Do Colleges Need to Be Need Blind?

“So, what are the “non upper SES” sports? I’m not talking about the racial demographic of the teams. What are the sports that you equate to a lower SES high school?”

If you are talking about highly selective schools that aren’t in a BCS conference, basically all the sports. Which was my original point. The kind of kids who have the academic and athletic profile to play a sport at a school like Harvard (16% varsity athletes) or a Williams (30% varsity athletes) are pretty likely to trend upper SES.

So having a high head count athletic program is one characteristic (in addition to the others mentioned above) that will tend to keep the cost of the official need-blind admissions policy from getting out of budget control.