Sports

At Stuyvesant, anyone that achieves a high score on a multiple choice test can gain admission. In college, on the other hand, the process is much more complicated with other criteria considered. Among these criteria is the ability to excel at sports. At an elite school like Harvard University, athletes should indeed have to qualify academically in order to gain admissions. They should not, however, be held to higher standards.

Since the publication of the article “In a New Era at Harvard, New Questions of Standards” in the March 3 addition of The New York Times, Harvard has received criticism from other Ivy League coaches for recruiting basketball players of a lower academic standing than they have in the past. They believe that while Harvard was technically allowed to accept these players, it sacrificed its tradition of student quality to improve their basketball program, putting it at an advantage over other Ivy League basketball programs, which are not willing to make that sacrifice.

“There seems to have been a drastic shift in restrictions and regulations with the Harvard admissions office,” Yale basketball coach James Jones said in the Times article.

The Harvard freshman class is, however, ranked as one of the top 25 in the nation. This, in addition to the hiring of a new coach, symbolizes Harvard’s desire to win the Ivy League basketball title, something it has never done before.

Jones’s complaint is grounded in the Academic Index (AI), a scale used by the Ivy League to determine athlete eligibility and rate applicants. The total AI is out of 240 and to be eligible to play, a student-athlete needs at least 170. There are three components to the AI: average SAT I score, average SAT II score, and class rank or Grade Point Average (GPA). Each part is out of 80, so a student with a 1620 (out of 2400) on the SAT I, a 480 (out of 800) on three SAT IIs, and a 90 GPA would have an AI score of 171, barely qualifying him or her to play in the Ivy League.

According to assistant coaches under former Harvard basketball coach Frank Sullivan, a 171 AI never would have qualified an athlete for Harvard. They said that under their previous staff, the team needed to maintain an average AI of at least 202. They are currently complaining because the prospects that current coach Tommy Amaker recruited have an average AI lower than this mark.

“There are guys that we couldn’t touch that other schools in our league could recruit,” former Harvard assistant coach Lamar Reddicks said in the same Times article.

Complaints about this fact are ridiculous. Under Sullivan, Harvard set an arbitrarily high standard for its athletes. A 170 AI is the bare minimum a student needs to be eligible for the Ivy League, and there is no reason for Harvard athletes to be held to higher standards.

It is here that the application process of Stuyvesant and that of universities differ. To get into Stuyvesant, one needs to score high on a test, in which one simply either qualifies or doesn’t. In contrast, colleges not only look at test scores, but at grades, extra-curricular activities and other outstanding qualities.

The beauty of colleges is their ability to accept a student based on an outstanding talent that cannot be measured by a standardized test. Harvard, in accepting basketball players with lower AI scores than previous years, is merely exercising this right. The acceptance of a student with low academic credentials into Harvard for his or her skill in basketball should not be viewed as unjust.