I think the operative words are “competitive environment” because then there is greater interest and demand for a particular good than there is supply and thus there will be carping over just about everything. When DS was applying years ago, the trendy hook was overcoming adversity. I recall people complaining about the fact that their white middle class kid had had too easy a life to be appealing to the Ivies.
To avoid a Title IX derail, can we at least agree schools should eliminate male sports that don’t turn a profit? If that means the Ivies lose their division 1 status, so what?
I don’t think hooked students are resented much on campus as the students they displaced are relegated to perhaps flagship state Us. But they face the burden of proving to others that they deserve to be where they are. Perhaps Malia Obama and the Bush daughter.
I don’t think hooked students displace anyone. We think we know some of the labels colleges put on different buckets and make assumptions about who got placed in which bucket, then further assume that bucket is what got them into a particular school. But I don’t think anyone can know why one student got accepted and another didn’t.
I think students compete with students who are in whatever bucket they’re in, so athletes would compete with other athletes, legacies would compete with other legacies, and so on. But it’s not like high stats students have an automatic “in” and have been cheated out of their “spot” if a student with lower stats gets accepted. Stats is only one bucket.
Racial/ethnic buckets don’t exist, at least in the sense of having quotas or having URMs only compete against other URMs, which would be illegal. Athletes may have their own bucket, but that begs the question of why an athletic bucket exists in the first place?
There’s a lot of misunderstanding of what’s looked for. Some folks have odd ideas of what that is.
Tippy tops like kids who show they can succeed. That’s just not one-dimensional. Nor is it about “winning.”
Very few schools have sports that turn a profit at all, and I don’t think any have 6 male sports that do. Six male sports is the minimum for D1 status, so if we eliminated all male sports that don’t turn a profit, there would be no D1 (or D2) schools at all. I doubt there is a sport that turns a profit or is even self sustaining, male or female, in the Ivy league so they’d just do away with sports?
There is already a lot of resentment that Title IX caused schools to eliminate men’s teams, and it is true, it has. There have been a number of swim teams eliminated this year, a wrestling team, some baseball teams. Sometimes it hurts ($$$) to do the right thing, and I think Title IX is the right thing. Women in sports have advanced a lot in 45 years. The US women’s hockey team just sued to get equal pay with the men, jumping from something like $4000 a YEAR to $70k.
I believe that sports add a lot more to schools than just the money collected for tickets or the sale of t-shirts so I don’t want to eliminate any. I don’t care if, as the title of this thread asks, having a hook carries a stigma or resentment.
“Athletes may have their own bucket, but that begs the question of why an athletic bucket exists in the first place?”
@roethlisburger
Because athletics are part of the school’s culture, just as serious music, science research, debate and arts are? Is this really so hard to understand?
If the primary motive of college sports is profit just make them pro already and pay the athletes accordingly.
That wouldn’t be a bad idea or else charge student-athletes additional fees to cover the costs of their sports.
This already happens at some colleges, with some sports. The result is often that lower income kids don’t play, much like when it happens at the high school level, when some districts get cash strapped and to “pay for play”. Then again, to play at a very high level, you pretty much have to pay to play anyway, to cover club, trainer, coach whatever fees and such.
Maybe sports should be eliminated from school, period, college on down to kindergarten. Isn’t that the logical place to take this argument?
Sports are just over emphasized at schools. They want to fill their varsity, club, and intramural programs.
Are their any schools that offer theater or other arts at the intramural level?
If I was the principal of a public high school, spending $20-$40 million a year on its athletics program, you can bet I would want to reallocate that money elsewhere.
You mean “everyone welcome it’s all just for fun”? Of course there are. At most schools there are audition-serious ensembles and productions, and ones where anyone is welcome.
As someone who did both intramural sports and theater (despite never “trying out”) in college, yes I can absolutely say that there are “intramural” level theater & art things. What a bizarre question.
We’ve all been brainwashed. The biggest hook, for millennia, has been HWM. (High-ranking White Man, and what he chooses to promote.)
Worrying about whether Latinos in “name only” have money to go on vacations while not spending money on tutoring their children, reminds me of the racists who used to say, “Look at that black man driving that Cadillac. He’s got kids somewhere he’s not supporting!”
How many times did I hear that growing up? (Sometimes it was clothing or tvs or whathaveyou but the same implication.)
That’s envy and prejudgement, based on what he has and the speaker thinks he shouldn’t have. (Based on not knowing the facts and not minding one’s own business.)
Like the poster said elsewhere in this thread, we don’t know how colleges choose in each case, or in most cases.
But it stands to reason that in a society where women, African Americans, and Hispanics (and many others) are in danger just for being who they are, the bump any particular URM candidate may have in a college admission is miniscule compared to the favoritism that has gone in the opposite direction for time immemorial.
IvyGrad09 – where ever you went to school… you do your alta mater proud.
What in the world are you talking about? The point of this thread is to discuss the admissions process as it exists today, not a history lesson on past millennia.
@roethlisburger the phrase used was “has been”, not “was”. As in, still ongoing.So, agree with that opinion or not, relevant to today.
@katliamom
THANK YOU!
My son and I were just discussing some of the declared majors on his team (he’s at an Ivy) and I was blown away that many of these young men were taking by far the most vigorous majors offered AND practicing 6 days a week/ 3 hours a day. Many of them also hold down a PT job on campus and are involved in other EC. His sport tends to typically have a brainy bunch (same case at HS level) but if there was any doubt or people second guessing the legitimacy of their placement…