San Diego Tops The Charts

The first Green Alert poll shut down this morning after 165 ballots were cast. Given a choice of schools from different parts of the country to pick up if Dartmouth should change its football schedule, the voters went strongly for San Diego. The results:

• San Diego 41%
• Montana 19%
• A IA opponent 19%
• Georgetown 12%
• Elon 5%
• Stony Brook 2%
• Don't change the schedule 2%

A new poll is over there to the right, asking which opponent(s) you'd prefer to drop if a change is going to be made. Vote early ... but not too often.

The Daily Dartmouth has a wrapup of the early decision class with a few quotes from recruiting coordinator Adam Hollis. Nothing much new in the story if you've been reading Green Alert and following the links, but check it out here. (Regular decision admits are not included in the story.)

On National Signing Day you might want to take a look at this interactive College Football Recruiting Map, shared by a subscriber. I fiddled with this yesterday and it is addictive. You can type in a school name (unfortunately, the Ivies and FCS [nee IAA] schools aren't included) and find the names and hometowns of committed recruits on a U.S. map. Or, and this is kind of fun, type in a zip code and up will come the BCS (nee IA) recruits within certain distances.

To get an idea of the challenge Dartmouth faces, go ahead and type in 03755, our local zip code, and see how deep the talent pool is in northern New England. Now type in the zip code for Princeton, 08544, and check out the difference.

The next time you see someone wearing a Harvard sweatshirt or Dartmouth windbreaker, it may not mean what you think. The New York Observer has a story headlined, "Ivy League Teams Go Urban." Turns out, Ivy wear sold by New York outfitter Stall & Dean is becoming chic with the urban market, with one school leading the way. From the story:

In fact, Harvard, Yale and Princeton are not the top sellers, (Stall & Dean's Joe) Cuff said. While buyers in suburban markets like those clothes more, the urban market’s most popular school is, surprisingly, the one in New Hampshire.

“The No. 1 seller of 2006 would have been Dartmouth,” he said. “And Cornell was very, very popular.” In the 2007 video for rapper Mims’ recent song “This Is Why I’m Hot,” a young man is completely accessorized in Cornell University gear.

Another in a series of early decision recruit lists ....

SOFTBALL

• Amy McLuskie Sammamish, Wash., Eastlake H.S.
• Audrey Kolodziej, Morton Grove, Ill., Niles West H.S.
• Devin Lindsay, Whittier, Calif., La Serna H.S.

This has been around for a while, but if you want to read a non-Ivy perspective on the end of the early decision admit process at Harvard (and other schools), check out this story that appeared in last fall's Amherst Student. The student writer raises some very interesting points. From the story:

Realistically, Harvard is the only university that can risk lowering its yield and losing in the many college rankings that factor into an institution’s “quality.” The concern with yield is why some elite schools take up to 50 percent of their freshman class through early action/decision programs. Most schools downplay the advantage except for UPenn’s admission dean, Willis Stetson, who says that students applying early receive preferential treatment.