<p>You don't have to be a football star if you weigh over 280. Nor top of class. Add 25 lbs and the ability to move your feet and you can probably knock another 100 points off the SAT score.</p>
<p>There is an unfortunate idea that somehow, as long as you are a good athlete, as long as you have decent stats, you will be incredibly advantaged when it comes to admission to an elite college, such as Harvard or Princeton.</p>
<p>This idea is reinforced by those claims that applications of athletes that the coach is interested in are somehow 'tagged' for the admissions office, giving that applicant an advantage, and that overall, athletes who apply get in at a higher rate than the non-athlete applicant pool.</p>
<p>While the above may be true, I don't think people realize the all the work that goes in before the athlete applies, or even how student-athletes are more self-selecting of institutions than regular applicants, experiencing a 'rejection' of sorts even before they apply.</p>
<p>I can only talk about the sport I know, but you have to imagine the coach himself/herself as somewhat of the first screen for many of these student-athletes. Many student-athletes begin the process quite early. And many of these student-athletes need to get a coach interested in them. For some, this is easy, as they already have some sort of reputation. And for some, this is much harder, and they need to contact a coach to see if they can get them interested, go to camps etc.</p>
<p>Many student-athletes who are serious about their sport won't apply to an institution if they know the coach is not interested in them. Because they are trying to get the attention of a coach before their senior year, even before they begin the application process, these students know which coaches are interested in them, and which coaches are not interested in. </p>
<p>And they won't apply to those schools where the coach is not interested in them.</p>
<p>So, in some ways, these students can experience a 'rejection' before most kids even begin to apply. If you are a good candidate for Harvard, and you want to play sport X, you need to get the coach interested in you. And if the coach isn't interested, well, you don't bother applying to Harvard because for many of these students, they want to play sport X in college.</p>
<p>These 'rejections' aren't counted in the college admissions games and are rarely talked about, at least here on CC. </p>
<p>And I imagine for every student-athlete that a coach is interested in, there are many, many more with Harvard-acceptable stats, that want to go to Harvard, that the coach isn't interested in. And these students have done some work to get the attention of the coach, find out that they won't be offered a spot on the team, and they don't bother to apply.</p>
<p>very well said.</p>
<p>college rejection starts quite early for the student athlete...long before any applications are submitted.</p>
<p>Young relative was a good, not great, student in HS.
Decent lineman. 6'5, about 285. Had his pick of Ivies minus Harvard.</p>
<p>there are proven footsteps to follow too... Ryan</a> Fitzpatrick</p>
<p>Harvard plays "FCS" football, so they are not at the level of the big boys, but they still need quality players. Do some of their recruits get some slack? Sure, but they are still competent. They can still complete the work at school. As the school gets "better and better (higher in the rankings)" the talent pool that they have to recruit from gets smaller and smaller.</p>
<p>There was a high school all-star game on ESPN a week or two ago, and some of the recruits announced where they were going to school during the game. I only saw 1 of them commit, but he chose Southern Cal, and he could honestly barely string a sentence together. It was embarrassing. No way he scored more than 900 (out of 1600).</p>
<p>Of the number of recruited athletes matriculating at any particular Ivy in any year, how many quit their teams during the academic year? With the students having no financial incentive to stay with the teams, do Ivy coaches bring in more recruits than they actually need because they think that a few recruits may quit?</p>
<p>How prevalent is the walk-on athlete in the Ivy?</p>
<p>"There are also lots of athletes who get in over their heads at schools where they have no business being - UVA comes to mind."</p>
<p>True. This happened to a lacrosse player we knew at UVA.</p>
<p>It probably should be pointed out that the Ivy league does not allow athletic aid. So, while football (or what ever sport) may provide a hook to get that student in, it is just a hook. </p>
<p>Actually as ECs go, sports are probably a bad choice from a couple of different perspectives:</p>
