Thu 15 Apr 2004
If “tips” are students that would not have been accepted to Williams were it not for their athletic ability, we need a term for students who were accepted to Williams because of their academic ability but whose athletic experience at Williams was negatively impacted by the tip system. Perhaps “tip-offs” or “untips” or . . .
Whatever you call these individuals, Nate Foster ‘01 was one:
I think you hit the nail on the head with your last blog post on tips.
I was a decent, though by no means outstanding, baseball player at my high school and captained the team my senior year. Many of my teammates went on to play at small colleges. So when I showed up at Williams, I thought I might be able to “walk on” to the baseball team, even though Barnard didn’t know anything about me. There were a few of first years (3-4?) in the same position.
Barnard ostensibly gave us a fair shot at making the team, but it soon became clear that in his mind, we were fighting for the last 1-2 spots on a 26-man Florida roster (it’s 32 now?). After a few months of training where it was clear that even if we did make the team, we would probably never play in our 4 years with the number of people who were being tipped/recruited, all of us quit.
I like to think that I could have played baseball at the DIII level. And I feel ashamed to have bailed out before finding out for sure if I could have made the team and/or played. But at the same time, like you, I wonder why we need to have a baseball team that dominates NESCAC when there are people who get into Williams without tips and with whom we could field a competitive baseball team. All of this about needing tips to keep the balance of culture at Williams and prevent us from becoming Swarthmore is total crap (and, given Sam Crane’s recent comments about the intellectual culture at Williams, becoming more like Swarthmore might not be a bad thing!) We could certainly field competitive (if not dominant) teams without using so many, if any, tips.
What he said.
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March 3rd, 2008 at 8:23 am[...] Click below for full image of the squash teams back in the day. Who is that guy with the big hair next to Wendell? The year’s they are a flyin’. That team included several players who had never seen a squash racquet before they came to Williams. Twenty year’s later, this year’s mens squash team is much better, recently finishing 7th in the nation. Congratulations! How many of the men on that team had not played squash before Williams? Where are the Ephs who would have made that team under a different admissions systems? Let us celebrate the achievements of our Eph athletes but never forget the would-be athletes who are missing from the picture. [...]
April 15th, 2004 at 12:40 pm
Are people on the team labeled as tips?
Like when you show up at try-outs, are the tips sitting off in an air conditioned lounge, already wearing the varsity uniform, high-fiving each other with their vastly muscled forearms while the rest of have to sit around on the ground wearing shirts that have your SAT scores in large numbers on the front, pushing your glasses up off of the sweat covered bridge of your nose - the whole time the coach is belittling you, ranting on about how you are making a mockery of the sport?
Have we seen a number as to how many tips each team gets relative to the size of their allowed roster?
For instance, if the baseball team has 32 people on it, are they give 5 possible tips each year? 30?
Does that number change? If so, what causes it to go up/down?
Does the performance of a team change that number? If a team does poorly, are they allotted more tips? Less tips?
And then it would seem it is also worth asking if one is very clearly not making the team because of the tips, or is it just a convenient excuse?
Maybe they should do it the other way - instead of being allowed X tips per year - they should be forced to have N percent of their roster filled with SAT scores of some set value.
If the athletic departments can’t have their tips - then should the music and art departments also be told to go screw when they make a decision based on skill over that of SAT scores?
Like I’ve said before, I would think Howard Gardner might have some interesting thoughts on this.
April 15th, 2004 at 1:16 pm
Hi Eric,
Of course, the tips do not have special “T”s tattooed onto their foreheads. But on the baseball team at least, many of the players were two-sport athletes (with hockey/wrestling if I recall correctly) and of the members of my class, I knew of at least four players who had been identified by coaching staff before coming to Williams. Whether or not they were tips, I can’t say for sure.
Your point about a “convenient excuse” is fair. I’ll be the first to admit that I was not in the same league as the other players on the Williams team. And if I were Coach Barnard, I would have picked the best 26 players for the team regardless of tip status or SAT score. And this would have almost certainly not included me, or the other “walk on” cases.
