dontno

I hold that academic merit should be the primary basis of acceptance because, umm I dunno, a college is a ****ing academic institution.

Maybe you weren't aware of this, but colleges are schools. Classes are taught by teachers. There are students who take notes, study, then take exams and leave with a certificate noting that they've successfully completed the ACADEMIC program. Yes, there are of course social aspects to every college. But primarily, it is a place of learning. Thus, admission, especially at the upper tier (HYPSM), should be based primarily on academic credentionals.

These universities are the holy grail and realization of lifelong work for so many people. It's unconscionable that someone with incredibly low scores can be accepted over academically qualified individuals.

To summarize: Academic institutions (are you going to argue that a college is not, by definition, an academic institution) should accept STUDENTS (we call them students, not athletes) based on academic merit. Pretty simple.

@ Previous poster:
Clearly you deserved to get in and I'm not against the admission committee using your athletic achievements as a sign of your dedication. If this was a tiebreaker, then I have no problems. My beef is with clearly unqaulified students. Someone from a neighboring high school was accepted to Penn as a football recruit. He went to one of the worst high schools in the state (vo-tech) and got an 1100. Almost everyone from my high school (the best in the state) got rejected.

Furthermore, Im sure there are a handful of recruited atheletes who also excelled in academia. But they're by far the exception.