<p>The last time the sports in college admissions thing flared up on CC I actually read the Levin book on athletic recruiting at the IVY and NESCAC schools and came to a couple interesting conclusions. The first is relevant to the current discussion.</p>
<p>IMO the complaints about the unfairness of the lower standards for athletes is actually a red herring. The actual issue is that spots are set aside for athletes at all. The actual standards applied to the slots do not affect any other applicant at all so if a school decides to lower standards for athletic recruits by one standard deviation or require 1600 SATs (of 1600) from all athletes it makes absolutely no difference to the application any non-recruit applicant to the school … those slots are going to recruits period. The main thing the recruit standards affect are … 1) the quality of the teams … 2) possibly the quality of the intellectual experience on the campus (think of a small LAC where recruits may be 25% of the students on campus).</p>
<p>So to me the punch line is the real issue is having the slots at all … but that is tougher argument as they are lots of sub-categories of applicants … athletes, legacies, developmental admits, URMs, one sex (at many unbalanced schools), etc. Unless athletes make up a substantial % of the population I think complaining about the slots also is a a fairly weak argument unless you are arguing for not considering any of the other issues either.</p>
<p>PS - I thought the other conclusion was also interesting and somewhat relevant.</p>
<p>I thought the book was OK … the data presented was pretty impactful (I took it at face value) … I thought the authors conclusions and suggestions were weak and I often had a different take on the data … with one big exception … one conclusion was very powerful IMO.</p>
<p>Having the goal of winning a national championship. </p>
<p>A lot of Ivy and NESCAC schools are trying to compete from national championships. In reality across these almost 20 schools and 700 varsity teams maybe a handful win a national championship. However, to pursue these national championships the standards for recruits are lowered compared to the overall student population. But what if a school held athletes to the same standards?</p>
<p>The teams wouldn’t be quite as good … no national championships. OK, but beyond that it wouldn’t really matter much. These teams play the vast majority of their games against teams in their conference … who have similar standards.</p>
<p>So now the gripe about “unfair admissions” would be gone … but those recruiting slots are still reserved … so this change does not change any non-recruits changes of admissions … however the athletes are now more similar to the non-recruits academically.</p>
<p>I agree. And, there are students who worked after school and on the weekends to earn money to assist their parent(s) and siblings or to be able to afford college rather than
work to “excel” in any other field. An argument could be made that it would only be “fair” to place those students on par with the students who did not work for money but rather to “excel” in a field.</p>
<p>IMO – once you strip it down to the basics, it is all about getting a hook/bump. If you have the hook that the school is looking for “you win,” if not “you loose” at that school. Disappointing? Sure. Unfair? No.</p>
<p>One fallacy behind the anti-athletics position is that being good at sports is mostly due to genetics or biological happenstance, whereas academic achievement is the result of seriousness of effort and hard work. A typical comment my D would hear was “You’re so lucky you’re athletic/fast.” I suppose for these people it would seem unfair to reward in college admissions a kid who is simply “lucky” enough to be born athletic. No one said to my D or S “You’re so lucky you aced the SAT,” or “You’re so lucky you’re a straight A student.” </p>
<p>Why not? As a parent of two kids who attended the Ivies and Stanford, and one who began her educational career in self-contained special education classes, I contend that genetic good fortune has a whole heck of a lot to do with academic achievement too. My youngest works far harder on her academics than her siblings ever did, but with less stellar results. She was not fortunate enough to be born as intelligent or intellectually capable as her siblings. So the idea that star students pulled themselves into college by their bootstraps of hard work, while star athletes are just lucky, is hogwash. Both groups begin with genetic realities over which they had no control, and then chose to build on them with a lot of effort. Many of their peers might very well be genetically “luckier” in brains or brawn, but were lazy.</p>
<p>And as a analytical geek I’d bet there is a higher correlation between high test scores on standardized tests in early grades and SATs in high school … than there is between outstanding athletic performance in early grades and in high school.</p>
<p>I was chatting with friends the other day and it emerged in our conversation that we were all uncomfortable with some Olympic sports, such as gymnastics, that seem to place a huge premium on youth and physical danger. Diving came up. To some extent swimming.>>>>>>>>>></p>
<p>Swimming is black and white, a timed race. It is not subjective as is the judging of those other sports. My kids swam competitively and absolutely if any had emerged as an elite swimmer, we would have let them pursue it as long as they could, all the way to the Olympics if they wanted to.</p>
<p>I hear you. What pushed my kids away from school music activities and towards a timed sport like xc and track was the objective nature of it. Among many unfair aspects of the scholastic music scene was that if you took lessons from one of the school band teachers, you got preferential treatment for ranking and solos. For example, their private students got advance copies of the solo audition pieces, etc. This really disgusted my son. </p>
<p>We were ready for him to change teachers right about then anyway,
and even though he knew the game now, he refused to try to get in with one of the school people. By a stroke of luck we met a professional musician at a music store who was willing to take him on as a student. Right away the gentleman got S into a different mouthpiece and reeds, and made other recommendations that improved his sound significantly. The school teachers demanded to know who had “set him up” with those things and seemed really put out by it. Meanwhile, this guy was shocked to learn that S was not in the highest ensemble group. As a teacher, he was familiar with what was typical proficiency and also claimed S was much farther along than he himself had been at the same age. So he was ticked off because he knew it was a political thing and took it upon himself to visit the school band teacher. The conversation he relayed back to us was a real trip. </p>
<p>The local drama scene was run by the wife of the president of the BOE, for the sole purpose of giving leading roles to their two daughters. They built up nice resumes–by their own hard work, of course! 'Nuff said.</p>
<p>While school coaches can and do mess with athletes for political reasons, it’s a lot harder to do in objective sports.</p>
<p>I agree that the problem is reserving slots for athletes. I don’t see why someone (like jonri) who argues that athletes shouldn’t get any more consideration in admissions than those who excel in other fields also has to argue against LACs giving preference to males (or presumably tech schools giving a preference to females) or aiming for diversity by recruiting URMs or getting lots of $ for a college by letting in a few development cases. (I don’t agree with legacy preferences and I’m not going to defend them.) </p>
<p>To me, to claim that reserving a certain # of spots in the class for athletes is ethically comparable to these other things is just plain silly.</p>
<p>I’m only arguing that saying 15% of the slots at a top college HAVE to go to athletes is unfair if you don’t also said 15% of the slots have to go to students in performing arts, 15% of the slots to students with extraordinary community service, 15% of the slots to students who excel in academic type ECs–model UN, Fed Challenge, QuizBowl, etc. </p>
<p>Of course, no college (other than those with conservatory type programs) does that…because it adds up to more than 100%.</p>
<p>And GGD, working counts as an EC and the kid who has to work out of economic necessity gets a bump for that…though not the same kind of bump as girl with pony her parents bought. Years ago a college rep said it was equivalent to “being president of Latin Club.” Fair? Definitely not.</p>
<p>Jonri- I don’t get upset easily but I do take offense with your references to girls with ponies. I seriously doubt that the equestrian rider gets any bump. I have always heard it was the opposite and that equestrian activities were not worth much since it is considered a sport of the rich.
