(07-13-2023 09:24 PM)DawgNBama Wrote:  

(07-13-2023 06:54 PM)DFW HOYA Wrote:  Is football a way that the Ivy League can recapture its lost glory?

Football requires much more scholarships than basketball, and it takes awhile to win in football too!!

The Ivies' lost glory isn't in basketball. One would be hard pressed to name five great former Ivy League basketball stars. Football is the traditional sport when one thinks of the Ivy League, with the stadiums and what's left of its fan base of the past. This video was from the 1980s when Penn could get 35,000 for a game. Now, they're lucky to break 8,000.

Ivy schools do the best in men's lacrosse which makes sense since its mainly a middle class private school sport. Ice hockey is probably 2nd since its another middle class private school sport. Harvard, Yale, and Cornell have all won national championships but Brown, Dartmouth, Princeton havent had the same amount of success. So no basketball isnt a way that the Ivy League can recapture its lost glory and the way they can is with lacrosse and ice hockey. Surprisingly, they havent had much success in men's soccer and you'd think that's another sport they would do well in.

(07-13-2023 10:12 AM)bryanw1995 Wrote:  

(07-13-2023 08:18 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  As long as the Ivy League schools don’t provide athletic scholarships, they’re realistically not going to compete with the P5/Big East in basketball.

That being said, they punch above their weight against everyone else because of who they can attract based on academics.

For instance, I have a co-worker whose son is on the Princeton basketball team that made the Sweet Sixteen this year. He would have very easily been able to get a non-P5/Big East basketball scholarship. However, he is also a legitimate genius (if I listed out his resume, you quickly realize the insane qualifications it now takes to get into an Ivy League school today far beyond great grades and test scores). So, he couldn’t turn down an opportunity to attend Princeton.

To AssKickingChicken’s point, the Ivy League schools are generally very competitive in the sports that aren’t full scholarship teams. When you remove the athletic scholarship component and provide the Ivy League brand (plus the fact that their need-based financial aid is so strong), they get a ton of great athletes outside of football and basketball.

Now, if people have been paying attention to the evidence presented in the Harvard Supreme Court case that was recently decided, the whole irony of this discussion is that it’s actually waaaaaay more of an admissions advantage to be a recruited athlete for getting into an Ivy League school than it is to get into Alabama or Ohio State. So, it’s a great misnomer whenever it’s stated that the Ivy League supposedly “doesn’t care about sports”. The reality is that being a recruited athlete is the single greatest admission advantage that an applicant has in getting into the Ivy League (way more than legacy status and even more than if a family donates legitimately millions of dollars.)

Friend of my daughter got accepted by Cornell for this fall with a 1570 SAT, #3 in class of 500 at one of the top publics in Texas, good activities but not insanely good (he's a theater nerd mainly, he might have been President of the local kid's community theater group at one point). However, he chose to go to Duke, instead. They were both backup schools for him from 1. MIT and 2. GT. Every time I see him I want to ask for more details, but daughter gets embarrassed and tells me to leave him alone.

The point is, it's wise to apply to all the T1 schools if you're Academically qualified. Not just the Ivies, but Rice, Stanford, Duke, MIT, Chicago, CalTech, etc etc. You might get 10 acceptances or 0, but they get so many qualified applicants that it's sometimes just random chance that you get accepted to a couple but not all the others.

My daughter wants to go to Columbia. I told her the other day that her best way in was to become good at a sport that they sponsor, like Rowing. She rolled her eyes, laughed at me, and changed the subject. I guess she's not that interested in Columbia...

Interesting that you say this since one of the kids on my daughter’s club swim team just got an offer from Columbia. Stats are 4.0 GPA in all honors/AP classes at a super-competitive high school, 1580 SAT, and one of the top 10 male swimmers in the state. Other Ivies are also after him and he’s getting P5 interest. He’s essentially the perfect profile of a recruited athlete for an Ivy school: he clearly meets the academic standards and is also a legit elite athlete.

Do they even want to?

(07-14-2023 06:26 AM)TerryD Wrote:  Do they even want to?

Simply put, no. Why would you do it when the titans of the business world are endowing buildings and other resources that many of the schools looked at on this site would kill for.

Bryan: so you’re mad your daughter wants to use academic merit to get into Columbia?