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Comment by TrackerFF | Hacker News Reader

Athletic scholarships is one of those very foreign concepts, for us outside the US. Seems like a uniquely (North) American thing?

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Cambridge, Oxford and Imperial College in the UK admit students and provide benefits, scholarships and bursaries to people that are considered world class rowing talent, quietly and unofficially.

Many European countries have special programs for sports talents to develop and receive economic benefits whilst serving military service and/or seeking higher education. Most people don't know anything about these programs as they are not advertised or generally published.

To be blunt as someone who attended Oxford and was friend with someone who ended up coxing the Blue boat, nobody gives an actual shit about rowing there. It’s just a funny tradition. Colleges boat clubs are nice because the sport is great, the two bump races are fun and the mixers are rowdy. The Boat race is seen as a funny tradition and an excuse to compete with Cambridge. It is in no way as serious as academic leagues in the USA.

^ this is not true (source: attended)

Your experience may vary from college to college but definitely true as far as I’m concerned.

Having competed in The Boat Race, this is unequivocally false at Oxford and Cambridge.

I know nothing about crew, who wins, etc. but:

it may be the case that the wealth and elitism of "growing up rowing", like "growing up sailing, horseback riding, and playing polo and squash" is sufficient to to keep out the riffraff and the highly athletic boats crewed with also academically gifted rowers; but humans both group identify and are athletically highly competitive, even as spectators, and there's no way you can have world class talent in a sport without either combing the hustings for talent, or keeping "those people" out altogether. Oxford and Cambridge are not magically different than every other place in the world, they are magically the same. If they are good at it, then there's an explanation for it, and it's not "being good at fluid dynamics turns out to make you a great rower".

For example, the Ivy League in American sports is not the elite level of sports in any sport that matters economically, but only because they're only willing to bend the academic rules so far and they restrict competition to other like minded opponents (but they do bend the rules because they care enough to do so).

So either: Oxford and Cambridge aren't world class at rowing; nobody rows outside Oxford Cambridge and some other similarly elitist schools; or they're bending some rules to obtain elite talent.

Rowing is certainly an elite sport dominated by the socioeconomically well-off. I was simply making the point to the GP that unlike US institutions where rowers (and other athletes) are specifically recruited for their athletic talent, athletic prowess plays literally no role in the admissions process at Oxford and Cambridge. Rowers are not admitted "quietly and unofficially."

> nobody rows outside Oxford Cambridge and some other similarly elitist schools

For the UK it is this.

Also because they aren't nearly as common. Just because this exists in some form outside of the US doesnt mean that it happens at the same scale.

Don’t they have some kind of arrangements for choral singers?

Canada has them, but fewer, smaller, and students still need the academics. We don't have the religious fervour around university sports that we see in the U.S.

That and the institution of the "college application essay".

Does any other country have that?

College application essays for undergraduate degrees vary a lot by country.

The UK UCAS admission system used for all undergraduate admissions requires an application text. It is much freer in its form than how I understand the US system with a very specific prompt.

As for Norway, to pick another random example, there is no requirement to submit any piece of writing to explain your motivation. Your grades do all the talking for you, so to speak.

The difference between UCAS and US system is that UCAS is universal essay whereas US “common app” has both universal and school specific essays.

Honestly i much prefer the US system to my exposure to the british system, much easier to apply to multiple schools in the US

> much easier to apply to multiple schools in the US

I think discouraging blanket applications to multiple universities is the point of the UCAS system in the UK

I think it is common everywhere to require essays during the college evaluation process, but I don't understand well enough what is the US's "college application essay" to compare.

In the US you write an essay to send to the college with your application, about why you should be accepted. I don’t know of anywhere else that has anything like it.

Edit: examples https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2019...

Wow, no, I have never seen anything like that before.

Is it really a literary resume for people that didn't have the time to accomplish anything yet? I just found a niche for chatGPT!

Oxford certainly has it when i applied.

And my college in the US didn't require one, and I didn't write one. It was optional.

China has it...

I thought the gaokao was all that mattered

Chinese colleges have sports majors that use athletic performance as part of their admissions.

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