<p>Can someone clue me in on what the A.I. needs to be for a recruited athlete (NOT football) at Dartmouth now? The coach seems to be dancing around the subject and I don't know if he's trying to avoid me or if he just doesn't know the answer. I thought I read that it's something like 191. But I'm not sure what the current A.I. is for the whole school and then what one standard deviation would be from that.</p>
<p>here is a link to a discussion on the parents forum:</p>
<p>Here is Dartmouth news-Facts on Admissions, Financial Aid and Football </p>
<p>It states:</p>
<p>*The athletic admissions process in the Ivy League is governed by a wide range of policies and regulations. The central feature in this regulation is the academic index (AI). This is a measure consisting of three parts using the high school rank or GPA, combined with the highest SAT I scores, combined with the three highest SAT II scores. All Ivy schools are obligated to use the exact same methodology in calculating AIs. In admitting students who are recruited as athletes in one of the 33 "Ivy championship" sports, each school has numerical limits (depending on the number of sports it offers), and an AI goal that is a function of the mean AI for its entire student body (i.e., four classes). The AI goal is one standard deviation from this mean. Most Ivy schools have very similar AI targets. Because the eight Ivy student bodies have slightly different profiles, their AI targets are very similar but not identical. In addition, there is a minimum AI, or floor, below which schools cannot admit an athlete without special dispensation from the League.<br>
*</p>
<p>From:</p>
<p>ALUMNI COUNCIL COMMITTEE ON ENROLLMENT AND ADMISSIONS
MAY 20, 2005
SUMMARY</p>
<p>C. Athletic Recruitment</p>
<p> Class of 2009 has 211 recruited athletes (compare to 188 in Class of 2008)</p>
<p> Explanation of Academic Index and how applied for recruited athletes; slightly different and more complex formula used for football players</p>
<p> Academic Index is formula that takes into account athletes standardized test scores and high school grade point average; recruiting rules govern the range in which an athletes AI must fall in order to be accepted</p>
<p> E.g.: Maximum AI is 240, and as a group, all matriculating recruited athletes must average within one standard deviation (13-15 points) from the mean AI of the entire class (214) so, at least 200.</p>
<p> Ivy League recruitment rules applied uniformly to all institutions but different schools may have different AI (Harvard, Yale and Princeton have a higher AI than Dartmouth; Brown and Cornell have a lower AI)</p>
<p> Bottom line: recruited athletes are athletes of national/international/Olympic caliber and must basically be good students with respectable standardized test scores.</p>
<p>NCAA Self-Study Academic Integrity - Dartmouth College</p>
<p>There are a couple of parents whose kid's were recuited as well as a few atheletes who occassionally post. Maybe they will chime in to help you out.</p>
<p>If all else fails, go to the parent forum as there are a number of parents who have gone through the recruitment process with their kids who can answer your questions.</p>
<p>I hope this helps</p>
<p>I've read that at dartmouth the AI is actually higher than most of the ivies. What sport are you involved in? If you can do some research you can see that for some sports ie hockey or football, have lower average SATs then the mean of the student body while in some like rowing for example, the average recruited athlete has a higher mean SAT than the average admitted student, making that sport not have much pull in the admissions office.</p>
<p>Thanks for the quick answers. I guess I'll have to nag the coach a little more and find out if I'm in a smart or an un-smart sport since it looks like the average for all athletes (except football?) needs to be 200 and right now I'm a few points short.</p>
<p>I think a recruited athlete needs to be within one standard deviation of the mean AI for the particular school</p>
<p>Does anyone know the standard deviation figure for the Ivies?</p>
<p>Here is a entry from biggreenalertblog.</p>
<p>Chris Lincoln, a former recruited athlete and deans list student at Middlebury College, is the author of PLAYING THE GAME: Inside Athletic Recruiting in the Ivy League, published in 2004 by Nomad Press. Chris, who just appeared on Rick Wolff's WFAN radio show The Sports Edge, generously took the time recently for this exclusive Q&A with Green Alert. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I met several times to talk with Chris about the book and traded numerous emails with him regarding issues he wrote about.)</p>
<p>Some questions include:</p>
<p>What is the Academic Index supposed to do, and does it work?</p>
