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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Also regarding sports recruiting and academic standards, I'm specifically referring to elite schools where the recruiting sports lose the school money and don't really contribute to its prestige. If you think sports teams are a necessary part of these institutions, fine, but so are the orchestras, moot courts, model un, and many other groups within these universities, none of whose potential participants get an extra special route to admissions.[/quote]

Gimme a break. At least the recruited athletes are usually evaluated multiple times by college coaches to ensure they are at the caliber needed for their sport.  
 So their athletic skill is real, as opposed to many of the non-athletes who have their not-for-profits set up and run by mommy and daddy in the name of the kid, or the coveted summer internship or job that was negotiated by daddy at the country club with his golfing partner. Or the kids whose parents send them to attend pricey math and science prep classes since age 4 to get a leg up on the “olympiads”. 
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Real athletic skill is often earned by pricey sports clubs and training since age four. So how can you say their skill is real? Could it be that skill elite development can be expensive? But why do you only accept that for athletics but not academics? The truth is that elite academic performance is far more accessible than elite athletic performance. The former can require just a single used textbook while the latter often requires five figures in club fees, training, equipment, showcase camps, training camps, gym fees, food (lots of meat!), protein powder, supplements, etc.

Why do only certain athletes get the privilege of having there performance checked? 10k runners do, but marathon runners don't. Football players do, but rugby players don't. Wrestlers do, but Judokas don't. It's completely arbitrary - there's no reason to believe the former are somehow athletically better than the latter, so why privilege them with with a special admissions process over the latter?

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Eh - you can get to a certain skill level by training, but ultimately, the ceiling to be a truly elite athlete is exceedingly rare and not easily found. You might be able to train someone to be an average Division III athlete, but getting to the elite D-III level for most sports (think Johns Hopkins or Washington University), much less the Division I level is going to take truly elite athletic talent that can’t necessarily be taught. The training is needed to maximize that talent, but that talent still needs to be there. It’s similar to how you can practice and train to raise your SAT score, but it still takes a certain innate talent to score a 1600.

I’ve got twins - one is a combo of a top academic social science/music kid and the other is a competitive athlete that also excels at academics. The former also plays a sport, but it’s more of a “keep in shape activity” while the latter is on a competitive club team that regularly sends kids to Division I and top academic D-III programs. The former kid has a substantial number of high level activities and awards (state and regional level) for both social sciences and music. They would be an incredibly busy person if they were just focused on only one of social sciences or music, but they have both pointy passions that the want to pursue. It’s actually kind of crazy to list all of their activities out.

The latter kid that is the competitive athlete legitimately spends as much or more time on their sport alone as they do as the former kid with everything else combined. This is on top of taking a full slate of honors/AP classes and having the time management skills to excel at them. That’s legitimately what it takes to get even a chance at the elite academic D-III admissions tip that a lot of people complain about here (much less a Division I scholarship or an Ivy recruitment). Their teammate that got a spot at HYP in their sport was in the top 5 overall in the state in that sport (plus high national rankings) AND a 4.0/1600 SAT.

The point is that the supply of kids that are actually truly elite in athletics (at least the ones sponsored at the varsity level at colleges) is low compared to the demand from colleges for those elite athletes (as sports are often a zero sum game and easily measured in terms of competitiveness between schools). The supply of kids that are truly elite in athletics and also elite academically compared to the demand is even lower.

That’s really what it is: a supply and demand equation. There are specific teams at colleges that need specific spots filled and they need a specific level of skill and talent in order to fill that spot. (Just filling that spot with someone random isn’t good enough because, once again, sports are one of the highest profile areas where schools objectively compete against each other and schools are naturally going to assign that a high priority.) Academic superstars are actually in greater supply by comparison, particularly those that want to pursue STEM or high-paying areas such as business and economics.

That’s the game. We see both sides of it with one social sciences/music kid and one that is on the competitive athlete track. I would never begrudge someone that gets an admissions tip for being a top athlete and, especially once you get past football and basketball recruitment (which is really where there’s more leeway on grades and test scores because those are the revenue sports), they’re often doing that with top academic marks, too. It’s not an accident that colleges see a ton of leadership qualities with that profile and elite employers (such as investment banks and consulting firms) *love* athletes with great academic records.[/quote]

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