As our loyal readers know, America’s elite colleges, including the Ivy League colleges, seek singularly talented students. One such singular talent can be a sport — provided the college coach at that institution is recruiting the student for that sport. If a student swims but isn’t fast enough to get recruited by Ivy League swim coaches, participation in that sport isn’t an angle for admission (in fact, it’s detrimental since it won’t serve the college). Yet as we’ve long pointed out, we believe the Ivy League and highly selective schools offer too many slots to recruited athletes.

But we’re not talking about the athletes who play football, basketball, or baseball. These all-American, time-honored sports spur school spirit in the student body, draw everyone together, and generate revenue. No, we’re talking about the sports that require immense financial and physical resources to play, the kinds of pursuits exclusively available at America’s elite private schools and suburban public schools. There is no reason why squash, fencing, crew, or golf players should receive the number of earmarked slots in incoming classes that they do at America’s highly selective colleges, especially in the Ivy League, which purports to be a beacon of American meritocracy. 

Ivy League Athletic Recruits Are Often Wealthy

We understand that football is a revenue-generating sport. And we know that the further a college’s basketball team advances in March Madness — if they make the Tourney — the more applications the school will likely receive in the subsequent admissions cycle. But squash? Swimming? Crew? Do these teams need so many reserved slots in each incoming class? And who exactly is filling these slots? According to a comprehensive analysis by The Daily Princetonian, the answer is students hailing from the wealthiest zip codes in the country.

As author Liam O’Connor writes, “The homes of the Ivy League’s more than 7,000 athletes were clustered around the suburbs of major cities. They mostly lived in the Interstate 95 Corridor, which extends from Washington, D.C. to Boston. Other hotspots included Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. One in 10 American players lived in a hometown featured on Bloomberg’s 2018 list of ’100 Richest Places.’ Connecticut’s Gold Coast had the highest concentration of athletes of any area in the U.S. One hundred and ninety-five came from lower Fairfield County, a third of whom were Greenwich residents alone. Rowing was the most popular sport there, followed by squash.”

Ivy League Athletic Recruits Hail from More or Less the Same Fancy Schools

Sports like squash, crew, and golf require expensive facilities, tons of space, and lots of time and money to hone your craft and buy the right equipment. Most schools simply cannot afford this level of commitment to a sport so few play. It should come as no surprise then that recruited athletes joining these teams consistently come from the most prestigious private schools in the nation (and sometimes, internationally!). Let’s take a look at the tuition costs of the top private schools filling Princeton’s athletic rosters, as reported by O’Connor:

Elite High School	Location	Day School Tuition Costs
Noble and Greenough School	Dedham, MA	$62,600
Deerfield Academy	Deerfield, MA	$53,860
Phillips Exeter Academy	Exeter, NH	$52,577
The Lawrenceville School	Lawrenceville, NJ	$65,420
Eton College	Windsor, UK	£52,749
St. Paul’s School	London, UK	£31,170

When one considers that the costs outlined above are just for tuition and that a whole other set of expenses are incurred to board at these respective institutions (as athletes often must do to commit to their discipline), the actual socioeconomic disparities between recruited athletes of country club sports and the rest of the Ivy League student bodies are thrown into stark relief.

We at Ivy Coach dream of a future where the Ivy League truly represents the most talented young adults in the world, not simply those who were lucky enough to be born into the right families or zoned in the correct zip codes.