IVY COLLEGES - ATHLETIC ADMITS

We were told that the average GPA and SAT/ACT scores for each team has to match the overall student body - and that is the school for each Ivy. Sure, they may have a few on the lower end (maybe 3.5-3.6 to go with a 1330-1350 old measure SAT score and a 27-29 ACT?) as long as it is balanced out by kids on the upper end. Definitely still no slouch scores. That is what I was told by more than one Ivy when my son was being recuited, anyway.

BTW, William & Mary is not an Ivy. I've been told by graduates of that fine institution that it might have been if not for the Civil War.

The article references IVYs and I have watched the IVY presidents admit that they take lower scores from athletes. Read the article and stop listening to what people say. They have up to 30% Athletic Admits. I have seen this in several articles. They are obviously not talking about 2.0 but I am sure 3.0 on the 4.0 scale.
I posted another article in another thread saying the same thing from a recruited player who couldn't believe they were recruiting him..

BHD - I'm calling BS on this one. I know about some ballplayers with very good academic qualifications who were denied admission to Dartmouth. In general, Ivy athletes need to have the same level of academic achievement to earn admission as non-athletes do. There are certainly exceptions (think football), but not many.

As for the W&M article 'referencing' Ivys, it read more like Ivy League envy more than anything else. Here's the primary throw away line in the report:

"Even elite institutions that do not give athletic
scholarships in the Ivy League, the New England Small Colleges Athletic Conference,
and elsewhere have been criticized for admitting large numbers of athletic recruits."

Hardly a d***ing indictment. And no statistics or evidence to substantiate the claim. Weak.

You would have more credibility on this topic if your son had attended one of the Ivy schools. All of my understanding is based on my son's expereiene at Dartmouth. And that is getting dated.

My son's grades were good enough to get into an IVY. He went for the money, great city and the warm climate.
My son competes for jobs with Ivy grads. He has 3 Fortune 500 company offers.He also passed all their tests with top marks. He also competed with over 10,000 university students in a world wide business competition. He came in 84th. He is in the midst of a fantasy BB competition that is world wide. He is #1 and stands to win $500.us if he can hold until the end of the season. he graduated on the deans list and Big South Presidents honor role (all 4 years).
Does it offend you knowing that student athletes get Athletic Admits that have below standard scores ? That document is only one of many sources I get my info from.
Did you know that Stanford uses a bell curve to bring their students grades up? My prestigious college did the same thing. I am sure others may do the same thing.
I don't care if you believe the article or not. I do care that others don't erroneously avoid Ivys because they don't believe they have a chance.
Have any Ivy's sued the author of denied that they do this ? No.in fact they have admitted it on a documentary on public TV because they believe it is for the benefit of the colleges over all student mix.
The players you know who didn't get in may not meet other criteria.

quote:

Even elite institutions that do not give athletic
scholarships in the Ivy League, the New England Small Colleges Athletic Conference,
and elsewhere have been criticized for admitting large numbers of athletic recruits."

There is no ambiguity here. The Ivy's were criticized by their academic staff who challenged the administration on this very practice. They lost their challenge and I pity the jock that gets one as a prof.
The 2 hour documentary had the presidents of several Ivy's state their support of the practice. Too bad you missed it.
I forgot that my son was accepted by an Ivy feeder college. A D2 in Connecticut that boast their grad placement in the Ivy grad schools. Got a max academic scholarship and it was the largest package he was offered. He wouldn't go.

for my 2 cents and based on the recruiting experience of my son, "academic" schools such as the Ivy's definitely "fudge" a little when it comes to athletic recruits but i think it is just a little.

Basically you need to be within striking distance of the overall student population such that an SAT that is 150 or so points off the mark isn't fatal but a significant break from the average admit isn't going to cut it.

There is also the reality that if you don't have the academic "chops" for a given school, such as an IVY, what is the point, you won't stay eligible, your experience will likely be a horrific one and the cardinal rule on this site always seems to be to find a school that fits you. With no disrespect, a 2.0 student with a 1000 SAT is hardly a fit for Harvard.

