Athlete recruitment...

phantasmagoric
Thu, 03 Feb 2011 01:16:39 +0000

Interesting points, TheGFG. Ignoring how it interfaces with admissions, I find it unlikely that Stanford would be able to recruit enough students for the variety of its sports, and walk-ons are going to be more common with other sports. With football, it’s probably least likely, but the # who actually do (even based on the very inclusive figure you calculate) suggests that the other sports definitely have a lot of walk-ons.

On an unrelated but interesting note, people seem to be all for lowering the ‘bar’ if there are exceptional accomplishments of a student–e.g. they founded a very successful company, or they did really notable volunteer work–but they don’t seem to want to make that admission for students who accomplished quite a bit in athletics, as is the case for students who might have the bar lowered for them. (As any student athlete will tell you, their sport consumed their time, and their talent was honed through years of practice and hard work, nothing to be scoffed at.)