you can thank the scientists at Google who produced the stat for me…Korn Ferry produced a similar research report as well.
If a school starts to cut top courses because their top 6 students transferred to TJ and there is no longer critical mass the kids left behind are the ones impacted. As long as the same coursework and curriculum is made available to all kids in the district capable of benefitting from the rigor I have no issue with it but remember you just reduced the peer group of gifted kids in the “home district” so this sorting is not all positive.
I think it is “a” primary goal but you are getting to the heart of the issue which is that too many people have too narrow a focus as to what schools will provide the necessary peer group and rigor. There are at many many programs in the US which will provide a more than adequate undergraduate math education including a strong peer group and prepare a student for graduate study in math at any institution if they excel. You indirectly acknowledged this with your first sons applications to GT (#54 USNWR) and Rice (#164 USNWR) but if you read your threads anything less than MIT is a travesty and failure. It wouldn’t have been a failure at all, many wonderful options and peer groups would have been available, and kids like yours are going to thrive because of who they are whether it is Rice or MIT.
I like it!
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Honestly, it depends on how good the athlete is and how much they want them. I’ve see 1200 level SAT scores and gpa’s commensurate with that (around 3.5 UW) at many of the Ivies, and also at some NESCACs. In all cases, these were fantastic athletes - one ranked number 2 in the country for their sport. Lately, all our recruited athletes to MIT have been rejected and those kids had fantastic academic credentials - on par with typical admits. It is what it is - I doubt things will change as the Ivies (and other schools like them) appreciate athletes and they seem to do just fine in terms of graduating and going on to successful careers.
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Note that the figure is quite different for women: 90% of top female CEOs played sports at sometime including in K-12, or college. Only 54% played in college; the rest earlier. Many private high schools require sports team participation
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100% agree, same exact premise as the athlete analog I offered. I would hope admissions officers would weigh that as a factor as well. My point being to Vulcan, there are multiple factors beyond grades/test scores that are predictors of success (especially when we are talking tenths of decimal points) to consider in admission.
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Ok. Granted!
I really should step away from criticizing American college admissions.
And probably from CC in general.
At least until the next generation of Vulcans comes along, god willing.
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That’s an even more impressive stat in my view, given female participation in college athletics really only took off post Title Nine. Will be even higher in years to come. And I don’t buy the private school argument, I am guessing only a fraction of those CEOs even went to private school
Sometimes great success occurs despite huge differences in measured decimal points.
Steven Jobs. Homestead HS overall GPA was 2.65
Martin Luther King received C+ grade for his public speaking class at Crozier Theological
Seminary
Albert Einstein report card: French 3, Geography 4, Drawing 4, Chemistry 5, German 5, Italian 5,
and math, physics and history 6. (school had a 6 point scale)
Arthur Miller: flunked algebra 3 times at his Brooklyn HS. rejected by U Michigan twice, accepted on 3rd try after writing the dean promising reform
George W Bush. SAT = 1206, Yale GPA =2.35
Joseph Biden. University of Delaware “C” average GPA
Richard Feynman had “poor grades” in art, social sciences, and literature. His college application to Columbia U was rejected.
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My kid was recruited by MIT so I have insight on this, at least for her sport. There is nothing guaranteed and they don’t do an “official pre-read” but we were able to have good conversations and get the right insight.
For her, the required minimum SAT to talk seriously was 750 with 770 preferred per the coach. They held that firm as we know kids who had early discussions but never crossed the hurdle and dropped off over the course of Junior year. My kid had a balanced 1560 spring of her sophomore year and once she provided that they never asked about scores again.
The coach looked at her junior year schedule for rigor and once the year was finished they asked for her transcript. The coach made a support offer late summer and we wanted to know what that meant given no guarantee. We were able have an informal conversation with a AO responsible for our geo. The question and comments were:
Did you always take the most difficult class available for every subject? MIT expects their students to always push to the extent possible was the comment.
A’s were assumed
The AO reiterated that recruits got a significant boost but nothing was guaranteed, that admissions made the decision and that my D looked like a strong candidate with no negative flags. The coach said that meant 2 out of 3 chance in his experience.
The rest of her stats were 3.95UW, 4.6W with 12 APs, top 5% of her class at a strong and well known HS which sends 1 or 2 kids to MIT pretty much every year.
I agree that the top is incredible, your kids fall into that group. The athletes that I know that are at MIT seem to do fine but they likely aren’t near the far right edge.
I think that my kids stats are pretty typical for MIT athletes, at least the ones that I know. They are competitive anywhere, nobody more academically deserving is left out.
