<p>The number is 125 team captains out of 263 ED1 acceptances. Not all of those team captains will be recruited athletes. In the pyramid of the sports hierarchy, there are a WHOLE lot more high school team captains than there are spots on college teams’ rosters.</p>
<p>But the vast majority of that 125 probably are recruited athletes due to the acceleration of the recruiting process. The Div. I Ivies and Patriot League teams try to get the jump on the high-academic major colleges (Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, etc.), and the top academic Div. III teams try to get the jump on the Ivies/Patriot League.</p>
<p>Athletes obviously get a significant admissions advantage (as do artists, musicians, URMs, legacies, developmental admits, etc.). But the fact that recruits have to elect, by Nov. 15th of their senior year, binding Early Decision or risk losing their offer is not generally considered to be one of those advantages. My son has gotten half a dozen offers, including a couple of Ivies, since Nov. 15th. Luckily for him Middlebury is and has always been his first choice (and he got in).</p>
<p>But keep in mind that there were always going to be some set number of acceptances used for athletes to fill out Middlebury’s teams, whether they went in ED1, ED2 or RD. My guess, backed by anecdotal information, is that the trend toward an accelerated recruiting timetable led to an unusually large percentage of those slots getting filled this year by ED1. That simply means, however, that far fewer of the ED2 and RD slots will go to athletes, to the benefit of those who apply ED2 and RD, and the waitlisted ED1 applicants.</p>