<p>My friend is a track star who was recruited by Brown, Cornell, and Harvard coaches. She eventually applied ED to Harvard, and was accepted.</p>
<p>However, her status as an athletic recruit is not what made her a competitive applicant. In addition to being amazingly talented sports-wise, she’s also one of the most brilliant people I know. Her GPA is above 4.6 and she takes extremely challenging courses. She’s had several fairly prestigious internships, and is an all-state musician. The one weak part of her application was her test scores; quite simply, she doesn’t test well. Her SAT was 1800 (but she didn’t send this score in).</p>
<p>She took the ACT and I think she got either a 28 or a 29. But the important part is that while her test scores were low, the rest of her application was stellar. I believe that the fact that she was an athlete made the adcoms look past the low scores. But even an excellent, Olympic-quality athlete is probably unlikely to get into an Ivy if his or her stats are not competitive. Being an athlete is a push towards admission, but hardly a guarantee. If your stats are sub-par, then you’re probably not going to get in no matter what hooks you have.</p>