When it Comes to College Admissions, Advantage Rich Athletes

It's an advantage more stark than you probably know. Of course youth sports has plenty to do with it.

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Last month’s Supreme Court decision that struck down the use of affirmative action in college admissions [Students For Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina et al.] has had a reverberating impact. Thought leaders everywhere have chimed in proposing steps to preserve diversity.

Abolish standardized tests. Emphasize standardized tests. Encourage minority applicants to focus their essays on how race or socioeconomic status have impacted their lives. Or scratch that, just highlight their plans to change the world like everyone else.

The debate has only just begun as long-held admission pipelines like legacies and super-donors are under new and intense scrutiny. The aftermath has also put the spotlight on an often misunderstood tentacle of the admissions process. The most advantaged applicants of them all: recruited athletes.

Given that many, if not most, of us are here because we have kids who plays sports, here’s a quick primer.

For the uninitiated, talented and smart high school athletes in an array of sports have a massive leg up over equally qualified but non-athletic candidates, especially at elite universities. These would-be collegiate athletes are being recruited as early as sophomore year. The athletic departments act as extra guidance counselors offering blueprints on everything from how which AP classes to take to what to include or not include in their essays. At Harvard, upon completion of an application, the school will send out likely letters to exceptional candidates, up to six months before Ivy League admissions day.  It’s essentially a preview that you’re getting in. There are some exceptional candidates granted likely letters solely based on their academics and non-athletic extracurriculars. But most are reserved for the recruited athletes.  And for a school like Harvard and other Ivies that recruit for sports such as squash, water polo, skiing, and rowing, most recipients of likely letters are affluent, white, and well-educated.

Now I know some of you are thinking … duh. Perhaps you’ve known all along that sports are the golden ticket for kids to get into schools they otherwise might not have. Perhaps you even know that only 3.4% of regular folk Harvard applicants get accepted but up to 83% of recruited athletes are in, even though both types of candidates are supposed to go through the same review process. And you’re likely unsurprised to learn that 83% of Harvard’s recruited athletes for the class of 2025 are white, whereas just 10% are Black and 6.5% are Hispanic or Latino.  And that almost half of these recruited athletes come from families with incomes over $250,000 which is a good thing for them since Harvard nor any of the Ivies offer scholarship money. In fact, most colleges offer little-to-no scholarship dollars in the lower revenue generating sports. But you get in which is the ultimate goal.

Of course it’s not just Harvard; it’s practically every elite school and plenty of non-elite schools. According to Dr. Kirsten Hextrum of the University of Oklahoma, across Divisions I, II and III, about 72% of college athletes are women, and 64% of men are white.

Until recently, this was news to me. I didn’t grow up in the big multi-billion dollar world of youth sports where clubs, private training, recruiting advisors where the norm, and so were a lot of promises. (Just keep those credit cards handy, parents.) Like many out there, I was blinded by what I saw on TV. College football and basketball populated the screen with a healthy dose of Black athletes. As Hextrum pointed out, the visibility of Black athletes on television cloud the reality that there 38 other sports sponsored by the NCAA, and most of those are largely unaccessible, at least at a high level, to anyone but the rich. Most of us think of squash as a vegetable and not a collegiate sport yet if your kid doesn’t eat vegetables but is skilled with a racquet, well, the Ivy Leagues or Stanford may await.

It’s clear why families would view sports as their kid’s admission ticket to a highly competitive college. As long as they understand that in most cases they’ll be footing the bill. As Duke women’s soccer head coach Robbie Church told Good Game back in March, “Sometimes I’ll say, ‘we have good news and bad news. The good news is we got you in Duke, the bad news is now you owe me $80,000.’” What is less clear is why some of these coaches of non-revenue generating sports have so much clout in the admissions process. Maybe it’s bureaucracy. Maybe it’s all that application money rolling in from the would-be athletes.

Of course, exacerbating the inequity is our friend, youth sports. There’s so much to love yet so many ills. The professionalization and high cost of youth sports has become directly tied to that dangling golden ticket that equals entry to a good college. The fun of dabbling in a variety of sports in a low key environment has been supplanted by the pressure to specialize or risk falling behind. Then it’s the lessons and the trainings and programs and an increased likelihood of medical bills from overuse injuries. Lord, the money better be flowing. And the fact that so many collegiate sports exist that are prohibitively expensive for 75% of America and unheard of in public schools just adds to the deep socioeconomic inequities. And yes, ultimately a lack of diversity at the university level.

It’s incredibly frustrating to think of all the kids who are left in the dark. To think of the kids who are equally as gifted both athletically and academically as the high income kids, but whose families don’t have the money for tutors and SAT advisors. Their chance of using sports as a catapult to a great school is minimal compared to their wealthy counterparts. It sucks.

Here’s hoping the fallout from the Supreme Court decision lights a fire under some of these college athletic programs. As it stands, most high level schools focus their recruiting efforts on established pipeline events featured talent from expensive clubs. That makes sense. It would also make sense to invest time and money to find the gifted kids who can’t keep up with the insane financial demands of youth sports in its current state. Harvard has special labs for everything. I’m sure they spare some change to create one focused on the inequities in youth sports.