With several hours per day committed to Athletics, is it ok for athletes not to take advantage of every AP course available
in order to balance school and athletics? Is there a magic number?
No one, whether they’re an athlete or not, is expected to take “every” AP class. Still, an aspiring Ivy
League athlete should take a very rigorous course load because 1) they’ll need to be academically well prepared for the intensive academic experience ahead and 2) the admissions people expect as much from all applicants, including athletes.
If your school offers a wide variety of AP classes, I’d advise taking at least 5-8.
I agree with sherpa. The only other point I’d add is, in my opinion the biggest difference for Ivy athletic recruits is expectations on ECs other than athletics, more so than with expectations on academics.
If a coach wants somebody and their academics are solid by the standards of the school, I don’t think a lack of ECs (compared to other non-recruit applicants) is likely to be a big issue. Whereas a course load that admissions views as insufficiently rigorous is likely to be problematic.
In my unscientific opinion, for a recruited athlete it isn’t very important. I’ve seen kids get in who took very few APs
My limited experience is that too many APs hurt with the Ivys. What coaches seem to care about in Ivy recruiting is the Academic Index, which is usually calculated using a non-weighted, 4.0 scale. So APs if you don’t score that A, can hurt a student athlete. The coaches/admission officers may say differently, but when the recruits talk to the players, there’s a lot of winking and nodding about rigor. However, to get past NESCAC and other tough division III admissions, you need the APs. They’re much harder on athletes than the Ivys.
We’re seeing two different schools of thought here, and both are probably correct. Coaches do, ultimately, want kids who fit into the academic environment of the school, so taking and succeeding at several HS AP classes indicates a better chance of doing well in college. That said, the AI really is the bar against which the kids are measured and it doesn’t measure or account for course rigor. Magic number of AP courses? I don’t think so. I would recommend any aspiring elite school athlete to take at least a few to be sure they’re ready for that level of academics. My kid is graduating soon after 4 years on Ivy team. She’s done well in school and her easiest classes still require approx 1000 pages of reading and 40 pages of papers. She took 7 AP classes in HS. She has teammates who struggle for C grades who don’t belong but hang on. Getting there into the Ivy school as an athlete is one issue; thriving whilst there is another.
AP is not always the measure of a top student. My daughter didn’t take many AP courses, and most that she did take she took senior year so the AP scores were never considered in her applications. She’s still a top student, she just wasn’t in the AP sequence at the right time for some courses. Never took calc in high school, but got an A in college Calc 1. She was no less prepared than those who had already had calc in high school (about half the class).
The question may be can the student handle the course work required for that college with the high school preparation. Many AP courses don’t really prepare the student. My daughter did take AP Spanish. She hopes never to speak another word of Spanish as long as she lives. She hates Spanish. Did that AP class prepare her for Harvard or Yale? I don’t think it had much influence on her one way or the other.
Thanks everyone for the responses. Certainly want the student to be able to handle the work at college but the difference in work required of several APs is just not possible with 4 hours per day of practice and five total honors to AP level academic courses (and sleep). There has been a lot written lately about how students shouldn’t overextend themselves and there are limited APs at our school and some don’t fit with intended major either so just hoping that ad com would take all of that into consideration. In our case, I don’t think it’s an issue of not being able to do the work but rather not having time to and I’m sure others are in the same boat. It’s great to hear the actual experience of others. Pre-reads are coming up and have to give senior courses so I guess will find out. Only problem with finding out that you need another AP in July is the AP summer work that should have already started by then.
Just a note of caution, but if the kid is having trouble managing time now, it is likely to get worse as an athelete in the Ivy. My son came from a full IB program at a rigorous high school and a nationally ranked team. He puts far more time into his studies and his craft now than in high school.
On the substance of the thread, I agree with @sherpa and @bluewater2015. Just meeting the AI threshold the coach has set out is not always enough, although it is certainly a good indicator. Every coach will have a story or two about a kid who got rejected for a LL even though their AI was acceptable. This may be a slightly larger problem at HYP than at some other schools, but there is more to the admissions review than just the mechanical AI calculation.
@Ohiodad51, thanks for the caution, and I hear what you are saying, but I wouldn’t categorize it as not managing time now but not ‘having’ time. This is a sport where the minimum weekly commitment is 24 hours per week of actual practice/conditioning plus 1 hour travel time to the facility (in the summer training bumps to 30). Add on 7 hours at school 5 days per week and maybe 7 hours of sleep per night plus time to eat, shower, dress, etc. and that leaves very little time for studying yet the student can achieve a gpa equivalent and higher than other kids who study a lot more.
I actually think athletes who are great students tend to be excellent time managers and likely spend less time studying but achieve equal results than others.
The high school is considered one of the top in the state and difficult to get through (some consider the work load very unreasonable even in the non-honors level courses but we have heard that students feel really well prepared for college --and they go to elite schools) so I think we’re ok - but could be wrong… I’ve read that the ad coms look at the school profile (but it’s not considered in the academic index) and that they consider the rigor of the school in addition to the rigor of the classes (maybe I’m making that up?)
I actually look forward to the fact that there appear to be less hours required in college athletics (including extra conditioning) - don’t laugh if I’m way off here. That may be sports specific but the time required appears to be less. Has anyone else found that to be true or am I dreaming?
Part of what the posters are saying is that he still needs to show he’s capable of the academic demands at a tippy top. And adcoms need to see that. You want to ensure that, beyond his high school being competitive, he, himself, is. That doesn’t mean taking “advantage of every AP course available.” But it means preparing. How many depends on the possible major. Try to see this as more than getting admitted.
