Welcome! Today’s post is going to focus on updates in a few different areas.
First, we want to draw attention to this:
James Murphy posted this to Twitter/X - this highlights that there are more athletes at Harvard than there are at the University of Michigan.
What does this mean? Let’s use some math and assumptions.
Harvard generally admits around 2000 students, and the class itself is somewhere around 1600 students.
If we assume that the distribution of athletes is the same in each year, then of the 1200 unique athletes at Harvard University, approximately 300 of them are in the 1600 freshman class.
This is extremely important.
Now we work from the other end - the general applicant pool.
50,000 people apply to harvard. Harvard admits about 4% of students. But the admission rate for a recruited athlete is around 85%.
So if we reverse engineer the numbers -
300 recruited athletes appear in the class
80% matriculation overall in the class means that 375 were offered admission
85% offer rate means around 450 recruited athletes apply to Harvard in a given year.
450 is approximately 0.9% of the overall applicant pool
Yes, Harvard does have the most D1 athletics in the country, but the competitive advantage is absurd for recruited athletes. Even if you want to use the 450 vs. 300 numbers, that means a recruited athlete has a 66% chance of enrolling at Harvard, while every other applicant has less than a 4% chance of simply being accepted into Harvard (3.2% acceptance rate, to be exact).
And if you think this is unique, look at Dartmouth.
We have been saying this repeatedly - athletics is an unspoken way to differentiate yourself in the application process. The numbers consistently bear this out.
We specifically chose the Ivies because we did not want the Allen Iverson to Georgetown argument, where some argue that transcendent talent are admitted because of the prospect of them winning a national title in a big sport (e.g., football, basketball).
No one is going to Harvard with the belief it will best prepare them for getting drafted in the NFL.
So when we say that athletics is a way to avoid competing, this is what we mean. We wrote about this before - the pathway to “easy acceptance” is closing through other routes. This is the one path that helps you escape the fight in the general admissions process.
Upcoming Class
For those who are searching for assistance in the college process, we will be opening soon for new applicants who want help with college applications.
Each year, we take in a small number of individuals and offer them the opportunity to work with us in their admissions process.
That includes:
Course Selection
Overall admissions guidance
Application assistance (including essay review)
Overall college selection and strategy
We make no guarantees, but our students have been accepted to Ivy League schools. This is the opportunity to have someone walk you through the entire process.
Upcoming Projects
To that end, we are also working on something that should be a MAJOR help for parents in planning. We will have more information in the next few weeks, but it will radically change how you evaluate colleges.
We are also in the process of working on a series on how to evaluate colleges across a variety of specific criteria - This makes it easy to understand what you should be looking for in the college selection process.
As always, feel free to message with any questions or comments.