https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/hes-olympic-medalist-college-sophomore-150348786.html
He’s comfortable competing academically with classmates.
Without knowing his academic qualifications, it’s hard to comment.
But it’s widely known that many multiples of the number of students who get into elite colleges are academically capable of succeeding in classwork. The schools are quite open in stating that they are looking for students who will make a difference in their school community and do important things in the world as students and after they graduate.
Selecting a 3.8/1450 Olympic medalist/world-class athlete over a 3.95/1550 VP of a school club and 2nd string sports athlete wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) surprise anyone.
The admission criteria for those schools - with specific guidelines on the number of athletes they can accept with academic qualifications lower then the average student - are well known. And not particularly controversial, AFAIK.
I’m guessing he wasn’t a 3.1/1100 SAT HS student. And I’m not sure “admits” is correct in the title.
You know…I would say winning an Olympic medal is truly an example of a hook. I’m sure it was viewed in the context of a student who Yale felt could achieve at their school. I’m guessing he is a strong student too…based on has possible career goals and majors. And I love watching him skate!!
One could argue that even higher school athletes who will not be competing at the college level should be able to get into the same colleges with lower grades than non athletes. Sports are a huge time commitment. Though of course there are the student athletes who just do it to have something on their applications and don’t really put in the full effort- there needs to be a better push at weeding those kids out.
I don’t think he was admitted as a student athlete since he doesn’t skate for Yale. I think he is saying he had a very good hook, which just happened to be an athletic EC. I’m sure they would have let him in with a Nobel Prize or if he’d saved 20 kids from a burning building or happened to be the son of a politician.
And those with 1450s on the SAT can hang with the 1590s.
If an athlete applicant isn’t recruited - which can stand in for being very good - then they aren’t getting much benefit from being athletes. At least not more than a dedicated musician or journalist or whatever.
If they are good enough to be recruited, then they leapfrog over regular applicants.
Many years ago, my uncle was a member of the admissions committee at a prestigious medical school within a prestigious university (one that often gets discussed here). They received an application from a student who was somewhat older than the norm at that time, and who the year before had competed in an individual sport at the Olympics, with a performance that had galvanized public attention (without winning a medal) and turned the athlete into a household name. The applicant’s academic credentials were fine – he was an undergraduate at the same university, there was no question about preparation or intellectual ability to handle that medical school’s curriculum – but not on a par with most of the people being admitted, who generally had extraordinary academic and research credentials.
Surprisingly, the committee had not faced this issue before, at least not while my uncle had been on it. They had a serious, somewhat intense discussion about whether it was appropriate to take into account the applicant’s athletic achievements (and the work it had taken to make that possible), as well as the public persona. Anyway, it turned out that 100% of the committee members wanted to admit the applicant – but most of them thought their colleagues might be opposed to it. They accepted the applicant . . . who turned down the admission in favor of a Rhodes Scholarship and eventual PhD.
This is taken directly from the article:
As a sophomore, he’s less academically shy than he was. (“I largely got in based on athletic merit,” he acknowledges. Assuming he might be out of his depth in class with other students, he found he’s pulling his weight.)
Many superselective colleges are wealthy, and posters on these forums write about their better academic support services that the money presumably buys. If that is true, then most of them should be able to pull a 3.1 HS GPA / 1100 SAT student to graduation in some major (and they may have a few such students in the form of those related to their largest donors, though such students are likely rare even among donor relatives). Yes, that may not be possible at a few where the minimum rigor is very high (e.g. Caltech), but not every superselective college is like that.
Athletes, especially at the world class level, are highly disciplined, driven, motivated and goal oriented, so it’s no surprise that they find themselves pulling their weight at any of these schools as long as they have the academic foundation that the adcoms felt confident in.
One Olympian that I really admired was Eric Heiden. While Michael Phelps broke Mark Spitz’s record that many, including myself, thought was unbreakable, what Heiden accomplished at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid could very well stand forever. He began his undergrad education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison before transferring to Stanford University and graduating with a BS in 1984. He then went on to earn a medical degree from the same university in 1991. I don’t think he was a stellar student at Stanford, yet he did just fine considering the career that he’s had as an orthopedic surgeon.