The question I’m interested in goes like this. Let’s grant that having varsity sports are a net bonus for the College (this may seem obvious, but should not be taken for granted; for example, in the UK, almost all university sports teams are organizationally on par with club sports in the US). And let’s also assume that we would like these teams to be competitive with their NESCAC peers. That is, we don’t want our teams to lose ever game, year after year; that would be demoralizing.
The question is: have we gone too far? The baseball team boasts a nearly .676 record during Dave Barnard’s tenure. Previous coaches had .435, .468, and .559 winning percentages. We bested Emory by 50% in the Sears Cup competition last year! Assuming that the number of tips has gone up in the past 10 years (is this the case?), are we better off completely dominating our peers? Or would we be better off if we scaled back a bit, did less to tweak admissions for really top-notch athletes who are quantifiably less qualified then their peers academically (there are of course, many top-notch atheletes who would get in without tips, let’s ignore these cases) and settled for something closer to .500?
April 15th, 2004 at 1:42 pm
The “convenient excuse” wasn’t necessarily aimed at you, I was merely throwing the question out there - I hope it didn’t come off as an insult or anything.
(that said, I really like the idea of forehead tattoos)
I would tend to agree that perhaps increasing the sports tips over the years is questionable. But I would also have to question my own inclination there - I would be hesitant to fall into the “I remember back in the day we did it this way, and therefore that must have been the right way” sort of thought.
It is incredibly easy to do that I am finding the older I get (at my near geriatric 27). I worked many reunions at Williams where the fellows would sit around grumbling that they didn’t have TV/women/towels/internet/co-ed bathrooms/etc back in their day and the school was a better place for it!
It is very likely (IMO) that an increase in tips is unnecessary. It could even be out and out bad.
But I just feel that there are a lot of comments on here (and not necessarily yours) that fall to quickly towards “Change is bad!” instead of “there is a clear reason that this is bad” sort of discussion.
I know that winning at sports, and by that I do mean going beyond just being competitive, garners a phenomenal amount of worldwide recognition.
One could argue whether or not it is the type that Williams wants - but it is recognition nonetheless. Williams has that reputation of being great at athletics and at academics to maintain - the academics are apparently there since we are number one - so gotta keep the sports up.
I’m curious to see stats on the art and music departments in terms of their “tips” - and do other departments get those too? (or perhaps the art and music department don’t even get them anymore)
April 15th, 2004 at 1:55 pm
The only “tips” are for athletes. While demonstrated talent in some other field will help an applicant, there is nothing like the tip process elsewhere, at least according to the folks I have talked to.
April 15th, 2004 at 2:09 pm
Not sure if they would call it a “tip” but I can think of at least two people that told me that they were told they got into Williams based on the art/music department overriding their SAT score and school grades.
That was nearly 10 years ago now, so perhaps it was a short lived endeavor that no longer exists.
April 15th, 2004 at 2:24 pm
Depends what you mean by “override”. The Athletics Report descibes the admissions process in some detail. If you have an academic rank of 1 out of 9, you get in. If you have a rank of 2, then you might get in or might not. Any sort of specialness (arts, athletics, legacy, wealth, color, whatever) can help. The further down the ranking you go, the more special you need to be. There certainly are people who got in “because of” musical ability since they would not have gotten in otherwise. But, in no sense of the word, were they tipped.
By all accounts that I am aware of, athletic ability matters much, much, much more. It matters a huge amount of you are the 5,000th best football player in the country. It matters barely at all of you are the 5,000th best violin player (or whatever). See the Report for more details.
April 15th, 2004 at 2:56 pm
Here’s one thought on tips. I am a big supporter of Williams athletics, but let’s face it, there’s only a few teams that gain national acclaim / alumni recognition / widespread community involvement for Williams. First and foremost is the men’s basketball team, second is the football team, perhaps soccer might be third. I really doubt that Espn or Sports Illustrated would ever cover the success of the Williams tennis teams in any depth, for example. I am sure it might offend some peple to say that some tips have more institutional pay-off than others, but that is tthe reality: football games keep alums engaged and coming back to campus year after year (you don’t see alumni gatherings for Williams / Amherst baseball games, after all), and men’s basketaball victories over Holy Cross and Amherst and consistent final four appearances bring excitement to campus as well as to alums, plus publicity for Williams, not to mention something fun for the community during the long, cold winter. From a pure cost-beneift analysis, about 20 tips a year concentrated in men’s basketball and football would accomplish nearly the same for school spirit, campus events, and national acclaim, in all likelihood, as 66 tips spread to sports like squash and swimming. I’m not advocating this idea, necessarily, just noting it as one factor to consider.
