If the Ivies or Stanford or Duke give “points” or whatever for recruited athletes, then they are indeed lowering their purely academic standards (basically, GPA and SATs) for athletes. I’ve not seen any statistics on these schools, but I did see a study done about 15 years ago on certain of the little Ivies (I believe it was Williams, Amherst and Wesleyan) which concluded that given the same academic qualifications:
- historically discriminated against minorities were 15% more likely to be admitted;
- legacies were 20% more likely to be admitted; and
- recruited athletes were 45% more likely to be admitted.
I’ve got to believe that the Ivies, Stanford etc. do something substantially similar (or more so) for recruited athletes, or they could simply not compete.
Further, the elite academic schools play games with athletes that they are recruiting. For example, a highly recruited athlete from my hometown with good but not great academic qualifications was told by Harvard that if she would commit to playing there, they would accept her
BUT that if she would not commit, Harvard could not and would not accept her. She went somewhere else and was an All American.
