Chances of a student getting in as an athlete compared to not being an athlete.

<p>Basically the thread title says it all.</p>

<p>Let's say you have the usual Yale applicant except that he or she indicates that he or she will not be participating in any varsity sport if they get accepted.</p>

<p>Then you have another applicant, who in this hypothetical situation has the same exact application as the other applicant except that he or she indicates that he or she will participate in varsity track (400 meter dash) if they get accepted. This applicant has spoken with the coach and whatnot. </p>

<p>I'm aware that the second student probably has a better chance at getting in, but by how much would you estimate?</p>

<p>I hate hypotheticals, however, I would say that if they are recruited, chances increase by maybe 10-15%. I’m not an expert, and may be exaggerating, but I think that it definitely increases chances.</p>

<p>Impossible to quantify</p>

<p>If the coach puts him on his list and speaks to admissions, as long as the student qualifies academically, I can’t see why he wouldn’t get in.</p>

<p>For your hypothetical, if the second student has the “same exact application,” but also gets help from the coach, then he obviously has an infinitely better chance at getting in. If they’re exactly the same otherwise, why would the non-athlete ever get in over an athlete?</p>

<p>I have repeatedly read–in numerous credible admissions-related sources–that a recruited athlete at an Ivy League school has about a 60 to 75% chance of being admitted. With Yale having an unusually large number of varsity teams, this may be slightly higher. The reality is that this whittles the chances for a “normy” (that’s what the athletes at Yale call kids who get in with no hook–my D is a sophomore “normy” at Yale and lives with 3 varsity athletes in her res. college suite) to be admitted down to about 3% (that’s after admitting athletes, legacies, URM’s, development/celebrity cases). This doesn’t even factor in that Yale does sophisticated international recruitment and a significant % of their admits are intnat’l students. It’s tough to get in!!! Here’s what I tell students who fit the “normy” profile that I counsel, “If you line up 100 kids, 97 of them are going home. 3 lucky ones will be admitted to Yale.” That said, you can’t succeed if you don’t try. Good luck!</p>

<p>If you have the grades and scores to be within the middle 50% at Yale, you basically have a golden ticket for admission. </p>

<p>I was a recruit and legacy, and I don’t think I would have made it in without that even though I had a 1600 SAT and 3.9.</p>

<p>It doesn’t exactly work like that, lol. Though I will tell you that, in certain circumstances, being a recruited athlete at any Ivy League school will push you from almost literally no shot to a guaranteed spot. In those situations, the athlete is usually a top recruit.</p>

<p>Ballparking admissions rates for recruited athletes is a worthless task since there is no actual ballpark. Admission simply varies on a case-by-case basis, and admission/rejection, the vast majority of the time, happens not during the admissions process itself but during the pre-read, when a coach figures out whether he’s wasting his time with a recruit or not. For the athletes who pass the pre-read the acceptance rate is pretty darn close to 100%.</p>

<p>For someone who is not at a recruit level, does it make any difference whether they have a sports EC or not if they have enough other EC’s?</p>

<p>If you’re not a recruit, a sports EC is probably just as good as any other EC.</p>

<p>^And if you’re dedicated and talented, it’s just like your dedicated and talented in any area – which is a plus.</p>

<p>^ Not exactly; if you aren’t using your dedication and talent to the school’s benefit i.e. participate in a varsity sport, then odds are it’s not gonna be too much of a plus.</p>

<p>^I’d say not necessarily…
I mean, consider debate, for instance, Yale accepts hs debaters to a much larger degree than actually make it onto their debate team, I say this since the debate team accepts <20 kids per year, there were easily more debate kids than that in my Res college alone…
if you’rer not recruited, it’s like any other ec, and at any rate, can’t be much worse</p>

<p>Yale doesn’t recruit debaters, though.</p>

<p>If Yale is looking for students who will add to the campus, then someone who is playing on a Club Sports team is just as valuable as someone who is on a Debate Team.</p>

<p>Does the saying about “the bassoon player on the all-American squash team” hold any truth?</p>

<p>Do you mean it increases your chance of admissions if both playing sports and play bassoon/instrument/sing/dance?</p>

<p>I think it’s incredibly easier to get into yale as a recruited athlete, almost to a point that it’s unfair. A football player at my school could have had a guaranteed spot at Yale, but didn’t get a 26 on the ACT… He is going to Penn instead now.</p>

<p>Yale has a higher threshold than Penn for recruited athletes? Interesting.</p>

<p>The problem with playing sports in high-school if you’re not being recruited is is this: they take up much more time than other ECs and they’re not looked on as favorably. Trust me, i’m going through the application process with 4 years of football, 2 years varsity, under my belt (and I was a captain this year). It basically ate up my fall semester, leaving no room to do anything else, not to mention daily workouts in the off-season. In the end, it isn’t helping me that much in the admissions process because I’m not being recruited. It sucks, but that’s how it is.</p>

<p>A kid from my school is now a freshman at Columbia. He plays football, had a 27 ACT, and a 3.6 GPA. He had no other EC’s other than football. We had two kids get rejected from Columbia ED with 36’s and 4.0’s with simply incredible EC’s who are both now at MIT. How is that even close to fair?</p>

<p>Courseloads were incredibly different too. All normal classes versus all AP’s.</p>