The book focuses on NESCAC and Ivy League schools and includes discussion of a report released in 2000 by The Special Committee on the Place of Athletics at Amherst.
Comparing academics
According to Bowen and Levin, at NESCAC schools, recruited high-profile male athletes (those who play helmet sports such as football, hockey and lacrosse) on average score 140 points lower on their SATs than male non-athletes and 77 points lower than walk-on athletes. Recruited low-profile male athletes on average score 62 points lower than male non-athletes and seven points lower than male walk-on athletes. Recruited women athletes score 68 points lower than both non-athletes and walk-on athletes.
According to Bowen and Levin, in the classrooms of NESCAC schools, recruited high-profile male athletes on average are in the bottom 23rd percentile of their classes, while walk-on high-profile male athletes are in the 40th percentile and males at large are in the 49th percentile. Recruited low-profile male athletes fall into the 37th percentile, while walk-on low-profile athletes fall into the 46th. Recruited female athletes make up the 46th percentile of their class, while walk-on female athletes are in the 54th percentile and females at large are in the 58th.
The College athletics department tries to recruit student-athletes who will perform well both on the field and in the classroom. "We recruit quite hard with a dual purpose-we want to recruit the best possible student-athletes," said director of athletics Peter Gooding. "It is a significant challenge to maintain a competitive level of teams participating in NESCAC competition, while at the same time trying to improve the academic quality of the student-athlete."
Gooding believes that athletes at the College are admitted on a more selective basis than their athlete-counterparts at other schools. "The academic profile of most Amherst College athletic teams is a stronger profile than the general student body of the large majority of NESCAC schools. This is because we are much more academically selective in the admission process than most other NESCAC institutions," said Gooding.
Men's basketball coach Dave Hixon '75 agreed with Gooding. "The student-athletes here are very similar to the general student body," Hixon said. "I believe Amherst does as good a job as any school in the country in admissions, if not the best job. We have terrific leadership in admissions under Tom Parker in dealing with the whole complicated process of admissions ... and in balancing the pie, including athletics."
The balance is particularly essential at a small college. "My impression is that the balance has been found better here than at most colleges and universities," said President Tony Marx.
Some faculty members are confident that student-athletes take as much advantage of opportunities offered at the College as non-athletes. "Student-athletes enter many groups after arriving on campus and are as diverse as any other large population of students, and many who are wrapped up in sports upon entry develop a broader outlook during their time here," said Professor of History John Servos. Servos serves as a faculty member on the admissions committee.
"The problem is that student-athletes may be more likely to fall into groups that are indifferent or hostile to intellectual life when they come to college than others," he said.
Although some non-athletes agree that the College is recruiting athletes too heavily, others believe that athletes contribute to the student body. "Athletics should be seen as another facet
of Amherst's diversity," said Jake Thomas '07.
Athletic recruits
To a reputable athletic program, occasionally stretching the standard of admissions is necessary.
"The difficulty at a place like Amherst is that we're at such a high place-the top half of one percent. You just don't find certain types of people here-people who are six foot seven ... How far will Amherst deviate to get these people here? We find we will deviate two standard deviations," said Dean of Admissions Tom Parker.
Coaches at the College recognize that the admissions office considers many factors in their admissions decisions. "The admissions at the College is consummately professional," said Jack Arena, head coach of the men's hockey and golf teams. "When they say yes to a student or no to a student, we respect their decision."
Although the admissions office makes the ultimate decisions about all student admissions to the College, student-athletes who are recruited by various coaches do have an advantage. "The typical recruited athlete in NESCAC had slightly more than twice as good a chance of getting in as did other NESCAC applicants with similar credentials," wrote Bowen and Levin.
In NESCAC schools, recruited athletes make up one-quarter of the men and one-sixth of the women in matriculating freshmen classes.
The College is conducting internal checks and collaborating with other NESCAC schools to plan a holistic solution that will cover recruitment in the league. According to Parker, "We're working very hand in hand within NESCAC, meeting three times a year to work out an equivalency between the schools," Parker said.
The College is already implementing changes. The number of recruited athletes at the College has steadily been decreasing, from 96 in 1995 to 67 in the class of 2003.
"The issue of athletics and admissions has been discussed and examined carefully for the last five years, and it has had a direct impact on how we recruit student-athletes and the number of student-athletes that are admitted to the College," said Gooding. "The review process for the admission of student-athletes has involved admission officers, coaches and a number of members of the faculty."
Keeping student-athlete admissions standards constant within the NESCAC schools is a first step towards equalizing the admissions process. However, this is difficult since each of the eleven NESCAC schools have their own admissions standards.
It is impossible to declare a minimum SAT score or GPA for acceptance of a student-athlete applicant into a NESCAC school since not all NESCAC schools require the SAT for admission, and the schools consider an applicant's entire file before making any official decisions.
"If compromising standards is going from top one percent to top seven percent then I don't think that's much of a compromise. What I do worry about is underperformance," said Parker.
In "Reclaiming the Game," Bowen and Levin write that admissions committees should raise the academic standard for recruited athletes. When an athlete is recruited, the coach puts the applicant's name on a list called the "tip list." The athletes listed receive more lenient admissions considerations.
The College does have academic standards for recruited athletes. There is a minimum SAT score for all recruited athletes. Coaches are asked to not place students who fall below the minimum score on the "tip list."
Improving academics
Until NESCAC schools are able to create a more definitive standard in the admissions process for student-athletes, the schools are doing their bests to increase student-athletes' academic performances. In past years NESCAC presidents discussed the possibility of creating Division III-A, another league of just academically-orientated small liberal arts schools. In Division III-A, schools could maintain their athletic teams but with a lesser emphasis on athletics in order to return the admissions focus to academic performance.
The idea of Division III-A is a few years old, but differing opinions among the colleges have slowed the progress of its creation; there is a general lack of interest among NESCAC and other small liberal arts schools.
NESCAC presidents have also discussed placing a limit on the number of hours a student-athlete can spend participating in his or her sport, hopefully leaving athletes with more time to spend on academic work.
"[We really need to] look carefully at the level at which we play," said Parker. "I think we're going to start looking systematically at it. There are 450 [students] in our entering class and we want everything. There may be a time when we decide a school of our size can't sustain this number of varsity sports. The best thing to do is study ourselves and break it down by teams and genders to see where underperformance is prevalent."