[Treebound]

I have a feeling that Stanford is fairly conservative in tabulating these medal counts, which I consider the correct approach.

However, consider Janet Evans: won three gold medals at the 1988 Olympics and a gold/silver at the 1992 Olympics. In between she competed for Stanford at the NCAA level. Post 1992 she attended Texas and then graduated from Unbelievably Spoiled Children, although she did not compete at either school. Of course on Unbelievably Spoiled Children's web site her five medals are included as part of their claim of winning more medals than any other university. She is a Unbelievably Spoiled Children alum but IMO it's bogus to include her medals, which gets back to my point about inconsistency. Stanford is taking a more honest approach (which I endorse) but by not including the Heidens and Strugs (and many others) it is shortchanging itself since most readers are not going to discern that different criteria is being applied by different schools.

Thanks for your thoughts on this DC.  The Janet Evans example is exactly the discussion I was having with an SC alum.  Evans is listed first in some of their website stories!  Note that I couldn't find her on UT's site.  Stanford has not compiled (or at least made public) a list of all its Olympic participants or its medal winners.  As Eric and I showed, Stanford's sites differ on the medal total.  I think that creating such a list would be a worthy undertaking and the AD can vet it with people like BobK, Terry, Rutter and others that will likely spot omissions!

I agree that its a slippery slope and of course SC takes the most advantageous approach.  Using their formula, my sense is that we may well have more participants and medal winners overall?  I believe we would clearly lead for Team USA participants and medal winners.  The press is using this info and putting out stories, and I would rather have these based on a level playing field of data.  I think the AD should make a list of all Olympic participants and medal winners and note those that didn't actually participate in said sport while at Stanford.  I think per a prior comment, Stanford considers you an alum if you attended at least 3 quarters in a row. 

[Treebound]

I have a feeling that Stanford is fairly conservative in tabulating these medal counts, which I consider the correct approach.

However, consider Janet Evans: won three gold medals at the 1988 Olympics and a gold/silver at the 1992 Olympics. In between she competed for Stanford at the NCAA level. Post 1992 she attended Texas and then graduated from Unbelievably Spoiled Children, although she did not compete at either school. Of course on Unbelievably Spoiled Children's web site her five medals are included as part of their claim of winning more medals than any other university. She is a Unbelievably Spoiled Children alum but IMO it's bogus to include her medals, which gets back to my point about inconsistency. Stanford is taking a more honest approach (which I endorse) but by not including the Heidens and Strugs (and many others) it is shortchanging itself since most readers are not going to discern that different criteria is being applied by different schools.

Thanks for your thoughts on this DC.  The Janet Evans example is exactly the discussion I was having with an SC alum.  Evans is listed first in some of their website stories!  Note that I couldn't find her on UT's site.  Stanford has not compiled (or at least made public) a list of all its Olympic participants or its medal winners.  As Eric and I showed, Stanford's sites differ on the medal total.  I think that creating such a list would be a worthy undertaking and the AD can vet it with people like BobK, Terry, Rutter and others that will likely spot omissions!

I agree that its a slippery slope and of course SC takes the most advantageous approach.  Using their formula, my sense is that we may well have more participants and medal winners overall?  I believe we would clearly lead for Team USA participants and medal winners.  The press is using this info and putting out stories, and I would rather have these based on a level playing field of data.  I think the AD should make a list of all Olympic participants and medal winners and note those that didn't actually participate in said sport while at Stanford.  I think per a prior comment, Stanford considers you an alum if you attended at least 3 quarters in a row.