The Amazing Admissions Advantages for Athletes at the Apex of Academia
Who gets the biggest leg up in the U.S. higher education admissions race? Not minorities or legacies, but jocks.
That’s a good way to go places.
Photographer: Flickr user Rivigan
Ohio State University is famous as a sports powerhouse. The same can’t really be said of Amherst College, a small liberal arts school in Massachusetts known mainly for academics.
But Amherst prides itself on having “the oldest athletics program in the nation,” and it boasts 27 intercollegiate teams to Ohio State’s 37 or so (it depends on what and how you count).2 According to the U.S. Department of Education, there are 593 student-athletes at Amherst and 1,065 at Ohio State. Divide those numbers by the undergraduate student populations — 1,849 at Amherst and 46,820 at OSU’s main campus in Columbus — and it turns out that 32 percent of Amherst students are intercollegiate athletes, compared with just 2.3 percent at Ohio State. Amherst’s football team alone makes up 4.1 percent of the student body. Which one was the sports powerhouse again?