<p>Just a question, somewhat related to the original topic…I’m a rising junior and I’m trying to get recruited by top schools for baseball. Academically, I should be qualified. I have a 3.95 GPA at a top HS (school doesn’t rank but I’m near the top of the class), I’ve been getting 2350s on blue book SATs (hopefully up to 2400 by the time I take the real thing!), and my subject test scores are 800 on Math2c and 790 on chemistry (I’ll take physics next spring). Now, I read the link posted by EMM1 regarding academic index, and I noticed a section saying that having an academic index above 220 is highly beneficial.</p>
<p>"3. Students with A.I.s above 220 stand a better chance of being recruited, and needn’t be All-State caliber players. In fact, some Ivies have been known to pad their teams’ Academic Indices by recruiting football players with 1550 SAT scores and virtually no chance of ever seeing game action. "</p>
<p>Does this also apply to recruiting in baseball? I’m a decent baseball player but I’m still unsure of where I stand in terms of my ability. My academic index, however, will likely be at least a 230. Exactly how strong of an athlete do I need to be in order to garner some interest from top schools, particularly those in the Ivy League? (In case anyone knows a bit about baseball, I’m a LHP)</p>
<p>monstor, congrats on excellent academic stats.
You might want to start your own thread with “baseball” in the topic line to attract more responses. Have you started contacting coaches yet? If you aren’t a rising senior, it’s still perfectly fine for you to introduce yourself. You should include a fact sheet with your academic numbers, as well as your baseball stats.<br>
If you are not a rising senior yet, be assured Ivy coaches are a little distracted with locking in their current recruiting class, but will get around to responding to you.
Best wishes.</p>
<p>The conventional wisdom here on CC is that if you are a recruited athlete, you will have a ‘hook’ for Ivy League admission. If you receive the support of the coach in terms of admissions, it will help nudge you into the coveted admit category. In other words, if you are a really good athlete, you will get a leg up in admissions. You may not be the strongest candidate academically, but coach’s support will get you in. I think this is largely true to a certain extent.</p>
<p>For high school kids who want to be recruited, there also seems to be a certain ‘reverse’ of the above conventional wisdom. Knowing how hard it is to be recruited by a coach, even in the Ivy League, and knowing that the AI is also calculated for the recruiting class as a whole, there is also another idea out there that if you are a really good student, you will get a leg up in terms of recruitment–the coach will recruit you to boost the AI of the recruiting class. In other words, you may not be the strongest athletically, but your stellar, over-the-top academics will help get you on the team. The ‘reverse’ of the above for admission.</p>
<p>I am very suspicious of the latter conventional wisdom. It may happen in football, where there ends up being a lot of recruits. But I am not sure this happens in all sports, especially for sports where there are fewer recruits. </p>
<p>I know from my son’s experience in recruiting that having a high AI doesn’t mean that the Ivy League will be banging loudly at your door–even if you are a top athlete. His AI, I think, would be very similar to yours and he played at the top level in his club sport. He was an All-State level player in high school as well.</p>
<p>Other recruits may not have had as stellar an academic record as my son, but their academic records were good enough. In addition, sometimes a coach thought highly of his play but wasn’t recruiting this year for his specific position. </p>
<p>So be careful here. I was suprised at how many good athletes were out there who had good enough academic records that made them recruitable.</p>
<p>Another thought to add to the above post from skrlvr:</p>
<p>For competitive Ivy sports, it’s not enough to be a top athlete <em>and</em> meet the academic standards. In our experience the coach was looking for the serious commitment to the sport and the team – looking for the kid that would happily put the training and conditioning time in the gym as well as the practice field. The kid that would work hard over the summer and over winter break and come back in fighting shape. The kid that didn’t mind sublimating his ‘college experience’ and social life to the team cause. </p>
<p>College sports are different than high school sports and take an ‘above and beyond’ commitment. Some kids want this intensity. Some don’t. My son says it’s worth it – and he has the championship rings to show for it. Some kids just don’t want it that badly.</p>
<p>That’s part of searching for the right fit in a college, a team and a coach.</p>
<p>^^Some sports actually require a bigger commitment at the club level, but they are in the minority. Gymnastics comes to mind.</p>
<p>To monstor…you do have excellent stats, but do you want to play your sport in college or are you aiming mainly to go to an Ivy whether or not you can play baseball? It might be true that coaches pad their rosters with high AI kids (I doubt this is as true in baseball, because of the smaller roster numbers), but do you want to be a bench-sitter?</p>
<p>The short answer - I think - is that you’ve gotta have stellar athletic ability even if you’ve got a great AI. This long answer is this: In the Ivy League, they used to put high AI kids on the team’s list of admitted players, even if there was no intention that they would ever play in a game. They may not have even been recruited. They were called “boosters” because they were needed to boost the AI average for the incoming class in a particular sport. A single booster could be on the list at several Ivies, assuming he got in to all of them. Some sports needed more boosting than others, needless to say! </p>
<p>In 2003, the rules changed so that now the average AI for all athletes in ALL sports (except perhaps football?) has to be within one standard deviation of the school’s mean AI. The rule change was apparently aimed at doing away with boosters by sweeping all athletes - including those with typically better academic profiles - into the same cohort. By including all sports, instead of calculating AI’s per team, there were enough great academic stats to raise the group overall. So now, the coach can’t really use you for your great stats in such a specific way as before.</p>
<p>A 3.5 from a public or private high school? How many honors and AP’s? My son has lots of kids from his school go on to play sports at Ivies with mid 3.0 GPA’s, but it is a top tier prep.</p>