@IxnayBob @classicalmama All points taken, but I would quibble with the Calculus example. My experience, and perhaps I have too limited exposure to know, is that, in general, the demands of these teams mean that the students do not seek out the hardest courses. I know personally of an athlete, a gifted athlete, who is taking difficult courses in their major but really seeks out easier courses in other areas. It just struck me as something that was too bad. I certainly dont blame him and would do the same in his place. But it seems to be a strange position to put a 18-22 year old in.
Well, to be fair, many, if not most, Yale students seek out easier courses in areas outside the major.
@wchatar2 - wow such generalizations. I agree with @Hunt. My kid is an Intensive Literature major at Yale. As a sophomore, she is already fluent in German and now taking Korean. But, trust and believe, the math classes (Geometry in Nature) and social sciences classes she will take with not be the hardest - interesting, but not too taxing. Just like I am sure the Math major is not going to sit next to her in one of her advanced Literature courses. I am not sure what point you are making. Isn’t that how it is at college for the most part?
@ElMimino
Wow! Was that offered up or did you and your student have to inquire?
This may all be a exercise in futility as that date is smack dab in the height of kiddos racing season…
And as classicalmama will attest, those rowers who have drank the Kool Aid cannot fathom missing a race for anything.
But thanks for the lead! Will follow up.
I think some of this discussion about the place of athletics at the ivys and recruited student athletes has more to do with underlying resentment rather than calculable academic differences amongst admitted students.
Not to accuse anyone here of that but take a look at the threads dealing with applicants to Yale and the class of 2020 and it certainly is present.
I can only speak to the issue of what sort of student body do you want represented at Yale?
The admitted students are there because the excell and have talents. These talents are varied and encompass a wide variety. I know I wouldn’t want to attend a school with students who had spent their entire HS careers figuring out how to get a perfect score on the SAT or ACT or have a perfect GPA for that matter.
Are there exceptions where a candidate is not matched well? Sure but that holds true for many, not just athletes.
Well Im certainly sorry if I offended anyone. Since we are talking about 10% of the students at Yale its hard not to make generalizations. My question had more to do with why Yale cares enough to pointedly recruit 10% of a class for athletics. It certainly does not seem to be integral to student life there, again, as Ive said many times, perhaps Im wrong and am speaking with faulty information. Mea culpa if that is the case. But no, I have experienced no, zero, underlying resentment from the students that I have had contact with. My question had more to do with the institutional motivations of Yale. It seems to be the consensus here that it has nothing to do with money and everything to do with diversity of background. Thats fine.
After all, Ivy League is an athletic conference, with a long history, If we get rid of sports, Ivy League would be no more. I do believe Ivy League schools strike a good balance between sports and academics, unlike some other sports-crazy schools, such as Alabama, which, as someone sarcastically characterized, is really a football franchise with a university attached to it. For me as a Yale parent, a big joy is to follow The Game. I am looking forward to watching it in person next year in Cambridge.
As a parent of a non-athlete I understood that admissions tries to create a balanced, diversified class. I’m assuming that includes the right mixture of athletes to have competitive sports teams. Given every other school does athlete recruiting, I’m guessing Yale needs to as well. If most schools recruited for musicians I suppose Yale would need to do that to, but I’m betting the applicant pool provides an adequate supply 
@NCmom14 I guess thats also the crux of my question, are musicians, a cappella singers, actors, all other skill sets specifically vetted by the groups they are intended to associate with and allocated a specific number of slots in the same way as athletics. Honestly, Im asking, I dont know.
Generally speaking, no. Arts supplements may be sent to the relevant department for evaluation, though.
No offense taken @wchatar2. We are just passing back and forth info and doing what we do on CC. As an alum and a current parent, I can say that athletics are important to Yale students. Are we the rabid fans of say an Auburn, LSU or Michigan? Of course not. Also, Ivy athletes cannot compete on the level of their peers on scholarships at other schools. Not because of lack of talent, but because the Ivies do not allow their sport to take precedence over school work. Since they are not there on athletic scholarships, but the same need basis as all other students, they are not beholden to the coach or the team. They play for the love of the game only.
