“Every Ivy League school has an average AI for its student body. For varsity athletes, that average must remain within one standard deviation of each school’s overall average.” From: http://www.browndailyherald.com/2.12230/for-ivy-admission-athletes-face-a-different-standard-1.1671107

~15% of a normal distribution lies below one standard deviation from the mean. That means that on AVERAGE the recruited athlete cohort can fall comfortably within the bottom quarter of the incoming class. Does this seem like a reasonable floor for an athletic index?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation

Dartmouth athletes have a great graduation rate. They also receive more tutoring and assistance than the general student body.

As for football, the 2010 season aside, we seldom do well enough to excite alumni or attract outside attetion to the school for football-related achievements. ANd there’s little future benefits for the players–nobody on our team is going on to the NFL. So how is it worth the risk and expense? The more research that’s done about football, the more we find heightened risks of alzehimers, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, progressive dementia, and other brain injuries. Whatever value we get out of having a football team does not measure up to the long-term health risks it poses to our players.

The real issue we should be talking about is the “Golden Ticket” phenomenon in the admissions office, where each admissions officer has a “Golden Ticket” that they can give to a student who doesn’t meet cutoff requirements, but is an ‘inspired choice’. These students have no eligibility restrictions and it is a dirty secret inside the Admissions office designed to promote diversity and do a community service. Sometimes these tickets are given to athletes, sometimes to students from 3rd-world countries, and sometimes children of personal friends to admissions officers. There is a lot of deception and corruption in the admissions process and the D’s editorial barely scratches the surface of it! Let’s look into this Golden Ticket scam and get some accountability from Jim Kim’s Dartmouth.

What about the golden ticket scam inside the admissions office? Why has the Dartmouth not reported on that?

There is no “Golden Ticket” protocol currently in use in the Dartmouth admissions office. I cannot speak to whether one may or may not have existed before, but it certainly has not been in place the past four years.

This isn’t about a few “Golden Tickets”. It’s about people getting accepted only because coaches are allowed to beg.

I have worked loyally at Dartmouth for years and love this place. But I just got out a 3 hour meeting where we were told that we will lose our jobs if we disclose any information on the golden ticket program. Days like this are the toughest part of being an admissions officer.

This column would have been better entitled, “Defending Our Recruitment Policies” rather than “Defending Our Student-Athletes”. Wrapping this issue in the flag, so to speak, will stifle healthy debate about both the vital role that athletics have in higher education and the status quo in Ivy athletic recruiting.

The two measures she cites are both from the NCAA, which has a vested interest in making athletes look good. Athletes get tutoring and other considerations that aren’t available to others. Although athletic success in HS should be rewarded, college coaches should have zero contact with the admissions office about admitting athletes. The fact that there is athletic recruitment at all at an academic institution, regardless of standards, is troubling.

Ms Laskaris:

I would be curious to hear some more admissions information, because I find that the information you included here is unsatisfying and does not convince me that all is well with our athletic recruitment process.

“The Ivy League stringently regulates the admission of recruited athletes to ensure that each school’s student-athletes are representative of its student body. Dartmouth consistently exceeds its League requirements.”

I am not concerned that Dartmouth is breaking the League requirements. I am concerned by the League requirements themselves, which appear to create loopholes and set lower academic standards for admission of top athletes at institutions whose focus should be academic achievement.

“In the two most prominent national measures of academic success among student-athletes, Dartmouth ranked third out of 351 Division I colleges in 2010-11, both in National Collegiate Athletic Association Academic Progress Rate commendations and the NCAA Graduation Success Rate.”

What is this Academic Progress Rate commendation system? Further, why is the relatively simple fact of graduation one of the major indicators of academic success? (Aside from finding the graduation rate a grossly incomplete indicator of academic prowess, I have also found that in my experience, the only thing harder than getting into Dartmouth is getting kicked out. Dartmouth will work with students who have misbehaved/underperformed to make sure they graduate, athlete or not. It looks bad for Dartmouth to have students they’ve selected fail.)

“The combined graduation rate for the last five classes of Dartmouth’s recruited student-athletes — 95.3 percent — is slightly higher than the overall rate for the undergraduate student body of 94.6 percent.”

Again, I find the graduation rate an unsatisfying indicator of academic performance while at the College. It merely indicates that students are meeting the bare requirements.

“Finally, this past term, Dartmouth’s varsity athletes collectively earned their highest average Fall term grade point average in eight years, with more than 40 percent achieving GPAs above 3.5 and nearly 80 percent above 3.0.”

What I did appreciate about the graduation percentage statistic is that you compared it to the general student population. Here you did not do that. What percentage of the general student body achieved a GPA above 3.0 in the Fall? Further, what are the more longitudinal statistics on this? You fault The Dartmouth for honing in on a single year — 2010-2011 — but here you hone in on one TERM.

Further, I am curious about the average high school GPA of incoming student athletes, especially considering our admissions processes are at question here, and the high school GPA is more salient than the College GPA (that, I might argue, is more relevant to the separate issue of the extra academic services that are available to student athletes).

On my team of fifteen players, two are engineers, four are pre-medicine, and one already has her masters. All of the seniors have jobs coming out of college. I, personally, have been applauded by my peers for the tough classes I took on last Fall and this Winter. My teammates and I have managed to maintain our high grades taking the same tests and writing the same essays as all other students while also putting in at least 20 hours a week. I cannot speak for all athletes; however, I can assure the Dartmouth student body my team is not “furthering the gap between these students and their peers.”

Someone needs to step up and tell the truth about the gold Ticket. I don’t believe either of these admissions people who posted on here. Am I a golden ticket student? Why are these admissions officers choosing personal friends? Is there any truth? This is soooo confusing!! Someone tell the truth!!!!!!!! ><

Check out that Isiah Berg has to say: http://www.dartblog.com/data/2012/01/009964.php

For some background on the Golden Ticket, see: http://www.dartblog.com/data/2012/01/009967.php

There are so many times I read the different comments and come to the conclusion that nobody knows exactly what they want out of Dartmouth. There is so much confusion of what Dartmouth stands for. Athletes at Dartmouth. Like it or not they are not going anywhere. Figure it out. Somebody who is in a position of power, please figure it out. Tell us what the big picture is and defend your position. Make a stand. Golden ticket? Imagine someone getting something because of who they know. Welcome to the real world.