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<p>My sense from reading about athletic slots at Swarthmore, Williams, and Dartmouth is that there is less of this informal push by coaches for high-stat recruits than there used to be. Basically, all of the interested parties (coaches and adcoms) got so sick of the informal system that they all just said to the administration: “tell us the number of slots you want to set aside for athletic recruits and where you want to draw the line on academics”. The coaches fill those slots with a great deal of independence. To be sure, athletics can still give the nod to a high-stat varsity prospect like your son, but it’s more of a seat-of-the-pants adcom call, just like whatever nudge my daughter got from her community service. </p>
<p>At schools where athletics has a very high institutional priority, the adcoms are obviously going to tilt that direction more often. At schools where athletics is lower on the priority list, they may tilt the other way. For example, Williams does not end up with 40% of their students playing on varsity sports teams without a lot of adcom “tilting”. Adcoms at a different kind of college might be inclined to tilt in other directions, perhaps favoring the diversity of experience that comes from admitting an equally well-qualified student with female names in both of the Parent lines on the application.</p>
<p>Patuxent:</p>
<p>I could not agree more with your “rant on Kwesi, Jr”. To me, the frustration with the affirmative action system is that outbidding each other for the same handful of kids makes the colleges feel all warm and fuzzy like they are actually contributing to a solution to the problem. They aren’t. </p>
<p>At elite colleges with the most long-standing and aggressive affirmative action programs, African-American enrollment is lower today than it was 30 years ago. They haven’t expanded their recruiting base, so “their” handful of students are now being divvied up among more colleges.</p>
<p>The frustrating thing is that there are probably URM kids from public schools all over the country who could get great deals from these elite colleges if they only had any idea…and if they had one mentor to steer them along through high school. Nobody seems to grasp the opportunities.</p>