<p>Hello, I was very curious as to how big of a role athletics play in admission to Cornell University. I will be participating in varsity lacrosse, wrestling, and football (If I do not make the varsity football team, I will be playing X Country, but that's irrelevant IMHO), and I didn't know if I should compete and work hard to do well in them while balancing academics.....Or maybe focus solely on academics? Do athletic achievements come into play? Does it look "better" to just participate in one, or will they understand that my passion is divided? In simple terms, I am just wondering if athletics will "improve" your chances on getting in, and, if they do, to what extent.</p>
<p>(Just a heads up: I am posting this to both the Cornell and Columbia CC page, don't think that I am spamming, it's just those two) </p>
<p>Academics is your first measure. ECs (such as athletics) show how much you can add to the overall community. Important? Yes. All-important? No – athletics is on par with other items that paint a picture of who you are. </p>
<p>There’s no hard and fast answer for you. Take the most rigorous classes possible and do your best to balance. If too many sports impede on one’s classroom achievement, I’d advise my kids to pull back on the sports. My oldest daughter just made the Varsity cheer squad of our huge mega-high school as an entering freshman – a very competitive spot. My neighbor, an asst FB coach at the HS says that the Cheer team has the most intense training hours of any sport at the school, too.</p>
<p>It now looks like she’ll be a four year Varsity athlete – and she’s in one of the most intense IB programs in our state. Her mom and I have our fingers crossed that she can balance both.</p>
<p>DavidCU: I saw a post you did on the Cornell board. With those grades and test scores and high participation in 3 tough sports, I think you’ve definitely placed yourself well. My final bit of advice for you: when you choose teacher recs, make sure they can cite anecdotes of your academic leadership and acumen. From your sports, it’s clear you’re a person of influence. Make sure your rec letters remove any doubt about your academic chops. Best of luck to you.</p>
<p>Thanks a lot guys! Not gegrading anyone, but especially you T26E4! I have other academic-related EC’s under my belt, so don’t worry about that. This was more of a question of whether or not they treat athletics as “Oh wow, he/she has been playing three sports his entire HS career?! He must work much, much harder than the average applicant!” or, “He does three sports, just some other EC’s”</p>
<p>I’m assuming you want to be recruited. If you have decent academics and you’re a great athlete, then you can get recruited and be set for admissions.</p>
<p>If you don’t want to be recruited, then athletics are treated like a very intense extracurricular. Of course, Columbia and Cornell don’t need to admit as many athletes as, say, musicians during the RD round because so many athletes have already been recruited. So if you’re going to do varsity sports, I’d try to get recruited.</p>
<p>At my work-study gig I work closely with the athletics department staff and, though pwoods already said it pretty well, I can say from experience that getting recruited can make the admissions process a breeze. </p>
<p>This is true for transfer students, too. I’ve actually hear a football coach say, “You’re being recruited. So, you don’t have to do any essays,” to a potential transfer who was visiting the facility.</p>
<p>Insane. I don’t know how well that I am going to do this year, but if I do well, then surely I will try to get recruited! But if not, I think that they are some pretty good EC’s! Thanks for the help!</p>
<p>not for the Ivy League. If you can play D1 ball, your grades don’t matter,… only in a conference like SEC or Big TEN where football is their religion. (especially SEC)</p>
<p>If you want to gain admission to Ivy League as a highly recruited athlete, you still need to meet the academic standard. There is a reason why Ivy League schools do not have athletic scholarship.</p>
<p>I’d say, from experience, that grades don’t matter as much for athletes - even at Columbia. Our athletics department employs a liaison who is charged with the task of negotiating with admissions, with frustrated and disappointed professors, etc. She helps push kids through when they won’t make the cut on their own. The truth is, the two sides make compromises all the time. And I don’t want to generalize too much. But, yeah, it’s D-1 sports.</p>
<p>It’s also true that a lot of our athletes are brilliant people. They deserve quite a bit of credit for how hard they work on and off the field. So, respect to them!</p>
<p>I definitely agree with hellojan. Sure, you can’t be anywhere near as unintellectual as recruits at Big 10 schools, but getting recruited by an Ivy is a pretty sweet deal. First off, you’re not actually competing against all the best athletes in the country, since most of them will choose to go to schools that actually appreciate athletics. So it’s easier to be recruited at an Ivy than any other D1 school. You have to be relatively good at academics, but nowhere near as good than if you were competing against the brilliant non-athletes who apply. It really is the best of both worlds, assuming you are a good athlete and don’t mind going to a school where most people don’t care about athletics.</p>
<p>Oh I bet, but I think that I could get into Cornell without being an athlete, but it’s a toss-up. Hopefully being an athlete, especially for lacrosse and wrestling, will get me into Columbia, Cornell, and as a stretch, Yale.</p>
<p>Wrestling does recruit. But, alas, neither Columbia nor Yale have varsity men’s lacrosse teams. At both schools it is considered a club sport - and, as such, the players finance and organize the team themselves, as they see fit.</p>
<p>My friend is a great football player & he has good grades (but they’re probably not as good as most of the kids who get accepted into Ivy League schools) but he has gotten many, many letters from Harvard and Princeton expressing their interest in him playing football for their schools. He’s not choosing either of them because he’s gotten offers from schools that are more sports oriented and have better football programs. So, from this, I would assume that if you are a recruited varsity athlete, it probably will be easier. But I’m sure there are many other recruited athletes who have amazing grades/test scores and could’ve gotten into an Ivy without having that hook.</p>
<p>“He has gotten many, many letters from Harvard and Princeton expressing their interest in him playing football for their schools. He’s not choosing either of them because he’s gotten offers from schools that are more sports oriented and have better football programs.”</p>
<p>This is why it’s (relatively) easy to get recruited at an Ivy League school. Their sports programs are DI almost by default—since they’re in the Ivy League—but the majority of the student body cares much more about academics (and other ECs) than sports, and the school only cares about sports to the extent that they keep their DI rating and get old alums to donate. It’s not like, I don’t know, some powerhouse football school (seriously, I can’t think of one…Michigan maybe? Ohio? I don’t follow NCAA football!) where the football team is the most powerful institution on campus.</p>
<p>Michigan stinks in the last decade, and Ohio State was just hit with a big scandal (Ohio State will also stink in the next decade). </p>
<p>There is no such thing as “DI rating”. There are big six power conference where they generally have great resources for sports, but not all of them are known for academics. If your future is not athletics, it makes no sense to bypass a chance to go to Ivy League school just to attend a football powerhouse, such as a SEC school like Alabama.</p>