recruited athletes

[strykermom]

<p>If a coach wants you, how low can your grades be and still get in? d’s friend is getting emails from a coach, but they haven’t seen the grades yet. She has a gpa of about 3.0, with no honors or AP classes. I have heard that the Ivy league can only take kids that meet certain academic standards. Back in the day, a 3.0 was not so bad.</p>

[sybbie719]

<p>Hi,</p>

<p>I think you should move your question to the parents forum as there are many parents of recuited athletes who participate and they can give you a better sense based on the sport.</p>

<p>If you do a search recruited, athletes - parents forum, you will find a number of threads.</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/283274-sick-ivies-saying-they-don-t-recruit-4.html?highlight=furstenberg#post3415219[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/283274-sick-ivies-saying-they-don-t-recruit-4.html?highlight=furstenberg#post3415219&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Keep in mind that there are different levels for different sports.</p>

<p>IMHO, unless friend is an olympic caliber athlete, the 3.0 is very low for Dartmouth even as a recruited athlete. I remember during my D and her friends where at the house and the friends were talking about how they took the “rocks for jocks” course over sophomore summer. The friend said it was one of the hardest courses she took, because there were no rocks, and the jocks were really smart!</p>

<p>Based on what I have seen over the past few years, amongst the recuited athletes, it seems like the student being an athlete was more a tip rather than a hook because the students presented grades, SAT scores, APs that already made them competitive candidates and their sport(s) put them over the top. While Furstenberg has retired, I do not see Lakiris, doing anything differently when it comes to recruited athletes.</p>

<p>A couple of years ago the Dartmouth ran a series of articles titled In admissions, many get ‘special’ attention. they specifically wrote about recruited athletes.</p>

<p>the artilcle states:</p>

<p>

Athletes and students with 800 SAT scores also gain admission at a disproportionately high rate, Dean of Admissions Karl Furstenberg said. Rates are also higher for students with exceptional essays and above-4.0 GPAs. With so many people applying for admission at one of the top 10 schools in the country, it takes a combination of many factors to get that thick envelope come April. </p>

<p>On the other hand, roughly 40 percent of applicants are given some sort of extra attention — minorities, legacies or athletes. This year, 24 percent of applicants were students of color, 3 percent legacies, and roughly 13 to 17 percent were athletes, based on estimates. This 40 percent of the applicants has a combined admit rate nearly double the overall level. </p>

<p>Athletic admissions statistics are not released by the admissions office. Some speculate that athletes — particularly those for big sports — are given the highest preference of all. This does not appear to be the case at Dartmouth, although athletes do benefit from having a lobbyist in their coach. Coaches submit ranked lists of their recruited athletes to the admissions office. The admissions office then reviews the applications, taking into account the applicant’s athletic talent and coach’s recommendation. </p>

<p>“Athletic talent works in the same way other kinds of talent do. The only difference is it’s a much more organized and structured recruiting process and that’s a function of the NCAA and the Ivy League rules,” Furstenberg said. “They tell us who they want, but there are no guaranteed number of slots.”
But even with the ability to submit a list, some coaches expressed frustration with how little say they really have. </p>

<p>“How much clout do I have? Minimal,” men’s swimming coach Jim Wilson said. “If you look at my SAT scores and compare to the average SAT scores, my kids may be getting in with a 1450 instead of a 1460.” </p>

<p>Wilson did, however, speculate that some of the “higher-profile sports like football may be getting a little more help.” </p>

<p>Coaches are given little feedback from the admissions office before submitting their lists, according to Wilson. “I’m shooting blind,” he said, adding that other schools, even in the Ivy League, are actually more lenient with athletic admissions. </p>

<p>“Some schools will say ‘if he has this GPA and this SAT score were going to let him in.’ Our admissions doesn’t do that,” Wilson said. </p>

<p>Michele Hernandez '89, who worked in the Dartmouth College admissions office in the mid-1990s and is currently a private college counselor, concurred. </p>

<p>**“Dartmouth actually has higher standards for athletes than most schools,” she said. “Many athletes that are walking straight into Harvard couldn’t get into Dartmouth.” </p>

<p>While athletic talent can bolster an application, it does not replace other criteria for admission, according to Furstenberg. If coaches do not find well qualified applicants to put on their list, they risk not getting enough players that year. **</p>

