Stanford REA vs. Brown ED

phantasmagoric
Fri, 27 May 2011 10:18:25 +0000

Wow phantas, so are you saying that the athletes here receive no boost in the admissions process?!!



No, I’m not. I’ve implied or stated the opposite several times in my posts, above and elsewhere.



That, in academics, they’re comparable to the rest of the undergraduate student body?



In general, they are. There are some edge cases, of course, but the overwhelming majority are comparable to the rest of the student body. There’s a reason that they have very nearly the same graduation rate. If they weren’t doing well, Stanford would change its admissions standards. And were it not for their athletic gear, you would usually be unable to distinguish them.



If so, why do they receive a list of easy classes every quarter, while the rest of us who are ‘bad at sports’ don’t?



You obviously read the news hype without talking to students. For one, that list has always been available to everyone, and it had even circulated on email lists (but of course anyone could get a physical copy). For another, the athletics department offers tons of resources to help athletes in any way - they have specialized academic advisers, get lots of useless ‘balancing your time tips’ sheets, etc. because committing 20-30 hours a week to a sport while also taking a full course load will inevitably be difficult. In addition, everyone agrees that many of the courses on that list are hard; most were on there for their meeting times, since athletes often have difficulty taking afternoon classes. And finally, athletes and students alike find these lists useless, since everyone is able to find ‘easy’ classes by looking at CourseRank (which has grade distributions), past course evaluations (which everyone is required to fill out), and ExploreCourses (which allows you to sort classes by meeting time, GER, etc.).

FWIW, the article that ‘broke’ that news was a class project on investigative reporting in which the students attempted to make a big deal out of nothing, misquoted professors and students (who demanded a retraction), and were criticized for poor reporting even by their own professor. It’s really insignificant to the student body, so don’t worry, you won’t be at a disadvantage because you don’t have such a list. ;)



That was a joke. And, stalk much?



Not stalking - I was posting in the same thread as you when you derided public school students for not thinking much of Eton. (I agreed with you that Eton was prestigious, but explicitly said I wasn’t defending your statements, because they were really elitist and in poor taste.)



But, the truth is, athletes … get in not primarily on academics, but on athletic ability.



That’s just not true. Most would likely get in regardless of their athletic ability, since they’re stellar students to begin with. That’s largely because the high-price sports for which recruitment should affect admissions (i.e. it leads to a noticeable difference in team quality) are few in number, and thus the recruits from them are comparatively few. There just isn’t much incentive to recruit for them. That’s also why a large portion of Stanford’s varsity athletes are walk-ons - people who may or may not have played the sport before, but get into Stanford without recruitment, and then decide they want to play. You’ll find tons of such students when you get here.