For Catelyn—who, seated in the vital position of stroke, or rower nearest the coxswain, would dictate the shell's pace—the promotion culminated a college career sidetracked by hip and back injuries that had forced her to sit out one year and be less than full strength in other seasons. Because of the time she'd missed, she was still eligible to row for UVA even though she had graduated the year before with a B average and was now studying for a master's degree in education.

  Catelyn's parents were both on hand for the race. Her father, Gary, a renowned chef, has presided over the kitchen at New York City's Tavern on the Green and other well-known restaurants. Her mother, Rena, is a successful author of children's cookbooks. Catelyn learned to row as a freshman at the Baldwin School, a girls” prep school in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. “Basically, I wasn't really concerned with college for a long time in high school,” Catelyn told me. “If I tried and when I tried, I was a good student. But my attitude was,? don't care, I can float along with trying a minuscule Andria Haneman, sitting directly behind Catelyn, was the only freshman in the top varsity boat. Andria, whose father owns a waste removal company, had planned to focus on basketball at Holy Spirit High School in Absecon, New Jersey. But coaches there noticed her height (she's also five foot eleven) and steered her to rowing, which she grew to love. “They told me, ‘It's hard to get into college for basketball. Try rowing, it's a growing sport,’” she said.

  Andria said that one of her closest friends in high school, who had a similar academic record to hers but was not a recruited athlete, had been wait-listed by Virginia. Her friend wasn't resentful, she said, because he knew how much time and energy she had put into rowing. “You have to be intelligent to balance athletics and academics,” she said. “It's a different kind of intelligence—time management.”

  Besides UVA, Duke and Syracuse recruited Andria. She could have rowed for an Ivy League school, she told me, “but I didn't want to take the SATs again. The Ivies wanted something closer to the 1300s. I could go to Virginia anyway, and it's the number one public university.”

  UNLIKE LEGACY and development preferences, athletic preference rewards applicants for their own accomplishments rather than their parents’. Still, it's debatable whether, and how much, colleges should value athletic prowess—particularly when opportunities to excel in sports are unevenly distributed in our society. Because fund-raising considerations influence colleges” choice of the sports they sponsor and the athletes they recruit, athletic preference, like legacy and development, favors the wealthy, the white, and the well-connected.

  Currying favor with alumni and donors, elite colleges that profess to aspire to racial and socioeconomic diversity lower the bar for athletes in sports that are segregated by both race (white) and class (upper). The introduction of women's teams in country club sports under the gender-equity law Title IX has exacerbated this tendency. Coaches in all sports, meanwhile, have been known to reserve roster spots for borderline athletes whose parents have the capacity to endow a stadium or scholarship.

  “Athletics is a major area where the playing field is tilting as we speak,” said Harvard admissions dean William Fitzsimmons. “It's not just the sports you think of as upper-class sports. Even in my old sport, ice hockey, it would probably cost $2,000 to $3,000 to outfit a goaltender with all the latest high-tech stuff.” Because of limited budgets, he added, urban public schools are eliminating varsity sports or charging participation fees. “That works against kids from the bottom half and bottom quarter of the income range. It's also true for music and dance. People who are middle-class and above now have a much bigger edge when it comes not just to academic opportunity but athletic and extracurricular opportunities.”

  No wonder that, contrary to the stereotype, varsity athletes at elite colleges are more homogenous, both racially and socioeconomically, than the student bodies as a whole. Counterbalancing the diversity of football and basketball teams is an array of segregated sports: men's golf (87.6 percent white, 2.0 percent black, 1.4 percent Hispanic, 5.2 percent international students), men's lacrosse (90.9 percent white, 1.8 percent black, 1 percent Hispanic), women's lacrosse (91.0 percent white, 2.2 percent black, 0.9 percent Hispanic), women's horseback riding (92.8 percent white, 0.9 percent At Middlebury College in Vermont, a faculty committee found in 2002 that 26 percent of athletes had family incomes over $200,000—compared with 21 percent of nonathletes. Similarly, a recent study of nineteen Ivy League universities and liberal arts colleges found that only 6 percent of recruited athletes came from the poorest one-fourth of American families, versus 12 percent of nonathletes. “Recruited athletes as a group do not contribute to racial or socioeconomic diversity,” the study concluded.