My D’s sport and main EC are equestrian and the job she has held since 9th grade to help pay for her sport. Granted there are many riders whose parents buy them a new horse each season but there are equally as many like my D who ride what they can afford. Or ride the more difficult mounts and become better riders because they don’t have an expensive point and shot horse.</p>
<p>They can chase whatever dreams they have in addition to obtaining financial independence, but the last one comes first. And many many do both very successfully as long as they know what is priority.</p>
<p>BTW my own D. has dropped her sport, but she had too many dreams to chase, sport was only one of them, so kept some and dropped that one on her own. She was pretty good, several coaches were after her, good that she never paid attention and choose her UG independently of Varsity opportunities.</p>
<p>My alma mater has equestrian as a varsity sport. It does “limited” recruiting for the team, but it does do some and if you are a top rider, you DO get a bump. I assume that’s true at any college which has equestrian as a varsity sport.</p>
<p>If your D is good, you might want to check out the colleges which have equestrian teams. The fact that I don’t think athletes shouldn’t get a bump compared to those who excel in other fields doesn’t mean I wouldn’t take advantage of the fact they do if I had a child who was good enough to be recruited.</p>
<p>Only 18 universities have a Div 1 Equestrian Team. At most schools Riding is a club sport.
My D is going to be a freshman at a school that does not have a Div 1 team. Her school does have several club teams, hunter, cross country and western.</p>
<p>Without providing a point of view on what the Ivies or other elite colleges should and shouldn’t do (they can admit on whatever criteria they like as far as I’m concerned), it seems that you ARE ok with them making things being less of a level playing field as long as it’s giving less affluent kids a bump. Which is fine and noble, but that’s not a level playing field either. </p>
<p>I don’t think these schools are trying to go for “fair.” They’re trying to go for diverse and interesting. Which is why the rich kid from prep school who had the means to play squash or water polo and travel for Model UN is going to wind up rooming with the poor kid from Watts who worked as a janitor to support his family and didn’t have time for EC’s but who is a diamond in the rough academically. Which is why the class-president, never-met-an-organization-he-didn’t-run kid is going to room with the pasty kid who spends all his spare time in the library or lab. And those are the sparks they want to have happen.</p>
<p>“Fair” isn’t the operative concept when you’re looking for all different types of kids.</p>
<p><<< popping back in just because I heard you wre talking about Rice in here.>>> My s was going to take a job with the Rice Womens swim team, but I actually discouraged it. It can be hard to find time for academics and sports. I am in awe of those who so successsfully navigate it.</p>
<p>jym626–actually, depending on the job, working for a sports team in college is a great job. I was an athletic trainer in college and while I had to be in the training room from about 2-7 every day, the first 30 minutes of that was busy and the last 30 minutes, otherwise I got paid to study. I did travel with the team but everyone did homework on the bus or airplane so that wasn’t an issue either. It was a great job!</p>
<p>Pizzagirl…I agree wholeheartedly with your post #235. </p>
<p>On the topic of time management, an athlete in college has to juggle a huge time commitment to the sport (in my D’s case, during the competition season, for example, she was away all weekend every weekend, and even had to miss a week of classes for national championships ea. year…that was only SOME of the commitment) and juggle academics and in the case of a very selective college (my kid was at an Ivy for example), do well in school…and in my kid’s case, she was in other ECs too at college. Many of her teammates were pre-med in fact. These were no slouches. They brought their studies to competition weekends. My kid was able to get Academic All American at nationals, as did many of her teammates. And even with the huge commitment to her sport, she managed to be selected at graduation for the top award in her academic department.</p>
<p>I’ve been away all week taking my D back to school. Lots of activity and thoughts!</p>
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<p>Neither my dancer D nor my gymnast/cheerleader D went through that horrible gawky I hate my body stage in middle school and I credit their activites for that.</p>
<p>As for Gabby D having the drive to achieve any dream…you have to have the body for it. I wonder what her adult/retired body will look like. Her mother has a very large chest…if those breasts had popped out on Gabby, things would have gone quite differently.</p>
<p>I was wondering when someone would bring up Malcolm Gladwell. In his writings about affirmative action/top 10% admits, etc., he said that given the chance, most of the admits make it. Athletes have more time pressure but with that factored in, I bet the stats are similar.</p>