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For the class of 2015, Yale recruited only 177 of a total 230 athletes allowed by the Ivy League.
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I know that the Ivy League sets limits on how much member schools can bend admissions standards for athletes, but I'm not aware of any rules restricting the number of recruits. It would seem rational to limit the number of recruits that are below the mean academic standards of the class as a whole, and there's a limit to how many athletes any program might want, but I can't imagine there would be a limit on athletes who meet each schools' academic standards.</p>
<p>Hey Sherpa - yes - I believe they do limit the number of athletic recruits. </p>
<p>Prior to 2003, the practice of using ‘index boosters’ was really widespread in Ivy athletic recruiting. It got to a point where a coach would comb through lists of accepted applicants to find students with high test scores that had listed participation in high school hockey or basketball, for example, and he would list these guys as recruits to keep his roster in AI compliance. Often these guys didn’t even know they were listed as recruits.</p>
<p>So after 2003, the Ivy presidents adopted a rule to limit the number of recruited athletes who may be admitted to each Ivy school. This was to prevent the practice of padding the rosters with these false-recruit/index-boosters It’s a formula based on the number of varsity sports the school fields and the size of the travel squad for each sport -the league enforces a uniform travel squad limit for each sport. The total travel squad numbers are added together and multiplied by 1.4 to get the grand total for the total number of recruits that may be admitted over a rolling four year period. Each school can allocate where to use their recruit spots - but the overall number is controlled by the league.</p>
<p>Thanks Varska. I hadn’t thought of it from the “booster” perspective. It does make sense, but how could it possibly be enforced?</p>
<p>As an (absurd) example, suppose it’s November and Yale has already maxed out its recruiting quota for current year by issuing 230 likely letters in October. Now athlete x comes along. Dream applicant; valedictorian at a competitive HS, great test scores, best HS mile time in the country. But totally lacking in other ECs. She tells the coach she’ll choose Yale if they’ll give her a LL within three weeks, otherwise she’s going to Stanford.</p>
<p>Can Yale send her a LL?
Yes, because she’s clearly a strong applicant?
Or no, because she’s clearly an athletic recruit and they’ve met their limit?</p>
<p>Of course this is all speculative. Anyone’s thoughts are welcome.</p>
<p>From what other posters have said about Ivy recruiting, it sounds like each coach is given a limit of how many athletes they can support through the application process–there is your limit there. This is why you want to start your recruiting conversations early.</p>
<p>^ I agree. I once asked a Princeton coach what he would do if he’d already met his quota and then had another recruit who was an academic standout, someone with an AI above Princeton’s median. He told me admissions wouldn’t give him another spot.</p>
<p>So it’s clear that there are limits in place. I still don’t quite get it.</p>
<p>As I understand it there is a definite cap.
I know for our K1, the team got 7 slots allowed, while Harvard took 18…freshman for the same sport
Levin has been a real pita and kept the coaches from bringing in qualified scholar-athletes. (just look at the football team for example)</p>
<p>K1 has the same gpa/scores/ 12 APs, etc etc so no short cuts. Its imho a reverse snobbery…which is funny because Yale was once a school for men that wanted well rounded leaders- they went to chapel, played a sport, made contacts for careers etc…
Chapel and physical fitness/athletics/leadership have fallen by the way side with a bigger push towards the performing arts.</p>
<p>Interesting thought about the booster perspective…
a local kid who got into H without sport/LL “signed” yesterday at a ceremony at the hs to play the sport at H.