<p>“If the coaches say we need nine soccer players this year, but we only think six of them are qualified, that’s what they get,” he said. “All of the decisions are made here; the only person at the institution who can admit someone is me.” </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.pbs.org/weta/washingtonweek/voices/200405/0513local1.html[/url]”>http://www.pbs.org/weta/washingtonweek/voices/200405/0513local1.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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[sybbie719]

<p>Here is another thread that can hopefully help you</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/dartmouth-college/206585-i-athletes-dartmouth.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/dartmouth-college/206585-i-athletes-dartmouth.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Your D’s friends should also run her numbers through the AI calculator (there is on on CC’s website).</p>

<p>The AI is that it is a ranking system that combines SAT 1 SAT 2 and class rank to give you a score. This AI is then compared to the mean AI’s of non-athletes so the school has an idea of whom it is recruiting and the AI cannot deviate more than a set amount from the student-body. Ivy Football uses 4 bands for the AI to recruit and are allowed to recruit a certain number of players in each band. Since some schools are more competitive, teams have different AI bands.</p>

<p>

Football is the most closely monitored sport in the Ivy League. Given the range of competitive pressures surrounding football, it is monitored through a more detailed system of AI bands, or ranges, with very specific numerical limits on the number of football recruits that may be enrolled in each AI band. There are four bands corresponding to: class mean AI -1 S.D., 1 S.D.-2 S.D., 2 S.D. -2.5 S.D., and 2.5 S.D. - the Ivy AI floor. An average 30 football recruits may be enrolled each year distributed 8, 13, 7, 2 across the four bands top to bottom. No more than 120 recruited players may be enrolled over four years. Every Ivy school is obligated by the same system. This is an attempt to create a "level playing field"in terms of admissions standards.
The football monitoring system has changed periodically in response to changes in the external educational environment and direction from the Presidents. These changes have been well communicated to all staff within the League. Throughout the history of these changes from 1990 the Dartmouth Admissions Office has been very supportive of football as the College has sought to work within the Ivy system. </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2004/12/27.html[/url]”>http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2004/12/27.html&lt;/a&gt;

</p>

<p>From the Harvard Crimson:
<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=349217[/url]”>http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=349217&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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</p>

<p>No matter how good an athlete is, admissions officers will only compromise so much. The Ivy League uses a number called the Academic Index (AI), which Bowen says he invented, to measure applicants’ classroom qualifications. The index is the sum of three components: the average of students’ highest SAT I math and verbal scores divided by ten; the average of their three highest SAT II achievement test scores divided by ten; and their class rank converted to a 20-to-80 scale. A student who answered every question wrong on every SAT he took and placed last in his class would have an AI of 60; one with 800s on all his SATs and first in his class would score 240, and one with 500s on all his SAT’s and around the middle of his class would get 150. </p>

<p>According to McGrath Lewis, the median AI for all students Harvard accepts is 220, and the lowest it will take is around 185. “And you’d have to feel that 190 underrepresents their ability, preparation and potential,” she says. “If a kid looks like he can think with a pen, a 580 [SAT score] might underestimate him. If his dad is a house painter, he probably scores lower. If he’s a great football player with modest scores but good recommendations and grades, say, 550 and 580 and 10th in a class of 400, that’s a low AI, but he may have maxed out the opportunities he had. You wouldn’t take him unless you thought he could be really good at something, football. But that’s not a prima facie hopeless case.”

</p>

<p>

The Ivy League uses the AI to keep wayward admissions officials in line. The first rule is the floor—raised from 169 to 171 this summer. If an applicant’s AI score is below 171 (equivalent to an 1140 SAT I, an average SAT II score just over 570 and grades in the top 40 percent of one’s class), he or she cannot be on a recruit list at any Ivy League school. Second, the median AI for all accepted recruited athletes must be within one standard deviation from the median for the class as a whole, which means that no more than half of accepted recruits can have an AI in the bottom 16 percent of the admitted class—not exactly the highest standard.

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[VeryHappy]

<p>A few years ago, the Dartmouth lacrosse coach told us directly that, while Princeton will lower its standards to admit a player, Dartmouth will not.</p>

<p>Which means that if you’re a great student and are admitted to Dartmouth, but you’re only a so-so athlete, maybe you’ll be able to go to Dartmouth and walk on to play lacrosse.</p>

<p>IMO, it’s another thing that makes Dartmouth wonderful.</p>