AICE for the most part is similar to an AP.
Yes it would be true I would continue practicing 3-4 hours a day but if need be I could drop if it becomes too stressful
Yeah I have been thinking of a lower tier ivy like Cornell. I do like pushing myself though and it all depends on recruitment, I guess we will see. Thank you for your reply it was very helpful
It is often said that Cornell is the easiest Ivy to get in to, but the hardest to graduate from. It is not a âlower tier Ivyâ with respect to workload or course rigor. Add varsity athletic involvement to the equation and I think youâre in for a very demanding four years.
What year are you? Assuming youâre a 2026? Not sure how your sport goes, but for my D26âs sport, official visits were happening all spring and offers have already gone out for quite a few schools judging by the commitment posts. Have you asked the coaches where you fall in terms of the recruiting class?
D26 is neck deep in recruiting, itâs been an interesting ride for sure. Her friends who are looking at Ivyâs were much further than her in terms of timelines as sheâs focused on D3. She learned a lot from their experiences.
Maybe this has been answered - will you have 4 years of all core courses including a 2nd language. I donât see Chem or a language, but admit I could have missed it.
I am sorry you have been going through this past year with a health issue. As you know, it will be important to take care of yourself and college will require you to be healthy - with or without your sport. Exceptions donât come readily in college.
I donât believe you have named your sport and it will be important to understand what the season looks like and practice + travel commitments. My daughter is just wrapping up 4 years as an Ivy crew athlete and it is a lot - there is zero time to be out sick and her commitment is year round. Sick and injured kids get cut and others have left the school/team due to bad academic fit and/or health plus mental health issues.
You need to have open and honest conversations with each coach (plus they & admissions will see your attendance records) and also your current coach to understand if you are being realistic and with your doctor to understand the progression of your illness/injury and what the next year looks like to heal properly.
Not sure if your sport is only an Ivy sport, but if not, I would highly encourage you to expand your school reach to find the best fit academically, team fit and care available if you for your health.
If you are highly ranked your grades may be okay - but there is so much more to a pre-read and then turning a positive preread into a visit, then an offer + likely letter - these are their own big steps - with getting a pre-read being the easiest step - in my opinion.
I think most coaches are unlikely to give a up a likely letter for someone who is âslightly above averageâ specially as top athletes in many sports are getting cut from P4 programs and looking for a new home. Top programs donât have room for as many top recruits and the ones that can afford to (academically) are turning to Ivies for the stability it provides in the current environment.
Can be. It probably depends on the major. Most APs are not that hard and not truly equivalent to a college course. This is why top academic schools rarely accept AP credits. What are your AP scores?
This is because there are not that many offerings at many top schools. Prep schools are not overly fond of the AP curriculum. Many of these kids are taking harder or post AP classes. And they were able to juggle care AND non-core classes along with their extra-curriculars. And donât be fooled into thinking 3-4 hours a day in practice is more than what other kids were doing, even if they were âonlyâ working or doing theater or whatever it was that they did. I promise you everyone was just as busy as you.
I donât know what to plan to study but Cornell is play hard, work harder. The stress there is real. Honestly I think you are in for a rude awakening if you end up at one of these schools. As @blossom said, everyone there has done everything you did and then some. Better. Itâs just how it is.
Agree with above.
And as others have said and in my experience, the coaches are usually fairly transparent and should give you an idea if they think you are a fit, and on their potential list for a Likely Letter.
Christian McCaffrey went to Stanford with a 3.4 and 24 ACT. He was more than above average as an athlete and had to parents and a grandparent who were Stanford alums (and athletes). His high school was fairly new so didnât have a reputation with AOs at colleges, but it did have strong (wealthy) boosters (including his parents).
My daughter was an athlete and didnât miss a lot of classes or practices. Her school worked with the athletic department on schedules. For example, all math exams were on thurs nights. Since it was an engineering school, almost all students took some sort of math class, so the coaches didnât schedule games or practices on Thurs nights. My daughter did have one required class that conflicted with practice. She was a senior and the coach knew by then that she would give 100% on game day.
Good luck. Work with the coaches. They know how the AI is calculated and there is no reason theyâd keep it secret. Whatâs more, theyâd know what YOU need for and AI as the coach needs to meet the AI as a team total and can have one athlete with a lower number if they have others with higher numbers.
