<p>So, in general, the IVY's care about academics and course load
and it can be the deciding figure between two students when determining a spot.</p>
<p>But, I am wondering how it all works with the academic index, the fine details.....</p>
<p>1) Do they schools take into consideration the caliber of the high school:</p>
<p>For example, you could do your courses online ( with your book open),
be at a rural high school, or a more challenging high school where they give out 10% A's..... </p>
<p>2) Do the schools take into consideration the course load?</p>
<p>Do they give more credence to the student who took AP Physics over some watered down environmental science class?</p>
<p>Or is a 3.7 with a heavy course load the same as a 3.7 with movie classes?</p>
<p>Is it just a number that gets fed into the AI calculation?</p>
<p>The AI is really a tool to evaluate a larger population. In other words, the primary use is to evaluate the overall athletic cohort at a school to ensure that the academic range of the recruited athletes falls within the agreed upon statistical range. </p>
<p>As a tool to evaluate an individual athlete, the AI is less precise. A coach may tell you he wants 700’s per section on the SAT to make sure you’re on the safe side. But in the end, the entire ap (including course rigor, etc) is evaluated by admissions for each athlete.</p>
<p>Cbw- In addition to vaska comments I will add the following:</p>
<p>1.) Coaches do not admit students, the admission committee does. If your application essays are not well written you will have difficulty being admitted no matter how high your AI is. The admission committee can use the same holistic process to evaluate athletes as they do for other applicants. The admission committee takes into account the applicants test scores, course rigor and the type of school the applicant goes to. The coach can ask to have some of these standards relaxed when he offers a slot.</p>
<p>2.) The AI calculation uses 1/3 GPA (class rank is being phased out) and 2/3 either ACT scores or SAT and SAT II. Therefore an athletes test score are much more important than GPA.</p>
<p>3.) The AI has a floor or minimum requirement for each athlete and the team as a whole must make a minimum average as well.</p>
<p>For your specific questions I have seen an athlete successfully recruited for a certain HYP team who attended an average public high school. That same year a student from a prestigious private high school was deferred than rejected by another HYP school. The rejected student was a top ranked student, High ACT, and took multiple AP courses. I also have seen HYP offer a slot to an athlete who did not take any AP courses, only honors courses. For calculating the teams AI neither the type of school one attend nor the course load are considered, however the admission committee may consider these factors.</p>
<p>cbw, Of course admissions knows exactly where the kid is coming from! They have the school profile from every school and they see who is there. Admissions from the IVYs know exactly what they are doing. No fooling them!</p>
<p>CBW – From all the above posts, it seems to me that the requirements for athletes cannot be put into one simple formula, even thought that is what the AI is supposed to do. The AI is the main tool that is used for admitting, but there is other tweeking going on. Admissions criteria probably vary by school, year, sport and lots of other factors that no one can control – not even coaches. Furthermore, I know your kid is tennis – I would suspect that tennis and other sports have higher academic requirements than say, football or basketball. The fact that you know these formulas does not, in my opinion, help you all that much. You may just wind up worrying more. Your kid just needs to do the best he can in school and on his boards, and that he is spending a reasonable amount of time on his studies. Make sure you are emphasizing that with him and he is following through. At the end of the day, if he is doing his best and putting the time in, that is all you can ask of him. If he keeps up tennis at his current level he will wind up going to a great school somewhere.</p>
<p>What do you think about the balance of AP v Honors courses. Daughter is in communication with H coach and sent transcripts. She has As in her 3 honors courses and Bs in her 2 APs. The coach wrote back and said – work hard to get those Bs up to As! As a parent, it kills me because if she took all honors courses, she would likely have straight As. Anybody have any post-application experience with this?</p>
<p>The “H” coach knows his Admissions Committee want “A’s” in the most rigorous classes possible. He’d rather not have to fight for a kid or choose between two kids he wants. If she took all honors courses (no APs) she would have little to no chance for Admission. The coach is telling her exactly what she needs to do IMHO.</p>
