Music vs. Athletics

cellardweller
Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:05:49 +0000

mia: You don’t know anything about me. I probably know more than you do about MIT’s athletic recruiting policies as an Educational Counselor.

MIT is very different from other Division III schools by the limited extent to which coaches can tip the scales in favor of an applicant. MIT for instance does not issue “likely letters” as many Division III schools like Amherst or Williams or most Ivy League schools do. There is no such thing as “clear admits” where a top applicant’s file shows up in admission and could up admitted right then and there. Every application goes into full committee review after multiple reads by adcoms. At that point, the influence of a coach is very limited and just one of many factors in admission. There is no “tip system” where coaches get a certain number of applicants who may get admitted despite subpar grades or test scores. In the end, with a typical class of 1,000, MIT is able to fill its varsity needs among academically qualified students. Many are walk-ons especially in sports such as crew, fencing, pistol or sailing.

By not compromising on admission standards, MIT never had to face the problems linked to athletic recruiting common at Ivy league and most Division III schools. These issues have been widely covered in Books such as The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values by Shulman and Bowen. Bowen was president of Princeton University from 1972 and 1988. The Shulman-Bowen data show that recruited athletes not only enter selective colleges with weaker academic records than their classmates as a whole, but that, once in college, they consistently underperform academically. MIT just decided not to play that game.