This may already be happening: the report on athletics indicates that the difference between performance of most recruited athletes and the rest of the student body is barely material. Three unidentified men’s sports feature by far the most dramatic differences. I am curious what those three are, but there is no doubt football is at the top of the list. I would guess Hockey and either Soccer or Basketball are the other two.
On another somewhat related idea, I am in favor of increasing the size of the student body slightly, to closer to 560-580 incoming frosh. Williams has built enormous new arts and science facilties and will soon have a new student center and library to match. The size of the student body has not expanded in decades, while the applicant pool continues to grow. If Williams stays at 66 tips, it could add about 50 more students per year with more of a focus on arts, service, and pure academic studs — the school would still be very manageably sized, but there woudl likely be more going on on campus / more efficient use of the tremendous new facilities, and the classroom impact of the handful of marginal recruited athletes on a proportional basis would be somewhat diluted. Indeed, the average SAT would probably stay the same or even rise somewhat by bringing the percentage of tips and legacy admits down.
Williams’ isolation is probably the biggest drawback in terms of attracting prospective students. Even 50 more students a year would bring more vibrancy to what can be a sleepy campus at times, allow for larger, more cost-effective concerts and lectures, and most importantly, allow more prospective, enthusiastic students to gain the benefits of the Williams experience. Williams should have the academic facilities in place to accomodate this increase by the end of this decade, it’s just a matter of building a few more dorms. Otherwise, I imagine one enormous and one moderate student center, a huge studio art and theater complex, a state of the art science center, and a soon to be designed new library being somewhat underutilized. I don’t think that two extra entries per year would dramatically change the liberal arts character of the school: Middlebury already takes around 570 students per year. Thoughts?
April 15th, 2004 at 4:38 pm
A counter example:
I wrestled in high school and did pretty well, and even moreso, I enjoyed it immensely, to the point where I only even considered colleges that had wrestling teams coupled with good academics and small classes… which basically cut my top choices down to Williams, Wesleyan (where I had legacy status), and Carleton.
My experiences on the wrestling team were overwhelmingly positive. I was one of the worst wrestlers on the team, but being on the team, learning from people better than me was something I’m very glad that I did. The whole team experience created a very supportive and friendly environment that the JA’s in my dorm ultimately failed to provide.
We didn’t have cuts, or roster limits. Most of our trips were by bus, and we had to pay our own way to Florida when we went, although the team paid for the hotel rooms. Since most of our trips were via long bus rides, there weren’t limits on how many of us the team could afford to bring. If there was one problem with the number of kids on the team, it was that with injuries as the season went on, we often didn’t have ENOUGH participants in the room to have a great practice.
Yes, I understand that some sports, like baseball and football have roster limits, and wrestling doesn’t, and that’s probably the difference. Another consideration is that even with our tips, we weren’t a GREAT team, given the competition. I can say without a doubt that without our tips, we would not just have lost the overwhelming majority of our matches, but been blown out as well in most of them.
April 15th, 2004 at 5:31 pm
I don’t know if it is true or not, but I was told that Rob Mitchell was submitted as a tip for the XC/track team and was turned down. (I guess XC/track don’t have much pull at Williams)
He (Rob Mitchell) went on to Amherst and also to then set records in multiple events and be generally our toughest competition in his events (in track for certain at least).
Track and xc also have to buy all of their own equipment, fund their own spring break trip pretty much entirely themselves (we should have tried harder to be like the crew team and get the children of CEOs of a large multinational companies), and apparently xc/track have no pull in tips either.
I would say that track/xc aren’t much of a worry in this tip stuff though since pretty much the entire varsity group while I was there would get academic excellence awards every year.
So with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek, I will guess that all of this must be about the hockey and football teams.
April 15th, 2004 at 9:52 pm
I’m with Nate on this one. We have gone too far. The only thing scaling back (cutting in half?) tips would do would be to increase the losses of our sports teams. Maybe a little adversity would be good educationally!