Olympian Emily Hughes to Attend Harvard University While Continuing Skating Career

[icesk8erdude4e]

she's in for a wingding ride, and I agree with the above posters that she's have to upgrade a LOT of her skating for her to make it as a skater she should just take advantage of this oppurtunity to attend school and make the best of it.

 

[Joesitz (RIP)]

Why is everyone bagging on Emily's ability to balance school and skating? It's not as if there isn't any flexibility in college. You choose the classes you take and your schedule. Plus Emily has a good team of coaches in Massachusetts. Mark Mitchell isn't anything to scoff at. I wouldnt' be surprised if her skating improves with the switch.

I believe the Thread's question if being discussed.

 

[chuckm]

Emily HAS to take a full courseload. There's no getting around that. From what she's said, if there should be a point where she can't keep skating without compromising her education, education will always come first.

 

[Tonichelle]

why does she have to take a full load of courses? I missed that part...

 

[feraina]

Harvard is very lenient about taking leaves of absence or half course load. I don't see how putting off Harvard for a year to concentrate on skating is compromising her education. In Britain the majority of kids take a year off between high school and college; it's called "gap year." Doing both at once seems like compromising both her education and her skating. Besides, going to college isn't only about passing classes, and a university like Harvard has especially a lot to offer outside classes. It'd be a shame if she had no time for anything but skating, coursework, and sleeping...

 

[euterpe]

Harvard is very lenient about taking leaves of absence or half course load.

That's after the student has established herself as a matriculated student by carrying a full year's course load. Emily has to take a full load for her first year.

I don't see how putting off Harvard for a year to concentrate on skating is compromising her education. In Britain the majority of kids take a year off between high school and college; it's called "gap year."

Once she finishes a year at Harvard, Emily could take a year off. But I suspect that she wouldn't do that until the next Olympic season.

Doing both at once seems like compromising both her education and her skating. Besides, going to college isn't only about passing classes, and a university like Harvard has especially a lot to offer outside classes. It'd be a shame if she had no time for anything but skating, coursework, and sleeping...

I agree that Emily cannot do full justice to either her education or her skating by trying to do both at once. Lots of skaters have attended college and still competed, but none achieved top ratings at Nationals or Worlds:

Paul Wylie - no national title, never top 6 at Worlds. Won his OSM the year after he graduated Harvard
Matt Savoie - no national title, never top 6 at Worlds
Tonya Kwiatkowski - no national title, top 6 at Worlds the year after she graduated
Amber Corein - no national title, never top 3, never got to Worlds
Alissa Czisny - no national title, one top 3 medal, top 15 at Worlds
Derrick Delmore - no national title or medal, never got to Worlds

 

[morninglight]

Most of the time the past two years, Emily spent hardly any time at school. She did her assignments on her own.

That's really interesting. Did all the universities she applied offer her admission because of her skating career, rather than her academic achievement?

 

[Spun Silver]

Not all or entirely but non-academics play a big role in US college admissions. But Emily is also a very good student who comes from an educationally oriented family. I don't remember details, but she received a college tuition grant from the USFSA this year based on her good achievement.

And home-schooling, or in the case of kids who perform, self-schooling, is perfectly accepted. All the kids have to do the same college entrance exams, so there's a fairly objective measurement of their achievement.

ETA: And if you've ever seen Emily interviewed you can see she's Harvard material insofar as it is training many of the nation's future leaders. She is Ms. Personality and clearly very bright and self-assured!

 

[morninglight]

Not all or entirely but non-academics play a big role in US college admissions. But Emily is also a very good student who comes from an educationally oriented family. I don't remember details, but she received a college tuition grant from the USFSA this year based on her good achievement.

And home-schooling, or in the case of kids who perform, self-schooling, is perfectly accepted. All the kids have to do the same college entrance exams, so there's a fairly objective measurement of their achievement.

ETA: And if you've ever seen Emily interviewed you can see she's Harvard material insofar as it is training many of the nation's future leaders. She is Ms. Personality and clearly very bright and self-assured!

Thank you for your explanations about the school system in the US. I now have a better picture. I very much appreciate it.

Yes, I can totally see that she is a bright young lady with great personality.