  As a taxpayer-supported state institution, the University of Virginia's primary mission is to provide a high-quality, affordable education to bright young Virginians—and, by so doing, to give a leg up to promising low-income graduates of public elementary and secondary schools. Yet the women's crew team at the university illustrates how athletic preference helps the already advantaged. Like college squads in many sports that are rarely seen on television or covered by the national media, the women's rowing team (Virginia has no men's varsity rowing team) is virtually all white and predominantly affluent.

  Although 68 percent of the student body as a whole comes from Virginia, the women's crew team is mainly composed of out-of-state private school graduates (from such upper-class bastions as Noble and Greenough in Massachusetts, Exeter in New Hampshire, Lawrenceville in New Jersey, and Sidwell Friends in Washington, D.C.) and international students. Few of its sixty athletes would have made the grade at the elite university on academics alone. Yet they are not only admitted but also encouraged to enroll with athletic grants-in-aid—usually called “scholarships,” a misnomer because scholarly attainment is irrelevant to the awards—on the basis of skill in a sport that's inaccessible to or prohibitively expensive for most Americans.

  The Virginia women's crew team is given twelve admissions slots each year, more than any other sport except football. To fill those slots, Coach Sauer submits transcripts and test scores of fifty recruits to the admissions office for preapproval, prioritizing them in three categories: worthy of a full athletic scholarship, partial scholarship, or none. The office approves about forty, whom he may then offer a slot and scholarship; their actual applications for admission, submitted later, are a formality. If the office has denied a top rower, he may prod her to retake the SATs or boost her grades so he can resend her name to the admissions office. Since other universities pursue the same rowers, most enroll elsewhere, but he lands his dozen.

  “Most of the kids we recruit need help to get in,” Coach Sauer said.

  FOR MOST high school athletes, participation in sports is at best a marginal boost to their college admission chances. But for those skilled enough to make the list of recruits that each college coach sends to the admissions office, athletic preference is becoming a bigger factor than ever in getting into elite colleges.

  The number of student athletes at a typical college increased from 332 in 1992-93 to 366 a decade later, reflecting a rise in female athletes prompted by Title IX. Moreover, a higher proportion of varsity athletes enter elite colleges through the sports door than they used to. In the old days, walk-ons—well-rounded undergraduates who tried out for a team because they enjoyed competitive sports—made up the lion's share of college squads. As a professional, win-at-all-costs mentality has pervaded college sports, walk-ons have largely been supplanted by more proficient recruits receiving admissions priority.

  Although big state universities dominate high-profile sports such as football and basketball, recruited athletes make up a higher proportion of students at elite private institutions. That's because the typical Ivy League “If you ever looked at all the sports at Harvard, we don't have a clue about most of those sports,” said Kenneth Still, senior program director for athletics in the Boston public schools. “It reflects what moneys are put into the athletic program here as opposed to private schools. If you're going to Andover or Exeter, one thing they have on their ticket to college admissions is that you have to play sports. They put sports on the same level as they put academics.”

  IN 2002-2003, a Notre Dame coach recruited high school standout Patrick Ghattas, hoping he would help the university win another national championship in a sport it had dominated for decades. There was one stumbling block: his SATs. Although he comes from a well-off family (he described his Lebanese immigrant father as a “savvy investor”) and maintained a B average at prestigious Oregon Episcopal School in Portland, Oregon, Patrick scored only 970 out of 1600—400 points below the university average. While they wanted to accommodate the coach, Notre Dame admissions officials told Patrick they couldn't take him unless he raised his score. On his second try, Patrick nudged his score above 1000. Although it was still more than 300 points under Notre Dame's average, he was admitted and awarded a full athletic scholarship. “That's as low as we'd go” on the SATs, said Daniel Saracino, Notre Dame assistant provost for admissions.