<p>My son was told at his Ivy engineering freshmen & parent orientation that there were 700 students rejected in his class that had exactly the same academic stats as the 700 that were accepted. It was a 7% acceptance rate into that particular college that year. The difference between acceptance and rejections was miniscule. Even though your D is an athlete, she is competing with other athletes that have very impressive credentials for very few slots on the team.</p>
<p>What I have heard from Ivy recruits is that the coaches (depending on the team) may be allowed one recruit that is low on the API scale, but that the others he recruits have to be in line with the school’s API. This makes sense, because you do occasionally hear about kids with lower scores getting in, but they are usually the very talented athletes that were probably the coach’s top recruit. It sounds like they give some leeway, but not the same to everyone - similar to schools that have scholarship money for athletes - the coach is allowed to decide in many cases how much he gives to each player out of a pool of cash that was allocated to his team for scholarships.</p>
<p>Imafan- I think Fenwaysouth is correct. For “H” you need to have AP courses. The only possible exception may be if the athlete is ranked near the top nationally and the athlete has high ACT or SAT scores.</p>
<p>Good advice here, imafan. First hand experience with H, I can assure you that a B in an AP class is not a deal-killer. But as fenway said, the coach wants the process to go as smoothly as possible w/ admissions.</p>
<p>Personally, I think you’re better off with a transcript that has some AP classes, even if there’s B or 2, than all A’s and a complete absence of AP classes.</p>
<p>If the Ivy’s cared about the school’s reputation then there wouldn’t be the SAT. My opinion is that elite schools couldn’t care less about a school’s reputation. In fact all things being equal like course load, grades, SAT, etc, I would guess an Ivy would give the nod to the public school kid over the private just for the sake of diversity and raw talent. But if the elite prep school kid is clearly the better candidate then he would get the nod. Hence the whole point of the elite prep schools, which is an attempt to turn out the superior candidate.</p>
<p>In your book, ( hope that is your book), you state that colleges add 5 points to the AI for tough schools. Is it tough schools or tough course loads?</p>
<p>That was what my original question was about, although I didn’t word it well.</p>
<p>^ No, it’s not that clear cut cbw. In speaking with coaches, they’ve said a recruit that may be on the bubble academically may get a little boost (<5pts) if they’re coming out of a program with a strong academic rep. But back to my earlier post on this thread - don’t obsess about your AI number, it’s primarily to evaluate a group of students. Your admissibility as a recruit is going to be the whole package, scores, GPA, course rigor, school rep, recs and, of course, your desirability as an athlete.</p>
<p>"a recruit that may be on the bubble academically may get a little boost (<5pts) if they’re coming out of a program with a strong academic rep.</p>
<p>This would explain how an athlete with a SAT of 1500 can be admitted to HYP.</p>
<p>It’s crazy to generalize. Some kids need the AP’s others absolutely do not. Some top schools don’t even offer more than a very limited few AP courses. My experience with 2 recruits at IVY, GPA and scores were most important, course rigor may have been factored in since the HS was top flight but the feedback we had was GPA was more important unless looking for a specific program, for example certain AP’s were requested for Wharton over regular Penn. The Brown coach specifically told us GPA more important than course rigor and recounted he had to turn down a kid from very competitive school taking highest level classes because he had another kid with higher GPA in less rigorous program. Coach was not happy about it! The situation with test scores much more transparent - they tell you what you need and the scores are weighted more heavily than the GPA. Also, I do believe the Ivy recruiting process does not factor weighted GPA’s.</p>
<p>An SAT of 1500 would have to mean recruit is insanely desirable as an athlete and that the coach has other top academic recruits to balance the average AI for incoming class. Also, doubt it could be anything other than a helmet sport. Non-helmets tend to bring up the numbers for AD’s total AI</p>
<p>I have read that 600 is the minimum score an athlete can have on each section of the SAT. That must not be true if a 1500 was accepted. Would a coach kow if the athlete was eligible for this ‘little boost’? Would the high school counselor know?</p>