recruited athletes

sybbie719
Sat, 26 Jan 2008 08:57:19 +0000

Here is another thread that can hopefully help you

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/dartmouth-college/206585-i-athletes-dartmouth.html

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

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.



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.

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2004/12/27.html



From the Harvard Crimson:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=349217





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.

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.”





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.