I am more familiar with Japanese systems where I am from. The way it works there is that some of the private universities offer an admission to exceptionally talented students in any fields. Using this system, some of the top skaters go to top private universities like Waseda University (Yuka Sato, Fumie Suguri, Shizuka Arakawa) in Tokyo or Ritsumei University in Kyoto.

But I don't think that the national or public universities have that option unless they changed the rules in recent years.

Yet, there is one skater who goes to the top national university. Noriyuki Kanzaki, who was placed 4th at the Japanese Nationals and 7th at the Four Continents Championships, has been in Kyoto University, the second best university in Japan after University of Tokyo, for his undergrad and grad programs. The admission is given purely by academic achievement; so I think it great that he balances these two achievements at very high levels.

Home-schooling is not really common over there. But with regard to exceptionally talented students like Mao & Mai Asada, Takahiko Kozuka, and Miki Ando (all in Chukyo high school & university), the school would do everything possible to support them. Indeed, they have built a rink for them! Kansai Univ, which Takahashi & Oda attend, has also built a rink. For private schools like Chukyo high school & university and Kansai University, having those star students is certainly helpful in competing with the other schools, given that the number of kids is decreasing in Japan.

I also saw a TV show featuring Yuna Kim (Yuna & Mao talk-show in Tokyo, April 2007) and what astonished me was that the school principal called Yuna as the "treasure of our school" because she has let the world know of their school. Further, they have a museum of Yuna in the school!

 

[Spun Silver]

But with regard to exceptionally talented students like Mao & Mai Asada, Takahiko Kozuka, and Miki Ando (all in Chukyo high school & university), the school would do everything possible to support them. Indeed, they have built a rink for them! Kansai Univ, which Takahashi & Oda attend, has also built a rink.

WOW. Now that is something that no school in America would do for any skater or even any football player (which counts for a lot more here)! It really demonstrates how important skating has become in Japanese society.

I also saw a TV show featuring Yuna Kim (Yuna & Mao talk-show in Tokyo, April 2007) and what astonished me was that the school principal called Yuna as the "treasure of our school" because she has let the world know of their school. Further, they have a museum of Yuna in the school!

WOW. I don't think that would happen here either. There is a great concern with allowing even exceptional kids to be normal. Or maybe I should say pretending they are normal. Money buys you the right to be different, but talent generally does not.

 

[feraina]

WOW. Now that is something that no school in America would do for any skater or even any football player (which counts for a lot more here)! It really demonstrates how important skating has become in Japanese society.

Well, most top schools on the East Coast already have ice rinks of their own (Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Dartmouth, Boston Univeristy, just to name a few that I know about; and here in Princeton, the local private secondary school has its own rink as well). I don't know the history of these rinks, whether they were more for the purpose of FS or hockey, although all of them in use for both currently. I also can't imagine any private or public universities/schools at the present time building rinks for specific athletes, but U.S. FS is a popularity slump, and there are already so many rinks in all the urban areas!

Regarding entrance into top universities in the U.S., they don't just look at your standardized test scores (SAT, ACT, AP), but also what your teachers write about you, what you write about yourself (in terms of who you are, what you want to do with you life, why the school is good for you, and what you can bring to the school, etc), what you do outside classes (in sports, music, community service, leadership activities, etc.), how you spend your time in the summers... It's definitely not just your grades for most top universities (with the exception of MIT & Caltech, although even they they look at all the rest of what you bring). With the SAT being so easy, and the internal criteria of different secondary schools so variable, and their pools of applicants 10 times the size of what they can take, they have to look at something other than grades. I know that at Princeton University (where I work), they actually create quotas for athletes of different disciplines and admit them at different criteria than "normal" applicants (the FS club here is lobbying the university for this special treatment) -- one reason for doing this is to create interesting team sport events to make the alumni proud, who in turn donate more (this really works!). The department I'm in (Psychology) is looking for ways to up the difficulty of their degree programs so as to discourage some of those specially admitted athletes from pursuing a Psychology degree as an "easy way out." I think for someone like Emily, she just needs good grades, not amazing ones, combined with her Olympic credentials, to get into most ivy league schools (for instance, I think being an Olympian counts more than having perfect SAT's).