MIT has been known to accept students with lower test scores than Caltech, if said student plays football and commits to four years of college playing up front with the coach.
MIT offers a service and a website for entering stats for college athletics hopefuls , and offers evaluation sports camps, in the summers for many sports, including women’a volleyball. Sports is a factor at MIT for admissions. Caltech, it sounds like its less important. MIT is about four times the size of Caltech
and offers division 1 competition in one sport: Crew. So for crew, division 1 rules, are applied, which
is a completely different admissions process, entirely based on making the division 1 team.
All other MIT sports recruits are division 3,with a few being pretty strong and serious teams, but using the regular application process, with grades, test scores, recommendations, optional interview counting the same for everyone.