Bottomline, doesn't hurt to apply, to look, to pursue and let the school decide if you make the "grade" for them or not.

have to burst your bubble dbg_fan...i spoke with an ivy league coach this summer who told me that his school slotted him "x" number of kids who needed, as a group, a certain average SAT score...he recruited a kid i know who did very well on the test. he was more than excited when this kid committed which then allowed him to go after another kid whose score was substantially lower...

I know two local high school baseball players who attended Ivies with high school gpa's of 3.5 and SAT's around 1300.

Ivy League Academic Index For Athletes

Hitithard - that is what I was saying in my earlier post. If they recruit kids with higher gpa's, sats, acts, then that is what allows them to go after kids with lower gpa's, etc. But the team averages have to be in line with the average for the entire undergraduate population. No doubt that there are some kids that are recruited that might surprise some people. But I would be very surprised if any of the schools would recruit a kid that would not be in the 3.5 gpa range with very respectable SATs and ACTs.

I hold open the possibility that some Ivy's may recruit kids that score lower than I imagine.

Bobblehead, if you have other sources as you state, such as documentation or admissions from the Ivy's themselve please point me to them.

I'm looking at Stanford's academic profile for the class of 2011. Probably a good proxy for the Ivy's. It says that 1% had a high school gpa of between 3.4 and 3.6 and less than 1% had a gpa of less than 3.4 How much lower it doesn't say. 98% of the class was in the top 20% of their high school class, etc. It may be safe to assume that the majority of those that don't meet these minimum standards might be atheletes, but who knows? Maybe one or two of them are great cellists.

I still think it is safe to say that a sports team at any of these ivy or ivy-like institutions would not boast an average gpa of 3.4 and an average sat of 1250.

RJM - I hadn't seen your posted when I posted my most recent two post. The document you provided says it all.

I know of a couple of kids playing/played at Vanderbilt who had 3.5's in high school and no AP or high honors classes.

I doubt Harvard won an NCAA D1 hockey championship (about ten years ago) with a bunch of high school valdedictorians.

When you see percentages that conflict with the norm it's not just athletes. It's also done for diversity of the student body.

quote:

Originally posted by RJM:
I know of a couple of kids playing/played at Vanderbilt who had 3.5's in high school and no AP or high honors classes.

I doubt Harvard won an NCAA D1 hockey championship (about ten years ago) with a bunch of high school valdedictorians.

When you see percentages that conflict with the norm it's not just athletes. It's also done for diversity of the student body.

Every college I have researched, except Cal Tech, has athletic admits. It's not just an ivy thing. Colleges want well-rounded students and they want to see a student that finds the time to do other things besides study.

The Ivy League and NESCAC schools have athletic admits. Period. I believe the NESCAC even has written rules regarding how many, what they call tips, are allowed per school. Some coaches can or will talk about it more openly than others. My son attended the Yale camp last year (which I highly recommend for anyone interested in the Ivies or other highly rated academic schools) and they had an open session with frank discussions about the recruiting process. Each coach was asked how many slots they had. As best I can recollect, all of the Ivies in attendance (Yale, Brown, Columbia and Cornell)said between 7-8, except Cornell. He explained that per school guidelines that he could not discuss that issue. The elite LAC coaches in attendance said they had between 2-3 slots. MIT said he had 25 slots, but what he really meant was he gives a list of 25 players to admissions. I would assume he ranks those players according to whom he wants. He said that the previous year they were able to get 8 out of their top 12-15 players or something to that effect. The fact that these schools have athletic admits does not mean that recruits can be too far off from the typical admitted student profile, the admissions departments make sure of that. The Ivy league coaches probably have an easier time evaluating whether you are admissible due to the AI. My understanding is they have an average AI that they have to hit. One coach my son met with plugged his GPA and test scores into his computer right in front of us and confirmed that he was right in their recruiting range. The NESCAC coaches and schools such as MIT, Haverford and Swarthmore probably have to work closer with the admissions office to get a feel for their recruits' admissibility and with only a few slots they don't want to be wrong. One thing they all will tell you is that you have to apply ED if you want their support and according to both NESCAC and Ivy league websites no one can tell promise you admission except for the admissions department. Here is a quote from the NESCAC website. Link is below.

