Are the high-level athletes at those schools academically comparable to the rest of the student body? Or do they have average SAT scores that are hundreds of points lower?
Here’s a hint: https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/paper-trail/2008/12/30/athletes-show-huge-gaps-in-sat-scores
Now, it’s true that top schools with less athletic emphasis – e.g. Ivies, other D1-FCS schools like Lehigh or W&M, or D3 liberal arts colleges – will bend their normal academic standards for athletes as well. But – they won’t bend as far. And as a result, they aren’t nationally competitive in major college sports. And that’s what I meant when I said that such schools had “high academic standards” – I was talking about the standards for athletes in particular, not the standards for the student body in general.
Absolutely. Sometimes the Ivies and similar schools can be nationally competitive in “minor” college sports that the “power” schools are less interested in, like Cornell or Lehigh in wrestling, BU in hockey, Johns Hopkins in lacrosse, or Dartmouth in skiing.