair in the city orchestra, or worked 25 hours a week all through school. [/quote]

All of these kids are academically gifted, every one of them. Any kid that scores 97% or above is pretty academically special except maybe for elite college admissions and here on DCUM where every child is 3 sigma (and goes to an Ivy) if you believe the posters. Athletics is what gets these kids to yes, but they were equally qualified and would be in the hunt in the general pool as well. [/quote]

not sure what you mean here, but there are plenty of high schools that require you to take a test to get in. At least that's part of the application process. so it's totally reasonable that some HSs have average SATs of 1500.

but yes, hooked kids are equally qualified. true with URM, legacy, donors and athletes.  would they get in without the hook? eh, unlikely because 1 out of every 20 kids get in.  [/quote]

My comment had nothing to do with the HS that they mentioned. As you suggested it is surely a 'test in' school and all of the kids are academically gifted in the same manner as virtually the entire pool at a T25 school od top SLAC for the purposes of this discussion. The point is that es they got 'yes' because of their athletic hook but otherwise they would be in the exact same pool of highly qualified kids and have the typical chance of admission. In no way do they diminish the academic experience at one of these schools which is what an earlier poster implied.[/quote]

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