I mentioned to dh that this was clearly for the hs benefit as anyone looking at the roster of the team can clearly see the incoming student does not have what it takes…
however I wonder if the H coach will list the kid as an “official” walk-on. The student has exemplary gpa/scores etc.</p>
<p>Why does it matter if the kid is labeled as a recruit or a walk on? Neither status gets you money. Is it because labeling him as a recruit would cut into the coach’s future (years) allotment?</p>
<p>Would the athlete in Fogfogs post #7 be considered a “athletic recruit” for the rule in post #2?</p>
<p>If the number of athletic recruits is calculated as a four year average then the atlete in post #3 could be recruited but the coach would have to take one less recruit next year.</p>
<p>I’ve always assumed an AD had a set number of athletic recruits that would be reflected in the number of sports and funding. Each Ivy is different, so I think the total numbers will vary considerably. Along those same lines, I’ve assumed if an AD wanted to move the number of recruits from one sport to another, he could do it as long as he stayed under a total given to him by Admissions. </p>
<p>Both my son (Ivy baseball) and his girlfriend (Ivy soccer) have told me it is a hard limit to the number of Ivy recruits per year, and it doesn’t change year to year. The coach knows ahead of time the number of recruits, the number or LLs, so the balance is the number of qualified ED applicants he can pursue. Walk-ons become an exception should someone leave, get injured, or get accepted on their own. Am I off base here?</p>
<p>That’s the way I understand it. Administration can ration those numbers as they see fit as long as they keep the coded recruits (those who count toward the AI average) within that 4 year average allowed by the league. So Yale hockey (D1 champs), H basketball, etc, may be allowed a few more spots by admin but it would be at the expense of other sports.</p>
<p>For reference, I went into some of my saved archives to see if I could find a raw number for athletic recruits at son’s Ivy. I did. My son’s incoming 2014 class had 222 recruited athletes or 6.9% of the total incoming class. So if 230 is the total ceiling number as you suggest, my son’s incoming class was at 96% “athletic recruit capacity” vs 177 of 230 which is 76% “athletic recruit capacity”. Huge difference.</p>
<p>Under the global ceiling of recruits that an Ivy AD gets,
when would the coach of a specific sport know how many recruits they were to be allotted in a given year?<br>
For example, for the incoming class of 2015 would each sport’s coach know now how many kids they can recruit?<br>
Or would they only know in the late summer or fall, or even after OVs how many they get?
Could a prospective student-athlete ask the coach how many and get a reliable answer or is that protected info for each school?</p>
<p>I think you will find that coaches are very up front about what they are looking for, how many spots they have to fill, what they want in a recruit and how much money they have to give (when applicable). I was taken a bit off guard by how upfront the coaches were at first. I expected a bit more cloak and dagger but it’s pretty straightforward, at least the coaches we dealt with.</p>
<p>I’ve just been through all this, hopefully my input helps. I was being recruited by Yale in the fall, the coach there told me his number of LLs was strictly limited to 7, and they had to be EA. The princeton coach, who I started talking to in the winter, said their number fluctuates from year to year at the discretion of admissions and depending on how many other sports had used. Normally they could get an additional LL in RD, but admissions had to look at the total athletes already admitted before seeing if they could take more. </p>
<p>I told princeton if they could get another LL, I would accept it, and they would offer it to me. A few weeks later, the coach told me admissions was uncooperative and wouldn’t give me a LL. If I got in on my own I could still be on the team. </p>
<p>Thankfully, I was (unusually for this sport) very academically qualified, and against my expectations I got in in April. I think what I find the most odd about everything is that even though I was eventually admitted, they wouldn’t give me a likely letter in January. I suppose that’s because of the LL limit. </p>
<p>On a slightly related note, I felt yale (at least the administration) was a lot more condescending to athletes who “cheated” the admissions process.</p>
<p>The reason it matters whether somebody is recruited or not is that the Academic Index is used only for the recruited athletes–it is what allows the school to recruit a certain number of athletes with stats below what would otherwise be needed for admission–it only allows the stats to be so much below in the aggregate, and it only allows a few recruits with stats substantially below. As noted above, if there were no limit on the number of recruits, you could simply “recruit” people with very high stats who were never actually going to play.</p>
<p>Ask Yale swimming who lost its women’s coach after two years about athletics at Yale. Aside from the occasional highlight (like ice hockey–how did that happen???) Yale athletics is becoming quickly an after-thought. At H, where I am now, The Game has ceased from being even a contest in the past decade–and I can’t recall the number of times in the past that Yale has won The Race. </p>
<p>Ask these kids who go on OVs how they are treated by the present student body–as if they are morons who need to take off their shoes to count to twenty–to see why many very good candidates who might have chosen Yale go elsewhere…No need to go to a school so effete that it looks down upon academically qualified kids just because they are athletes.</p>
<p>Levin is gone–and good riddens–but the new guy is his hand picked successor so don’t expect many changes. It will mostly likely be more of the same…</p>
They can thank the behavior of some current and recent athletes for that impression. It’s too bad, of course, that all athletes get tarred with the same brush.</p>
<p>I knew kids in a variety of clubs and interests who were just as moronic in their actions as athletes (and I was NOT an athlete, btw). But somehow Yale has gotten into its head bc of Levin that jocks are dumb.</p>