Ivy League Recruiting

[Ohiodad51]

In terms of the Likely Letter, we had feed back from the coach via the AD who was directly working with Admissions. We had an email containing the pre read by the summer before Junior year. By the end of Junior year we had an email containing an attachment which was the exact copy of the Likely Letter that was later sent in the mail.

I weep for the home of Daniel Webster to be so incautious as to leave written proof of open and notorious violations of the Ivy Common Agreement.

I cannot speak for all the Ivies, but a female lacrosse recruit at UPenn was asked to take the ACT and met the requested score. She was later asked to take the ACT again, which was being used to raise the AI for the recruit group.

I don’t think anyone disputes this happens, particularly in sports with small cohorts of recruits, where a jump in one recruit’s ACT can make a significant difference. It may be frowned upon, but it is not, ipso facto, prohibited. It is called dumbbelling. It is why the band system was put in place for football, and why the men’s basketball rules changed a few years ago.

The coach most definitely has a depth chart which is used when presenting his/her recruits to Admissions. This is used to compile the AI which needs to be met. We asked the coach flat out where our child stood on the depth chart in terms of support. My experience is personal, not what I have been told or read about.

Mine is too. So is @varska’s and many others. And sure, any list of recruits being supported for a likely letter will contain recruits with varying academic strengths. That is how coaches build a class in this environment. If what you are describing is something akin to the band system in football, where an Ivy coach gets a few recruits with academics maybe pretty far below the type of student usually admitted, and a few recruits who are closer in line with the academic stats of the college as a whole, then I don’t think anyone would disagree. On the other hand, if what you are saying is that a coach can specify varying levels of support based on his or her judgment of how desirable a recruit is, then many of us just disagree. That has been our personal experience, and it is in conformity with the rules as they exist.