<p>The Ivies are noted for the high number of varsity sports they offer. Harvard offers the country’s largest number with 41 sports - 21 mens and 20 womens. Putting football aside, which is under a different requirement, the Ivy League requires that the total remaining pool of recruited athletes have an average AI no less than one standard deviation below the average AI of their entering class as a whole. </p>
<p>The Ivy minimum AI is 171. All non-football athletes as a group have to average 1 standard deviation below the AI of the school’s freshman class as a whole. HYP’s freshman class AI averages are estimated to be in the 220 range. That would put their average AI less 1 standard deviation in the 200 - 210 range. This would indicate that a whole lot of fencing/swimming/squash/tennis/track/other athletes are “boosting” the averages of the players recruited for the helmet sports, basketball, and other sports that a school puts a priority on for its heritage or other reasons. Cornell’s recent basketball success has led several of the Ivies to put new focus (and more flexible admissions criteria) on basketball recruits. Keylyme is right. I am familiar with a recruit that recently received a likely letter with a GPA hovering around 3.0 with mixed junior year performance and SATs that yielded an AI in the low 180s - permissible under the Ivy rules, but requiring a “booster” athlete - either on his team or in another sport to offset his score and maintain the AI average less 1 standard deviation in the 200 range.</p>
<p>The good news for the athlete’s in “booster” sports is that even with superior scores and SATs, they emerge with admission to an Ivy from thousands of other applicants with similar scores that do not gain admission - their hard work in school and in their sport helped them win the lottery.</p>
<p>The athlete’s with the lower AIs in “preferred” sports win the lottery too. Their hard work in their sport, their genes, picking the “right” sport, and an academic record still credible gets them in the Ivy door.</p>