Are you saying that football student/athletes at Alabama dont play for the love of the game? Im shocked:)
I am sure some, if not most, love the game. I am also saying that if it is a choice between a class and practice, you are going to your job. I must admit I am not the biggest fan of the way students at these major schools are “used” by these schools to make millions of dollars. The pittance of a scholarship they get is miniscule in comparison. It is a constant fight between me and my H who attended college on a basketball scholarship and my nephew who currently attends Texas A&M on a football scholarship. He is pre-med and gets crap all the time about needing to put schoolwork before practice. But I guess this rant is probably better served on another thread.
Well in all seriousness, I attended an Ivy league graduate school, not Yale, where, with slight exaggeration, if had asked 90% of the undergraduates who the football team was playing next, the reply would have been a blank stare.
Lots of detail on the academic qualifications of recruited Ivy athletes, and the way academics interact with athletic recruitment in admissions (with a fair amount of Yale specific info) here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/sports/before-athletic-recruiting-in-the-ivy-league-some-math.html
@wchatar2
Your question is completely valid and worth asking…
But as many have suggested, I think athletics are treated very differently at the Ivys than other schools that also do athletic recruiting.
And this discussion has yielded much in the way of helpful info.
I also think it depends on the sport. I have heard from my daughter that there is a running joke about the classes the football team takes vs the average Yale student. She has also heard first hand that their gpa’s and scores were nowhere near what hers were and they laugh about it. There are many athletes that are recruited in their sophomore year and there is no way that the school can know how they will score on SAT’s ACT’s and even the hard earned gpa at that stage of HS. On the other hand the kids there don’t really seem to care. Perhaps it is because they are already accepted and so it is all water under the bridge.
One thing I hear all the time is that everyone there has a hook of some kind. Some have special talent, some have special intellect and some are just gifted in sports. These hooks balance out the other areas that a person may not be as strong in but this creates diversity in the class. My own kid is a cheerleader- (not a recruited sport btw) and most on the squad have never cheered before. Everyone jokes that its because there were not a lot of higly intelligent cheerleaders in HS that make the Yale cut. Perhaps there is some truth to this in many of the sports. This could be why they need to balance recruitment with some of the scores of those recruited.
On a completely different note, we parked next to parents of a kid that was recruited for a sport as a sophomore (I wont name sports) and knew he didn’t want to play as he accepted the likely letter. He had this in mind the entire time and now plays a different sport for fun instead. They apparently can’t require you to play in order to go there so as soon as he moved in as a freshman he quit the team. Now THAT could potentially cause a lot of highly qualified deferred students a whole lot of grief.
@Memmsmom
I know some sports recruit rather early but those athletes are still required to do the academic pre-read with admissions and must fall within the AI range in order to receive a LL. If they had drastically lower GPA or test scores they wouldn’t be admitted.
And that’s pretty shady of that kid to accept a spot and knowingly back out. I suspect karma will be knocking on his door at some point.
It is true that football has a bit more give in terms of who they can recruit, because they recruit more athletes than average and use a band system–but coaches can only recruit a small handful of players in the lowest band. What they do once they are at Yale, I do not know.
And I agree that accepting a likely letter without any intention of playing shows incredibly poor character–and that should piss deferred students off! I know that happens but it’s rare. That kind of action also rebounds on the athlete’s high school program and coaches.
@tonymom I am not saying that they fail out of school but a 3.2 gpa (which we know someone that is now a student and a recruited athlete) is considerably lower than the 4.0 students that are rejected. It may seem an unbalanced system but their hook was a physical skill that they possess. Another thing we found out while attending games is that many of the recruited athletes are recruited from specific private schools rather than recruiting based on both academics and athletic skill. That is rather unfortunate because I know of many amazing athletes from public schools with much higher academic scores that would never make the cut because they were not recruited. I was told this happens because they are not allowed to really offer scholarships for sports due to recruiting rules and these athletes are not looking for aid. I do not know how accurate that is though because it is something we learned from other parents while tail gating.