I also attended CMU (SCS). I'm not sure how many other schools do this, but when applying to CMU you apply to specific departments and the acceptance decision is handled at the department level. This causes there to be a great variance in the paper qualifications of attending students across the school.
You can see that compared to the other departments that the College of Fine Arts lags "significantly" behind the other "academically rigorous" departments. Yet even that being the case, we have one of the strongest fine arts programs in the country with many of the programs being considered top 10.
My reason for bringing this up is that college admissions are (and should be) based on something more meaningful than paper qualifications. The point of a well rounded University is to foster a place of learning across a varied set of fields. Who is to say that athletics is any more or less worthwhile than Fine Arts, Drama, or Computer Science? Athletics contribute a lot to a school's experience. Who cares if their grades are slightly lower and didn't get perfect SAT scores. They are recruited because they have astounding talent in their respective fields just like a geek might have a talent for numbers or a music major has talent for playing the piano.
http://my.cmu.edu/portal/site/admission/adm_statistics/
You can see that compared to the other departments that the College of Fine Arts lags "significantly" behind the other "academically rigorous" departments. Yet even that being the case, we have one of the strongest fine arts programs in the country with many of the programs being considered top 10.
My reason for bringing this up is that college admissions are (and should be) based on something more meaningful than paper qualifications. The point of a well rounded University is to foster a place of learning across a varied set of fields. Who is to say that athletics is any more or less worthwhile than Fine Arts, Drama, or Computer Science? Athletics contribute a lot to a school's experience. Who cares if their grades are slightly lower and didn't get perfect SAT scores. They are recruited because they have astounding talent in their respective fields just like a geek might have a talent for numbers or a music major has talent for playing the piano.
(I am not and never was an athlete)