[2006alum]

Which makes the IMO, excessive admissions hoops for athletes all the more distasteful. It seems likely that some of these legacy/bought in students would have lesser academic profiles than some athletes who were denied admission. So far he has been kind of a bust in football, but it sure seems a guy like Demetria Robertson, who killed himself trying to get admitted to Stanford, would have succeeded just on the basis of how bad he wanted it and should have gotten in because of that.

I don't think "excessive admissions hoops" is an accurate characterization of the process for athletes - there is no question that top recruited athletes have a gilded pathway to admissions that almost all other applicants lack, and I suspect most of the ultra-wealthy of connected-legacy admits still have meaningfully better admissions stats (GPA, APs, SATs, etc.) than recruited athletes that get Door 1'd. Josh Childress got admitted to Stanford with an 1100 SAT score. His score was approximately one standard deviation above the SAT mean, while the median Stanford matriculant scores almost three standard deviations above the mean (1465). Short of being an Arrillaga offspring, I suspect the folks we're talking about were in the 1200-1300 range, and thus solid, but not admissible but for their connections/wealth.

And trust me when I say this: there are thousands and thousands of applicants who get rejected from Stanford every year who worked just as hard as Demetrius Robertson and wanted it just as bad. They just don't entertain us every Saturday in the fall, so we're less sympathetic. But they are absolutely no less worthy. Every one of us who is fortunate to call LSJU our alma mater is living a life of constantly cashing in the spoils of a lottery ticket that happened to have winning numbers the day our ticket got considered.

[2006alum]

Which makes the IMO, excessive admissions hoops for athletes all the more distasteful. It seems likely that some of these legacy/bought in students would have lesser academic profiles than some athletes who were denied admission. So far he has been kind of a bust in football, but it sure seems a guy like Demetria Robertson, who killed himself trying to get admitted to Stanford, would have succeeded just on the basis of how bad he wanted it and should have gotten in because of that.

I don't think "excessive admissions hoops" is an accurate characterization of the process for athletes - there is no question that top recruited athletes have a gilded pathway to admissions that almost all other applicants lack, and I suspect most of the ultra-wealthy of connected-legacy admits still have meaningfully better admissions stats (GPA, APs, SATs, etc.) than recruited athletes that get Door 1'd. Josh Childress got admitted to Stanford with an 1100 SAT score. His score was approximately one standard deviation above the SAT mean, while the median Stanford matriculant scores almost three standard deviations above the mean (1465). Short of being an Arrillaga offspring, I suspect the folks we're talking about were in the 1200-1300 range, and thus solid, but not admissible but for their connections/wealth.

And trust me when I say this: there are thousands and thousands of applicants who get rejected from Stanford every year who worked just as hard as Demetrius Robertson and wanted it just as bad. They just don't entertain us every Saturday in the fall, so we're less sympathetic. But they are absolutely no less worthy. Every one of us who is fortunate to call LSJU our alma mater is living a life of constantly cashing in the spoils of a lottery ticket that happened to have winning numbers the day our ticket got considered.