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The MIT recruits that I know have been incredibly strong academically - unfortunately, they’ve all been rejected. They were told 50/50 in terms of chances at the time they applied. I know 2 other kids that pursued other schools because of this - although strong students, they wanted to apply somewhere their chances of admission were more assured. Congratulations to your daughter on MIT!
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In the end she turned down the offer and took the “sure thing” at another school. Some schools did offer ED2 support but they weren’t at the top of her list. We are all happy the outcome, I just wanted to provide the details on her MIT journey since MIT isn’t typical for athletic recruiting.
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Title 9 was passed in 1972. Those serving as CEO are highly likely to be young enough to have benefited from it.
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Yeah but it didn’t happen overnight
Between 1972 and 2011, the number of girls competing in high school sports jumped from under 295,000 to nearly 3.2 million, according to data from the National Federation of State High School Associations. But girls’ opportunities still haven’t reached the level that boys were at back when Title IX was passed, and high schools today provide 1.3 million fewer chances for girls to play sports.
There are more women playing collegiate sports—about 200,000—than ever before. The number of female athletes at NCAA schools has increased from less than 30,000 to over 193,000 since 1972.
The implication of the page @kbdad provided is that 95% of Fortune CEOs played varsity sports in college. When you look at the Korn Ferry report, it is somewhat ambiguous as to what constitutes playing sports for female CEOs. But, I’m skeptical of all of the numbers provided. A significant percentage of CEOs come from South and East Asia (at one point 40% of all Silicon Valley companies had CEOs from South and East Asia). I highly doubt that many of the folks who attended one of the Indian Institutes of Technology were playing varsity cricket or that Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, or Elon Musk played varsity sports in college. Andy Jassy played sports in high school but I don’t think in college. Rex Tillerson (ex-CEO of Exxon) played in the HS marching band. The current CEO of Walmart played HS basketball. Unless you define sports more broadly, the number seems highly implausible to me.
I guess there is a question about what constitutes playing sports. Do intramurals count as playing college sports? Does playing on a traveling soccer team in middle school? I’d be stunned if 50% of CEOs male or female played varsity sports in college let alone 95% of male athletes.
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I don’t think the stats show up in the applications, but in where the student decides to attend.
I’ve seen it happen over the years with friends’ kids accepted to NYU but end up at Colo State, to Loyola Chicago but end up at an instate school, to Rollins and actually attend but transfer to a state school without even finishing a semester. Everyone thinks they can make the money work, and the kids in these examples could have paid for the expensive schools, but when it is time to sign to pay 10x what the state school will cost, they go with the cheaper option.
I have seen athletes turn down Harvard for a full D1 scholarship and a few years ago there was a big deal made of the kid who got into several Ivies but went to Alabama for the full ride (parents were doctors so no aid at all from the ‘need only’ schools), so it does happen.
Got it. I don’t blame her for pursuing a “sure thing” - our friend’s daughter did the same and is happily at Williams. No regrets. Congratulations to your daughter on her choice.
I agree, the stats seem high, but my point still holds (which is long lost in this wandering thread). Said another way, I think we would all agree the folks at MIT are smart and data driven. If MIT didn’t believe that athletes brought something unique and valuable to their undergrad community, they wouldn’t give them admissions preference (albeit tiny, as discussed) b/c they could care less about sports. D3 athletics are non revenue generating and actually cost money to carry. The original debate with Vulcan was whether they could hang academically at MIT and whether they deserved to take a spot from some other worthy applicant. My point was they are worthy, and that there are more ways to identify talent than 50 points on an SAT (bar is 750/750 according the parent of a recruited athlete on this thread). Athletes bring other qualities that are valuable in business and society.
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@kbdad, I suspect that successful athletic experience is likely indicative of the ability to work towards a goal and, with team sports, the ability to work with people. Although, I have come across some stars who are awful to work with, so maybe too much success can negate or reduce the benefits. After I read your post, I googled and the 95% stat is repeated withoutany question by groups that have a vested interest in hiring of athletes or special olympics or whatever but the Bayesian in me places a very low probability on the assertion that 90% of Fortune 500 of CEOs played college varsity sports and especially after looking at the bios of some of the CEOs I know or know about.
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Likewise with some violinists, another group that was mentioned above! All else being equal, if I wanted a team player, I might rather take a chance on hiring someone whose instrument is viola or cello 
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part-time readers have been a thing at top schools for ages…I knew Tufts was looking at them 10+ years ago (I recall seeing the ad and contemplating it).
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