<p>The Academic Index (A.I.) is used to determine if an athletes academic standing is representative of an Ivy League institutions student body as a whole. All entering Ivy League students are assigned an A.I., which is based on a mathematical formulatwo-thirds test scores, one third class rank or GPA (if the high school doesnt rank). Each schools mean A.I. is based on a rolling four year average. The trouble with the A.I. is that it cannot measure intangibles (character, drive, ambition) and it discriminates against kids who either dont test well or lack the financial resources to enroll in expensive test-prep courses. Under current Ivy rules, football is treated on its own, while all other Ivy sports must have a combined average A.I. for incoming recruits that is within one standard deviation of the mean A.I. of the whole school.</p>
<p>Is there something better?</p>
<p>I favor having an A.I. floor, under which no athlete can be admitted. After that, I support what the late Yale president A. Bartlett Giamatti wanted to do: let each school admit the class they want to admit. The trouble is, as coaches at several Ivy schools agreed, Nobody trusts each other in this League. So if a school starts winning, and theres nothing regulating the admission of athletes, its because admissions has opened the doors too wide. Part of me wonders if the League has made the whole A.I. as complex as it is just to keep people from trying to unravel it. Your head can start spinning when you get into it, so the tendency is to throw up your hands and say, Okay, whatevernothings simple in the Ivy league. But ultimately the schools need to become more transparent. They need to find the right way to treat athletes, not worry that they are being treated differently. Admit it and make it an ethical process.</p>
<p>A lot of posters on Internet message boards try to group the Ivy schools by admissions standards. Some will put Harvard, Princeton and Yale in one group, Columbia and Dartmouth in the next, and Brown, Penn and Cornell in a third group. How accurate is that, and if it's not, can you break the schools into three groups?</p>
<p>When I was researching my book back in 2003-2004, everyone I asked grouped the Ivy schools into three groups: Harvard, Princeton and Yale; Dartmouth close on their heels; then Columbia, Penn, Brown and Cornell. Youd have to check the most recent issue of the college marketing bible, US News & World Report, to get the latest rankings, but in the recruiting game, the top three Ivies enjoy a distinct advantage, especially with the parents of athletes. We lose kids to Dartmouth and Penn, one coach told me. We lose parents to Harvard, Princeton and Yale. Several Ivy people commented to me (and not for attribution) that there was a big difference between the academic quality of schools like Princeton, Harvard and Yale and some of the other Ivies lower on the scale. Its an athletic conference, said one of these folks, not an academic conference. Its a big mistake to lump these schools equally on an academic basis. But of course the weaker schools love it. Nothing like Ivy League snobbery, eh?</p>
<p>There have been numerous stories around Dartmouth about athletes turned down by Dartmouth but accepted at HYP and Columbia. Is it true the Dartmouth admissions director has said there's no truth to those stories? Have you heard any of those stories and if they are true, how does it happen?</p>
<p>I dont know what Dean Furstenberg has said about the truth of these stories, but I do know of cases where players were rejected by Dartmouth and wound up at other Iviesin one case at Columbia (as an Ivy Player of the Year in mens basketball), in another case at Harvard (as a mens soccer captain). I also know that a mens soccer player was turned down at Dartmouth and went on to become a first team All-American at Stanford. Last year, a recruit was turned down by Dartmouth in early decision, and hes now playing lacrosse at Yale. Im sure there are other cases as well. This is not unique to Dartmouth, by the way. It happens across the Ivy League. Athletes are rejected by one school only to wind up on the roster of another school. Ivy admissions has been labeled highly selective. It might be more accurate to call it highly subjective, especially in athletic recruiting. I just heard about a Yale lacrosse recruit who was flown in to New Haven and welcomed to the Eli lacrosse familyonly to get a rejection letter in the mail two days later. It really makes you wonder whats going on. How does this happen?</p>
<p>Is it true that at some schools, a student-athlete who fits in an AI "band" is all but guaranteed admissions by the numbers while at other schools (Dartmouth being one) a good deal more subjective criteria are taken into account and student-athletes who qualify numerically are regularly turned down?</p>
