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?
No one attends Harvard 100% for free. Even with literally zero income and a bunch of kids in college - the most pessimistic outlook their NPC allows, the student contribution is still $4600 per year - $1600 summer earnings and $3000 work study.
However, if a student earns outside scholarships, Harvard will allow them to use those to reduce work study and summer employment expectations - so if a kid can get $4600 in outside scholarships, then they can pay nothing.
“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.
You read my question the wrong way. I asked, what are the non upper SES sports, in your opinion. In other words what are the sports that you associate with an inner city or urban (lower SES) high school.
I’d say football, basketball, track and maybe soccer. The explosion of club/travel team sports has skewed most youth team sports into higher SES demos.
Football has resisted the privatization trend of youth team sports the most (although it too is changing). So football is still primarily centered around public school teams that are low cost to participate in. But even public school teams today cost more to participate in than before.
Suburban kids are many many more times likely to play team sports than inner city kids. Years later, that trend shows up in the roster composition of most college sports teams.
So Harvard (and the other Ivies, as well as NESCAC schools) have those sports, along with baseball, softball and wrestling. I’m a fairly cynical person, but I’m not cynical enough to believe that these schools have upper SES sports for the primary reason (or even a small reason) of attracting more full pay students, which if I understand you correctly is what your argument is. I think that they want to appeal to a broad range of interests and offer as many opportunities as possible. They offer the sports that are likely most familiar to those from a lower SES, and they also offer sports that are typically associated with higher SES students. And any student is welcome to enjoy, and participate in, any of the many athletic offerings.
While the SES mix of the students may not be the biggest motivator for the schools having the sports, they almost certainly account for that when adjusting their admission criteria and processes to get to a target SES mix (and financial aid budget), while still being need blind for individual applicants.
Embrace the cynicism, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/04/04/midwestern-liberal-arts-colleges-use-lacrosse-recapture-suburban-students
OHMom is correct that lots of not-so-selective schools use big sports programs to attract full pay enrollees, especially male enrollees. Often referred to as “heads in beds.” Lacrosse is great for that. If a school already has football or soccer in the fall, it costs very little to use those facilities for lacrosse in the spring. Many D3 schools will have 150-200 guys on the football roster.
But those school are not typically going to be need-blind/meet-full-need admissions type of schools (which is this thread topic).
I’d agree that Harvard and Williams didn’t build up large sports programs for the sole purpose of attracting more full pay students. They have big sports programs because they like having big sports programs. Similarly, they don’t maintain sky high admissions standards for the sole purpose of attracting more full payors. But sports and high admission standards do have that effect in practice.
Legacy admissions is one that has a much more direct linkage to attracting to full payors. A binding early decision program is another one that pretty directly links to increasing full payors.
There is a documentary titled “Citylax”. It is about 6-7 years old, and it shows how hard it is to bring a sport to a new area. A 5th grade teacher who loved lax wanted his students to play. He gathered equipment from a lot of his friends (suburban friends), got them to volunteer time, painting fields, coaching, reffing, uniforms. They wrote grant applications to US Lax. The parents didn’t know the rules or how to play. These kids weren’t going to camps or taking private lessons for speed or stick skills. My kids played for the team a few times just because they needed the numbers to field a team. One game was cold and snowing, and the kids had their ‘uniforms’ (a tshirt) on over their snow jackets and jeans while the other team looked like it was sponsored by Nike with polypropylene and cleats and gloves. Even with all this support, the program still struggles and i dont think it will ever be self supporting as the fa miles cant aford to pay $200 or so for a season, and that’s after equipment. The inner city high school teams can be good, but nothing like the suburban schools where the kids are playing year round, traveling the country all summer, going to camps and tournaments, and going to academically elite schools that are preparing them for college apps, testing, and all things college. They are definitely double dipping in the college prep pool.
There are some people of color playing lacrosse, but the numbers are still overwhelmingly white. My child who plays is Asian, but she grew up playing on the suburban club teams where she was often the only player of color.