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Comment by bluepod4 | Hacker News Reader

Do you mean in general? Or do you mean that MIT gives far too much weight to sports achievement? Because I don’t think they do.

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Why give any weight at all to sports achievement in a university? What's one thing got to do with the other?

I think intelligent, non-sporting people tend to have too strong of a bias against sports being factored into admissions. Universities look at lots of things that indicate someone is an intelligent, ambitious, hard-working person. That includes success at a high level in all kinds of things - if you're a top-level musician or dancer, they look favorably on that. If you've started a successful business, they look favorably upon that. If you started a charitable organization that contributed meaningfully to people's lives, they look favorably upon that.

I think in general, we'd all agree that those are good - they show that those people are driven and able to achieve something significant. So does being an elite football player. You have to be up at the crack of dawn for practice. You need to work well with other people. You need to memorize playbooks. It's a lot of work and commitment. Why shouldn't a university look upon that favorably?

I think the difference is in how it's approached. Admissions never say, "We need 20 bassoon players every year," but they absolutely look for 20 football players every year.

And it's a known way to game admissions. How many people do you know who row or fence? Because top schools are looking for a set number of people who are good at those sports each year and wealthy parents can get their kids top coaching for such boutique sports, knowing that.

Rowing is actually a fairly popular activity from what I see. (Caveat that I have some availability bias living outside of Boston.) It's also quite popular at the high school level, especially in the sort of private schools we have around here.

You can also join the rowing team at certain “elite” colleges without having any prior experience (besides knowing how to swim).

There are multiple levels of crew at schools that take it even halfway seriously. I imagine I could have gotten on freshman/JV crew undergrad had I wanted to in spite of not having rowed before. (I was interested in high school but my school never got it organized.)

And I played club rugby undergrad without having done it before. Lots of people play various non-intramural club sports without prior experience.

> but they absolutely look for 20 football players every year.

Yeah, out of a freshman class size of about 4,000 students. It’s negligible.

You took the largest incoming class size of an Ivy and compared it to a single sport to suggest the discussion, whether the admission criteria is optimally correct or just, is not important enough to talk about?

What kind of argument is that? "Yes my client hit that person but look at it in terms of percentages."

I used the average freshman class size of colleges that have deep sports cultures (i.e. large student body, wins championships, spends a lot of resources on recruiting, etc). Notice the emphasis on “recruiting”.

MIT and Ivy League+ schools do not have such deep sports cultures.

You said you were speaking in general, right?

Then, it doesn’t make sense for you to keep harping about MIT or other Ivy League+ schools because your argument falls flat when schools with sports-heavy cultures are brought up. Admitting athletes at the average school really is negligible.

(Unless you edited your original comment to specifically mention these schools? I only read your reply to me that said you weren’t talking about MIT and that you were speaking in general)

Also, I only used a single sport (i.e football) as an example because you used a single sport (i.e football) as an example. I quoted you. I know you were speaking in general. But so was I.

If you have specific concerns with MIT or Ivy League+ admissions as it relates to sports, then just say that! Don’t try to generalize your argument because it’s not helping your point.

(Also, if percentages don’t matter as much as you think, then why were they brought up in the recent Supreme Court case?)

Athletics has always been a part of the curriculum of a full liberal arts education.

I do think SOLELY athletics may be a bit much, but its impossible to ignore that athletics and education have been intertwined ever since the idea of a liberal arts education existed.

Sports is a huge money driver for some universities. Its a big revenue driver[0]. Performance of the team(s) also drives bigger contributions[1][2] by alumni when it comes to donations

[0]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/analysis-who-is-winning...

[1]: https://gceps.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/162ro...

[2]: https://digital.sandiego.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=191...

Robust health is positively correlated with pretty much every metric of life success. Success in athletics is not only a sign of positive health but also another data point on work ethic. There are some people who can get a 1600 on their SATs without ever studying and there are some people who can run a 5:30 mile without ever really training, but very few people who can do both.

Maybe not MIT, but there are many universities whose bottom lines are significantly impacted by the success of their sports programs and the television deals that come with them.

You can certainly argue that some schools overweight it but schools take into account lots of things that aren't strictly academic.

It demonstrates the ability to dedicate yourself to something and achieve success.

In general. I modified my comment to clarify. Thanks.

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