"The Coach's Role
While admission decisions are made exclusively by the admission committee, the coach's assessment of the athletic ability and potential contribution of each candidate is considered. Be aware that coaches at different colleges may evaluate the same student-athlete's ability differently. Positional considerations may also lead to different assessments of an applicant's value to a team.

It is important to remember that this is a college admission process with an athletic component, not an athletic recruiting process that comes with the opportunity to attend college. NESCAC coaches actively identify and recruit student-athletes and act as advocates for them; but no coach at any NESCAC college has the authority to offer, promise, or otherwise guarantee a spot in the incoming class to any recruited student-athlete."

Ivy League Athletic Admission Letter
NESCAC Statement of Common Admissions Practices

My son was also at the camp Burnt Orange's son attended (last summer -08). The below comments are from personal experience. I second all that is said above. I don't remember the Ivy coaches all saying 7-8 (Yale said 5, my recall), but they certainly were all around 5-8. And each coach talked about their admissions process with a slightly different angle - that is to say that they do not all have identical processes. At ALL of them however, the athlete must be academically qualified (whether they all use the AI in advance, they did not say, but I know that several do), the coach writes a rec. letter supporting the athlete, and the athlete must apply an be accepted by admissions - no passes! And you must apply EA or SCEA or ED (whatever the early process is for the respective school). For example, one Ivy (not at this camp) told my son that all of their supported athletes are presented to admissions as a package - which is to say that their grades, SATs, etc. meet a mid range on the AI - some may be lower, some may be higher - but they are presented as one group rather than individually (if that is the correct way to say it). Another Ivy coach (again, not one at this camp) "pre-qualified" his potential recruits on the AI to make sure the athlete (in this instance it was my son) he is recruiting fits the AI for his University before talking to the recruit - each athlete was taken on an individually qualified basis to the admissions office - NOT in a group. SO, in sum, while the Ivies use the athletic AI to qualify their recruits, whom they will support with a rec letter while the recruits must apply and gain admission on their own merit, their processes are not identical to each other.

I guess my son was one of those “dumb” jocks who got into Dartmouth because he could throw a baseball 90 mph.

All I know is our situation.

(From Dartmouth's website) Dartmouth offers 34 varsity sports - 16 for men, 16 for women and two coeducational programs in sailing and equestrian. In addition, there are 34 club and 24 intramural sports as three-quarters of Dartmouth undergraduates participate in some form of athletics.

With that many athletes, of course not everyone has “perfect” SAT’s, wears glasses and has a pocket protector (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Coach Whalen told us that he wrote a glowing recommendation for Josh, but that ultimately it was still in admissions hands.

Josh still had to jump through all hoops that every other prospective student goes through. He had a lot of community service, had to write essays, go through an interview process with an alumni, had to have at least the minimum entrance SAT scores, HS GPA 3.96 graduating 5th in his class. So, would he have gotten in without the coaches recommendation? I doubt it, but he did have at least the minimum requirements and the admissions thought that he would be able to succeed. They were correct.

Josh knows of some who were turned down for admissions that were smarter than him. As others have pointed out, colleges nowadays are looking for well rounded individuals.

So for those who want to continue to “diss” athletes at higher educational institutions, have at it.

quote:

So for those who want to continue to “diss” athletes at higher educational institutions, have at it.

Who is dissing anyone ?

quote:

Originally posted by BobbleheadDoll:

quote:

So for those who want to continue to “diss” athletes at higher educational institutions, have at it.

Who is dissing anyone ?

Sorry.

I should have said "dissing the institutions that bring in the less than stellar academically gifted students".

Same reply. No one is dissing them either. Personally I think it is a complement to the colleges who recognize the importance of diversity.
My purpose was to show that BB players should not give up on the Ivys and that there are a lot of smart kids who can get into these colleges that they think are beyond their reach.