<p>Thats a complaint you hear from Dartmouth coaches, especially about schools lower on the Ivy totem pole, such as Brown, Cornell or Penn. But I heard it from a Cornell coach, who was critical of other schools for taking kids based on their numbers, while she had to wait for her admission office to review a recruits entire folder. And I know of a case at Brown where a coach was told dont bother to recruit a kid based on the A.I. numbers, and the player wound up as an all-Ivy performer at Dartmouth. In football, a few Ivy coaches admitted to me that they sometimes fill higher A.I. bands with players they know will never see playing time for them. But they have to fill the bands to meet their A.I. average, so they recruit these kids. More often than not, these players quit the teamwhats known as attrition in the Ivy athletic lexicon. The whole numeric system is deeply flawed. There should definitely be an A.I. floor, but placing kids in bands, or having a school average A.I. for athletes, is a mistake.</p>
<p>If you think about it, the whole A.I. is really a double-edged sword. It eliminates kids while at the same time having a numerical basis makes it hard for the admission office to reject recruits who meet the numbers. Coaches argue, Hey, he meets the numbers. Hes within the criteria. Im doing what youve asked, why wont you let him in? But you can have a smart kid who tests well, yet his transcript shows hes basically lazyBs in non-AP courses. Hes got a decent GPA, very good boards, so his A.I. is strong, and the coach wants him. But admissions says, Wait a minute. This guys underachieving in the classroom. And he did a cursory job filling out his application, his recommendations are average, so we dont want him. When that happens, it ****es off the coach because the recruits A.I. met the criteria. But the A.I. is not meant to serve as the ultimate measure, the application is. So the system, while based on a numerical formula, is hardly cut and dried. In fact, you could say its even more complicated because of the A.I. and the averaging that must take place to conform to League rules.</p>
<p>here is an article of calculating AI, I hope it helps.</p>
<p>^^
Greenalert and Bruce Wood are Godsends. :-)</p>
<p>The most important fact for an individual applicant is the opinion of the coach. All of this AI stuff only matters for those athletes whom the coaches are actively recruiting. If you are not getting an enthusiastic read from the coach about his interest in you, then you may not be an athletic recruit at all. If that is the case, then you should look at the overall Dartmouth admission figures, not the athletic figures. Unless the coach is crazy or incompetent, he is not going to let one of his top recruits wonder about his interest. Few athletes are accepted in the low bands of AI, and all of them are top recruits, usually expected to be major contributors/multi year starters in high profile sports/team captains/ All-Ivy, etc. For people who are not at that level, this whole discussion is irrelevant.</p>
<p>A good check on your prospects: How many other Ivy coaches have sought you out? If the answer is "all of them, they won't leave me alone", then you are a top recruit. If the answer is "I get a form letter back when I send them my resume", then you are not.</p>
<p>afan -- Plenty of interest from coaches, but I guess I'm not showing any one school enough love. In the last week I learned what my big mistake has been with some of the coaches -- too much honesty. I'm really up in the air among (1) several non-urban Ivies, (2) a few decent D-1 schools where I'm hearing that I'd get at least a quarter or half ride and (3) a couple of nationally ranked D-3 programs with good need-based aid where maybe I'd have more of a life for 4 years ... and I've let coaches know how undecided I am. But it's only freaking July!</p>
<p>After meeting with a friendly, non-Ivy coach last week, I have a better idea now of how to "deal with" the Ivy coaches and their push for early apps compared with my hope to try to take a few official visits in Oct/Nov to different types of schools. I guess that if I don't show a whole lot more interest in an Ivy program, the coaches aren't going to waste their time anyalyzing and dissecting my academics. And I guess that makes a lot of sense if they have plenty of other kids that they think can do what I can do or better.</p>
<p>My big problem in talking with some of the coaches and maybe not being pushy enough -- I act like I'm 17. Wait a minute, I am 17!</p>
<p>I can't believe that I'll be able to fall in love with any one school, team and coach by the time early apps are due so the Ivies may be out for me. If Ivies had the February signing date for LOIs like everyone else it would make my life a lot easier. (That was a comment, not a complaint.)</p>