The other day, I had a bi-weekly talk with my son, and one of the things he said in amusement was that Chloe Kim was having a rather tough time adjusting to the campus life at Princeton because everyone’s gawking at her everywhere she goes, some even taking stealth photos of her, etc. Like Chen at Yale, I’m sure things will settle down where she won’t stick out among the crowd. From what I hear, she doesn’t possess the kinds of academic credentials that other kids who were admitted without any spiky hooks. So, she, too, is in that category of “I largely got in based on athletic merit.” These Olympians may lack in academic credentials, but they possess other assets that others lack. This freshmen year is going to be quite tough on her, but like Chen, I’m sure she’ll feel more at home by her sophomore year.
For sure! 
Not only has he already won an Olympic medal, but he is still training for the next Olympics, where he will put Yale’s name on the news again. If his academic record was anywhere above average, this was probably an easy admit decision.
Face it, next to no college kids know why they got in. I don’t think an adcom said, “Nathan, we only took you because you’re an Olympic athlete.” Nor do I think they expected him to compete on the team, against other colleges.
Yale likes leadership. But they’ve said that’s more than having some titles or awards, even smaller engagements can demonstrate leader qualities.
He filled out an app and supp, like everyone else. It had to be good. And rounded. I mind the athletic hook, but I think he’s probably as legit as the next kid.
I have all the respect in the world for a serious athlete doing well academically. That kind of person can do well in any college imo. However, based on my personal experience long time ago, I saw a friend who was 1st or 2nd in District in a popular sport get into Yale, even though he was not even close academically to get into top 20 colleges. I remember fondly we decided to sleep over and study for Calculus BC Finals next day, but we ended up talking about other things and we both got Fs on Calculus tests. lol I almost flunked out of the class, which would have meant I could not graduate from high school, but luckily, the math teacher’s own daughter attended Cornell, and the teacher felt sympathetic towards me when I told her that I got into Cornell, so she exercised her discretion and gave me a passing grade in her class to graduate. The difference between he and I was that I was 1st or 2nd in District in a not so popular sport while he was 1st or 2nd in a popular sport. I couldn’t complain because I myself got into Cornell with a 3.0 GPA,. even though kids with really high GPAs from my high school got denied.
It seems as if there is a tendency here on CC to believe athletes can’t also be just as smart and academically capable as their peers. There are always a number of kids in our local HS every year that are good enough athletes to play D1 and also smart enough to be admissible to an elite college without the athletic hook. Yes, those are the kids that end up at the Ivys or at the WASP type LACs as athletic recruits if they play their cards right, or who gain admission without being a recruited athlete because they chose not to continue their sport in college. I have no doubt that Nathan Chen’s being an Olympic athlete got him into Yale, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t qualified academically to be there.
It is easy to understand why Yale would want Nathan Chen on campus. Kudos to him for balancing Olympic level training, serious academics, and a social life.
Interesting that of all the information in the article, you chose the point he made (but not clear how he know this) as your title. He clearly had a much higher level of outside commitments (world championships, Olympics) than virtually all other Yale applicants that year and still was good enough to get in. Are you implying that he was undeserving? He is doing well enough in his classes and still winning at skating. Seems like a good pick on Yale’s part.
I also caught that drifting implication of “undeserving athlete that took up a class seat” by the carefully selected title…
Whether that was the OP’s real intention or not, the fact of the matter is that student-athletes, particularly in the Ivy League, are very successful once on campus. The Ivy League leads the nation in NCAA Graduation Success Rate (GSR) with a combined average over 97 percent across its eight institutions for student-athletes. That’s better than many institutions accounting just for non-athletes.
For someone at the world class level as Chen and Kim with global travels for competitions and so much time put into training and other preparations, it’s a remarkable accomplishment. If anyone wants to question their places in these colleges, ask whether all the admitted non-athletes could have achieved the highest academic credentials if they had the same loads as the likes of Chen and Kim.
Elle Woods, welcome to Harvard!
Agreed, there is no doubt that athletes can be just as academically capable as their peers. I’m sure Nathan Chen was academically qualified for Yale.
Yale probably has 10x more academically qualified applications than they can admit, they have no choice but to reject a lot of qualified (“deserving”) applicants.
Olympic athletes who are also academically qualified is a very fair, easy choice for them.
Athletes at Chen’s level - especially solo athletes vs. team - have to be very focused and good at time management to be successful. His athletic achievements may have been what got him into Yale, but it’s his intelligence, drive and ability to juggle a lot of balls is what is hopefully going to get him through. The landscape is littered with sports stars who wound up having very successful post-competitive careers, assuming they aren’t struggling with any psychological or other personal issues (that’s a whole other post).