  One might expect Notre Dame, with its glorious football tradition, to dip that far for a quarterback or a linebacker. But Patrick Ghattas is a fencer. He makes passes not with a football but a saber.

  “I always wasn't too good at standardized tests,” he told me in the spring of 2005, when he was a Notre Dame sophomore majoring in political science with a 2.4 grade point average—between a B and a C. “Fencing definitely helped a lot.” Patrick said his high school academic record would have been more impressive if he hadn't missed so many classes to travel to fencing tournaments.

  Patrick's SATs “were much higher than the average athlete in many universities,” said Notre Dame fencing coach Janusz Bednarski. “Test results are not everything. I know who is a hard worker. I am always talking with the coaches. If his coach tells me he is a very serious, goal-oriented kid, I pass my opinion to admissions. We will help him too, with academic services.”

  Football, basketball, and ice hockey—major sports that generate revenue and television exposure—generally command the most deference from college admissions officers. But even in blue-blooded sports, many recruits benefit from significant admissions edges. Reclaiming the Game, a 2003 study of selective colleges by William G. Bowen and Sarah A. Levin, found SAT scores of recruited athletes lagging behind those of other students in such affluent sports as men's squash (a 67-point gap at Ivy League universities) and men's golf (66 points). “The more selective the school, the greater the admissions advantage enjoyed by its recruited athletes,” they concluded. Premier recruits such as Patrick Ghattas enjoy a bigger advantage than borderline candidates.

  Once in college, Bowen and Levin found, recruited athletes in golf, fencing, crew, squash, and other upper-class sports often sink to the bottom half of their classes academically and are less likely than classmates to earn honors or be elected to Phi Beta Kappa. “Troubling issues of academic performance are not limited to the high-profile sports,” they found.

  Why do these colleges compromise their admissions standards for athletes in marginal sports that don't enhance racial or economic diversity and rarely generate revenue or media buzz? The kindest explanation is that great universities pursue excellence in all their endeavors. In sports, excellence equals winning, winning demands talented athletes, and those athletes need admissions help. The desire to win in all sports great or small is reinforced by the coveted Sears Directors” Cup, given annually since 1994 to the university (usually Stanford) with the best record in athletics across the board, and by bureaucratic pressures to give all sports their due; both the athletic and admissions staffs would balk at denying coaches in minor sports their recruits while giving carte blanche to football. As coaches in any sport win consistently, they gain more credibility and clout with admissions.

  “It's evident that football and basketball have lower standards, but the colleges” attitude is, ‘We'll do something for all the other sports. If we're going to have those sports, let's give them the tools to be successful,”” said Virginia rowing coach Kevin Sauer. “Otherwise what's the point to having a team? If you're restricted to the overall academic criteria at your school, the schools that are easier to get into would have a huge advantage. If the tougher schools loosen their criteria a little bit, that levels the playing field.”

  The first-year grade point average for women rowers at the University of Virginia in the fall of 2003 (3.0) trailed the university median (3.18). Still, Sauer contended that athletes contribute intellectually. “It's not just about having the best and brightest students,” he said. “You should have academic diversity as well. If you have kids who have to struggle, it brings a good mix. That kid may ask a more common-sense question.”

  Many of the minor sports are played in the Olympics, drawing media coverage (and patriotic fervor) once every four years. Notre Dame fencer Mariel Zagunis, for instance, cast glory on the university by winning a gold medal in women's saber in 2004. The daughter of an investment broker, Mariel grew up in Portland, Oregon, and attended a Catholic high school there. “You'd have to say, fencing is for the fairly well-off,” she told me. “If you want to get serious, you have to have the money, you have to buy expensive equipment, you have to travel nationally and internationally and pay tournament fees and hotels.”