Our high school sent two swimmers to Harvard and Vanderbilt.
Their stats were surprisingly low.
But they were TREMENDOUS swimmers. That had offers from lots of NCAA sports powers. One had a 3.87 WGPA and apparently no honors or AP courses because her WGPA was the same as her UWGPA. The other had comparable stats, but I think her family pulled her stats off of Maia because it was mildly embarrassing for the girl.
I suspect that academic standards go down as your athletic skills goes up.
AI does not factor in rigor. Itâs just a GPA+test score calculation.
This is absolutely the case.
What does your coach say?
What do you think about reaching out to D3 schools in your sport, where your talent might be more impressive? Or as a reach, Brown, where you can take classes pass/fail (and fails donât show up on your transcript)
Really, this student needs to determine whether they are in fact recruitable. A high school coachâs connections to a specific group of colleges will not translate into compromise on ability. Any college coachâs job is to build the best team possible within the parameters set by admissions and the conference.
If this student is truly mostly average at their sport, it is highly unlikely they are recruitable. Often, even the above-average athletes arenât recruitable at many schools, especially super-selective ones.
I agree, there are contradictions by the student in teh thread which leaves me confused as to where they really are.
Is it:
Or is it:
There is a very big difference in recruitability between the two.
But there are lots of schools where your academics will be just fine if your athletics are what the coach is looking for.
Youâre not going to find a lower tier academically at any Ivy League school, even if Cornell is a tiny bit easier to get into. If you get in, youâll also be surprised when you find that most of the kids have worked harder in high school than you have, and also are smarter than you.
Every course will be far harder than high school with an all AP schedule. APs are far easier than Ivy courses.
Although I went a long time ago, one of the running jokes was in the forward of our Calculus text, which said that it contained far too much material for a 2-semester course, and then told which sections to leave out if it was covered in 3 semesters, and If the plan was to cover it all, use 4 semesters. We covered it all in 2 semesters.
I had taken Calc BC in high school, started in the equivalent of Calc C, and got creamed. I passed, but only after figuring out how to do college level work and to study properly.
I didnât go to a Patriot League school, but I doubt that youâll find them to be more than a smidge easier.
@tomgrace just happened upon this thread which hasnât had a comment in a month and while I donât actually know anything about academic stats needed for Ivy Pre-Read (ha!) but since you also asked, âYou think college at an ivy would be more rigorous than 11 APs and 8 AICE classes over 3 years of high school?ââŠI just wanted to weigh in on that because a lot people commented that college will be harder than HS and that wasnât really the case for me. But I will say It probably varies a lot depending on your major.
I went to BrownâŠa long time agoâŠand I am definitely of the opinion that it was easier to maintain my mostly Aâs and occasional Bâs at Brown as compared to high school. In HS I took almost all AP and honors classes, as I believe most Ivy admits do. And, in general, I found the academics at Brown to be similar or possibly even slightly easier than my HS schedule. It could be because we only took 4 classes per semester (that probably helped), but it wasnât any harder than HS. I am absolutely certain there were harder majors than mine, so I totally get that some people had the opposite experience. For example a couple of my friends majored in Human Bio (not sure if thatâs still a thing?) and they definitely had more rigorous coursesâŠand more coursesâŠthan I did. I also have a graduate degree from a different Ivy, and I honestly found it similar in terms of level of difficulty.
Good luck to you!
While this is the experience of my own children, even at their know to be very rigorous college, they went to a rigorous HS, where they took a rigorous course work. However, they have plenty of classmates now that came from schools where they never took a discussion based seminar, wrote a 12 page paper, or took a math test where a 55 might actually get you an A. These kids are smart and eventually it levels out for most, but it takes some getting used to
For many, the lack of structured time with few classes and a lot of social opportunities can be challenging to navigate at first. This is where athletes have a leg up IMO. Those obligations generally help focus oneâs work.
Also, we have to acknowledge the COVID impact on many of these students school experiences. Real rigor went out the window for many, to never really come back. Grade inflation is a real thing. And foundational knowledge gaps are still surfacing years later.
When the discussion is about recruited athletes, many of them would not have gotten in on academic credentials alone, so yes, it can be challenging. But then again, you can also choose a fluff major and a shockingly large number do.
Focus on the OP, please