<p>1) From a time investment point of view, playing a sport at that level is a year around commitment, ranging from 20 hours a week in the off season to as much as 50-60 hours a week during the peak time (e.g. two a days in football, summer travel ball events in baseball, endless laps in swimming)</p>
<p>2) From a probability of success, the odds are pretty bad that a high school athlete gets to play at any level in college - let alone at a high enough level to get significant funding. Using football as an example, the NCAA says that there are roughly 280,000 HS seniors playing football in any given year. Only 16,000 of them will play college football the following year - so about 6%.</p>
<p>JCBK -Just anecdotal from the dark ages (the 70's)-recruited brother -in-law played basketball for 2 years at Yale then dropped off the team to focus on studies. Husband, recruited by Yale and Brown, played for Carnegie Tech ( Carnegie Mellon). Same thing-lasted 2 years. No money in it and was in engineering with very demanding schedule. Some stay all 4 years I would guess and thrive on the team but I would guess some do still drop out.</p>
<p>Valedictorian of son's class, who lettered in 3 sports and had other great ECs, was rejected by Harvard and Yale and went to Dartmouth. Not like he ended up at "Bob's House of Knowledge", but, still...</p>
<p>The boy has great scores, right?
The boy has great grades, right?
The boy is in the top 2% of his class, right?</p>
<p>From what I've read on here, that's what ALL of the applicants to Ivy League schools have. Those who are admitted are those who have something "extra." I'd say that being a star on a great football team could be that something extra. Right?</p>
<p>
[quote]
The boy has great scores, right?
The boy has great grades, right?
The boy is in the top 2% of his class, right?</p>
<p>From what I've read on here, that's what ALL of the applicants to Ivy League schools have. Those who are admitted are those who have something "extra." I'd say that being a star on a great football team could be that something extra. Right?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>That was exactly my point.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>Valedictorian of son's class, who lettered in 3 sports and had other great ECs, was rejected by Harvard and Yale and went to Dartmouth.<<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>Right, but was he college-level material in any of those three sports? And if he was, perhaps Harvard and Yale already had strong players at his position and really needed something else. If you are a star quarterback, but Harvard already has three quarterbacks but no receivers, you may well end up at Dartmouth.</p>
<p>^And its not even just "college-level" sports ability that it required: Both Harvard and Princeton are NCAA Division 1 athletic schools (as opposed to the generally less competitive Div. II and Div. III schools). In many sports Harvard and Princeton are recruiting the same athletes as the athletic powerhouse Div. 1 universities, but they have a tougher time attracting them as they do not offer scholarships, redshirting or the same celebrity environment offered by those schools.</p>
<p>You don't need to have wonderful stats necessarily... I know a guy who attends a rival school that got deferred by UGA (in-state) but is going to Princeton to play QB..</p>
<p>To answer #33, yes, he played football (linebacker) until an injury ended his playing days.</p>
<p>Captain of a mediocre football team can for sure get recruited by Ivies.</p>
<p>Just above 50% pass rate, mediocre pass yards/game, and an adequate number of touchdowns balanced by a tolerable number of interceptions... on a team that made the playoffs but lost quickly, not to mention a team that plays in the lower divisions.</p>
<p>Got asked by Ivies like Penn, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Ivy-caliber schools like Stanford (I never understood this one) by breaking a 3.0 and scoring just above 1800.</p>
<p>What about a girl who plays varsity football (with the boys) as a quarterback, and is near the top of her class?</p>
<p>Would that be a hook at all?</p>
<p>"The boy has great scores, right?
The boy has great grades, right?
The boy is in the top 2% of his class, right?"</p>
<p>Not really-- not bad, not great, and certainly not top 5 or even 10%. Sibling with much higher everything (minus the sport) did not get into any of top choices.</p>
<p>Hook for girl quarterback?<br>
Maybe not for recruiting, but why not as a hook? There are a lot more common ones used every day. And it makes for a ready-made essay topic...</p>