Can I get accepted into top tier universities WITHOUT athletics?

Consider this - Princeton has an 88% 4-year graduation rate, and 96.8% 6-year rate. Do you honestly think they’re in the business of accepting sub-par students because they play a sport? Many Ivy League teams are Division 1, but there’s a reason you won’t see them winning many national titles. Their student-athletes are students first and foremost, not athletes they brought in to help maintain their image as athletic powerhouses. Being a top athlete gives you an advantage over other qualified applicants, but you do have to be at least marginally qualified. They won’t accept you if they don’t think you can succeed - that would be worse for their reputation than any value you might bring as an athlete.

ALL Ivy league teams are Division 1. It’s a division 1 league/conference.

Some Ivy teams are ranked in the top 10 of Division 1 in that sport. Not every year, but many years. Lacrosse, crew, hockey, fencing.

You have to be much more than marginally qualified both academically and athletically to get into and play for an Ivy. And the Ivy teams find hundreds of student athletes every year to fill their slots. They are not unicorns, just smart and athletic.

Yes, you are likely( I don’t know all about you) only getting into Princeton because you are a top athlete. Kids with perfect ACT’s (and I mean 36’s in all subjects, and 12’s on essays), perfect GPA’s and all sorts of course rigor/EC’s are routinely rejected.

Look, the reality is that none of the Ivys are schools which just chase stats. Over centuries, those schools have developed in a certain way and have decided to seek certain qualities in the students they admit. Some of the things they happen to value in their student body manifests in athletic ability. Specifically, schools like Princeton have made a conscious decision that they prefer to admit a certain number of kids who have shown an ability to handle rigorous academic work while at the same time showing the discipline and hard work necessary to succeed on a physical level over kids who spend all of their time taking ACT practice tests and doing extra credit to make sure they keep a 4.0. Schools like Princeton value things like dependability, teamwork, delayed gratification, striving towards a goal, etc. Somehow they have developed the opinion that theses types of traits often correlate to success in life as well as in sports. Weird, isn’t it?

Your academic stats are by any measure exemplary. If you choose to attend Princeton, you will find yourself around quite a few very bright, very driven people. Many if not most of your classmates will be, like you appear to be, committed both to their academics and other things, be that sports, programming, chess, music, beekeeping (to use the examples from my son’s freshman year suite) or whatever. Do not let the fact that your stats are not “perfect” dissuade you.