  Like Patrick Ghattas, Mariel trained at the Oregon Fencing Alliance club under the tutelage of Ed Korfanty, the U.S. national coach in women's saber, who has close ties to Notre Dame. A former Notre Dame assistant coach, Korfanty has been friends with Notre Dame coach Janusz Bednarski ever since they fenced against each other many years ago in Poland; later, Korfanty was a member of Poland's Olympic fencing team, which Bednarski coached.

  Mariel, who received a full athletic scholarship, told me that Coach Korfanty steered her to Notre Dame along with three other fencers from his club, including Patrick. “I think my coach pulled some strings,” she said. “He got us all into Notre Dame on a package deal. It was always a given I'd be going to Notre Dame and only Notre Dame.” She acknowledged that academics were not her strong suit at Valley Catholic High in Portland. “I missed a lot of school during high school. That affected my overall grades. Honestly, based on my grades alone, I don't think I would have been what Notre Dame was looking for.” Her SAT score, she added, was “not so good. I was practically out of town for every test date. I could only get into the very last test date. I never had time to take preparatory classes.”

  To prepare for the Olympics, Mariel delayed enrolling at Notre Dame until 2004. In the spring of her freshman year, she told me she was “doing okay” academically and liked her classes. Bednarski, the Notre Dame coach, told me Mariel is “close to the level of the best students” at the university.

  Asked why Notre Dame bends standards for fencers, Saracino told me, “We give special consideration for maybe five, six, seven fencers every year. That's not a significant number.” The assistant provost said that fencing builds geographic diversity by attracting international students and that Notre Dame has won more national championships in the sport than any other university.

  “It's a tradition, much like football,” Saracino said. “Does it get the same attention? No. What you find is, Olympic sports like fencing appeal to academically solid students who have a real talent they're bringing to the university. Even if we don't find thousands of individuals who go out and cheer them on as they're fencing, it still is a sport that does get some attention nationally and does draw to the university students who do really excel.”

  Still, there's another reason why elite universities go to such lengths for upper-class sports—money. While almost invisible to the nation at large, these sports are important to wealthy alumni and donors who played them in college or enjoy them as leisure activities. For instance, several major donors on Harvard's Committee on University Resources rowed for the school, including former Olympians Richard Cashin and Franklin Hobbs IV, and A. Clinton Allen III, the stroke on Harvard's undefeated 1966 team. The late COUR chairman Robert Stone captained Harvard's heavyweight crew in 1947 and endowed the men's heavyweight crew coach's position in 2001. Those four ex-rowers alone have had eight children enroll at Harvard—including Frances Cashin, R. Gregg Stone III, and Jennifer R Stone, who followed their parents on Harvard crew. Fellow committee member Finn M. W Caspersen, a big giver to Harvard Law School and Brown University, is a devotee of rowing and horseback riding and has supported both sports financially.

  In 1995, former Williams College squash star Greg Zaff founded Squashbusters, a nonprofit program that teaches middle-school and high-school minority students from inner-city Boston to play squash, while also providing mentoring, academic enrichment, and college counseling. “Make no mistake about it: squash is a meal ticket into these top schools if you're good enough at it and you've got some academic firepower,” Zaff said. Asked why elite colleges care about squash success, he said, “The squash world is a moneyed world. The alumni have deep pockets. There's disproportionate power in the squash world, so it's good to have a great team. You attract the attention of powerful rich people, and the money of powerful rich people.”

  Perhaps no sport attracts powerful rich people as much as polo, a game in which mallet-wielding horseback riders wearing helmets, white pants, and boots try to whack a small ball into a goal. Known as the sport of kings, a favorite recreation of Prince Charles and other members of England's royal family, polo is played at only a handful of U.S. high schools and hasn't been an Olympic sport since 1936. Yet top prospects enjoy admissions preference from at least two elite colleges, Cornell and the University of Virginia, which annually duke it out for the national title.