Paco de Lucia

I'm actually a Princeton alum., so let me chime in:

Many people claim that athletes are "qualified" for Princeton, because Princeton supposedly wouldn't admit dumb people. Qualified is not a really objective word--on average, athletes in baseball, football, and basketball, on average, have grades, SAT's, and GPA's below those of other students. Their grades are also below the grades of MANY students who were rejected. So, based on numbers alone, athletes are not AS qualified as other applicants.

Now, we move on to the subjective factors, like essays. There is no evidence that the essays of athletes were significantly better than those of other applicants. Based on my experience (purely anecdotal, mind you), most athletes in baseball/basketball/fb did not perform as well in the humanities classes that I have taken. Additionally, the fact that they have lower objective statistics would hint that the quality of their essays was equal to those of other applicants at best.

EC's: athletics do take a big time commitment, so many may make the valid case that athletes have "better" or "more demanding" EC's. But, remember that there are high school "Varsity" musicians, thespians, etc. And, I would argue that those students did not get "as much" of a leg up as athletes.

Also, most athletes at Princeton can't be compared to the world-class dancers, musicians, and political activists who we have here. Most of the "elite" athletes in football, basketball, baseball went to large state-schools with the intention of playing professionally. Princeton, has had fewer football players enter the NFL than, say, UT, Ohio State, Florida, etc. On the other, proportionally, many more statesmen have come from Princeton than from most state schools.

Princeton does not give the same benefits to actors/actresses, musicians, and political activists that it gives to athletes. The reasons are many:

A) Athletes can show their talent to the public earlier, so athletes are "cash-cows." They bring in money from alumni.
B) Athletics have historically been seen in a higher light than other EC's: note that Cecil Rhodes wanted a mandatory component of the Rhodes scholarship to be athletic ability...but to me, this was indicative of the days before meritocracy, where only "certain sports" were considered athletics, and those sports were dominated by the rich.

From my perspective, MANY, though not all, football players, baseball players, and basketball players padded the bottom portion of the grade distribution. So, if you have been admitted, be glad that there are some athletes. They bring in money for your experiments. Many (though not all) pad the bottom of the grade distribution. And it is a win-win...when they go to jobs on Wall Street with relatively low GPA's, you can enter a more meritocratic institution such as Med School or Law School or Grad School, which heavily weigh your GPA.