Fence your way past low admission rates?

Data10
Tue, 25 Oct 2022 22:41:33 +0000

ucbalumnus:

That means that a college 1/4 the size with a similar set of sports teams may have 40% recruited athletes. Could this describe some popular (around here) northeastern LACs?

On the other hand, a huge state flagship with 5 times the enrollment would have only about 2% recruited athletes.

Yes, % athletes at highly selective colleges is usually well correlated with student body size. Most such colleges have several hundred athletes, regardless of size. So a few hundred / tens of thousands at big flagship might = 2% athletes, while several hundred / a LAC with 2000 students could = 30% athletes. Also relevant is how many low revenue sports like fencing the college have. A college like Harvard with 40+ teams could have 1000 athletes, while a college that has few low revenue sports could have <300 athletes. Some specific numbers are below, using federal reporting from a few years ago. I realize portion of students who are varsity athletes is not the same as portion who are recruited athletes, and degree of admission boost varies for different athletes and different schools.

UCLA – 2% of students are varsity athletes
Chicago – 6%
Cornell – 7%
Duke – 10%
Stanford – 11%
Harvard – 15.5%
Caltech – 22%
Swarthmore – 25%
Williams – 35%
Bates – 35%
Bowdoin – 36%

The portion who are White and wealthy also varies. As noted in earlier in the thread, there is a strong correlation with sport. There also large differences between different colleges. Harvard was mentioned above. Some specific numbers for Harvard are below, from the freshman survey. % White is most recent year, % income is 3 years ago (before the added the “prefer not to say option” in survey). It’s a similar trend as Amherst mentioned above, but not quite as extreme. Colleges that have a larger portion of total athletic roster in revenue sports, would likely show a different pattern.

Harvard Freshman Survey
White – 83% athlete, 49% non-athlete
<$40k Income – 4% athletes, 16% non-athletes
$40-$80k Income – 9% athletes, 16% non-athletes
…
$500k income – 26% athlete, 16% non-athlete

In the lawsuit sample, White admits also had a high rate of numerous other hooks. Specific numbers are below. Note that all non-White races had approximately the same portion of non-ALDC hooked admits.

White Admits – 16% athletes, 27% LDC hooked, 56% non-ALDC hooked
Black Admits – 9% athletes, 6% LDC hooked, 85% non-ALDC hooked
Asian Admits – 4% athletes, 11% LDC hooked, 85% non-ALDC hooked
Hispanic Admits – 4% athletes, 9.5% LDC hooked, 86% non-ALDC hooked