You may in fact be dreaming ;). My son was too, when he looked at the Ivy rules on practice times, etc and compared it to his utterly insane (for the level) sports schedule in high school. Realize that the Ivy rules on time for practice, etc. only cover “official” practices and do not account for meetings, lifts, conditioning, “captain’s practices”, etc. For comparison, my son was probably realistically averaging 2 hours a day weight training/conditioning during the “off” season and 4 to 5 from July thru November in high school. In general, I think he spends roughly the same amount of time on his sport during the season now (although the Ivy season is shorter and they travel less than he did in high school), and maybe slightly more time conditioning/lifting during the off season. Meetings/film session take up a lot more of his time now then previously however. That said, he was not doing a minimum of 3.5 hours a day, 7/365 as your child apparently is. That, by the way, seems like an insane commitment at the high school level, and you may very well be right that no Ivy athletes are training at that level 7/365. Just for information, what sport are we talking about?
As far as the academics, I don’t know. My kid went to a good high school that seems to prepare kids for college. They routinely put kids into the Ivys and other “elite” schools. But we are in fly over country, and there certainly was not the mad dash for AP’s, grade grubbing, etc that is often described on these forums. I will also say that my son did very little actual work during high school. Not the same thing now. Then again, he is a STEM major at a school that is known for being rigorous, and just one data point.
I believe you are correct that the ad coms will look at the track record of the high school, along with the rigor of the classes in deciding whether to “green light” a particular kid. I can say one thing on that point anecdotally. When my son went through his admissions review, his coach told my wife that he never worried about the kids who had the “most rigorous curriculum available” box checked on the application, so I think it is safe to assume that they ad coms at least look at stuff like that. I think several of the posters here are correct, and rigor of either school or course load is not maybe as important for an athlete as it is for a “regular” kid, but I am pretty confident they are still looking at it.
And I think you are right that athletes who excel at both academics and athletics become exceptional time managers. Which is why all of our second hand/anecdotal information on this thread may be helpful, but in my opinion the very best source of information for your son or daughter is to talk to the current members of the team at the schools recruiting him/her. I know in my son’s case he found the input from current players invaluable in making his decision.
To confirm @Ohiodad51’s post, I would agree. Mine was a multi sport all state athlete who also did a heavy travel team schedule. He did AP classes, though certainly not every one. He is working much longer and harder now than he ever has, both on team commitments and academically. If you are using the practice time rule as your guide, your kid may be in for a big shock when he/she arrives on campus.
Thanks, sounds like I might be dreaming! The sport is gymnastics - it is 6/365 (including most major religious holidays…) - it is insane and I am probably insane for allowing it. Since it isn’t a high school sport at many schools, the participation is at the club level and many gyms aren’t as worried about academics. There is a great catchphrase that says ‘Education is important but gymnastics is importanter’. Many people in the gym world don’t understand why we would even consider a non-scholarship school.
@Ohiodad you bring up an interesting point about travel time though - the college gymnastics season is much more compact and there is significant travel (much more so than now) so I can see where that could be a time issue and make study hours more complicated.
@Ohiodad51 that’s a good point that travel can actually be less in the Ivies than in high school and I agree. The schools are for the most part not that far apart by bus - even going to Cornell is nothing like the travel distances in many conferences. And the longer/airplane trips are often either over winter break or over spring break, depending on sport. It can easily be less travel than elite high school club volleyball teams, for example, which can have a few cross-country trips plus some regional trips in a season.
My son is a sophomore kicker and we have been on several unofficial visits (Princeton and MIT). He will be attending several Ivy kicking camps this summer. Given the AI and the recruiting bands, how much do you think a high AI (my son’s is currently a 238 after the ACT) gets you recruited versus pure raw talent? He is an above average kicker (not Div-I at this point) who has conference honors from this year. He is a a three-sport varsity athlete (baseball, soccer, football) and will have taken 11 APs by the time he graduates. Also, how hard is it to be recruited for multiple sports at Ivies (and MIT) with a high AI?
Yes, that incredibly high AI will help.
As several ivy coaches told me, they look at the total package the athlete brings to the table.
That package being made up of athletic skill and AI.
Also, admissions at many (all?) consider the average ai for the recruiting class. So that 238 will allow him to recruit several players with 200s (or for football even lower.)
There’s a legendary story of a JV basketball player being recruited to Harvard because they needed his AI.
AI averaging does not apply to football, which operates under the band system. Your son’s AI would put him in the highest band (Band 4) at every school. My guess is every kicker, punter and long snapper recruited in the Ivy is a Band 4 kid, so your son will be recruit able in an academic sense, and will likely only be competing with kickers whose AI is at or above @215 or so, depending on the school. I do not believe the fact that his actual AI is so high will give him a leg up on other Band 4 kickers though. The way it was explained to me is that where a kid falls within a band does not matter, the only thing that matters is what band he falls into.
I do not know the effect of being recruit able in multiple sports. I assume that it helps if coaches from two different sports in the same school think a kid can help their team, but I have no idea how much or under what circumstances. It may help more for specialists like kickers, given that the schools likely will not take a kicker every year. In that sense, if the kid is being recruited as an infielder but could also kick for the football team even though the coach does not want to spend a likely letter on a kicker that year, I would guess it would help.
A lacrosse player at my kid’s school was recruited by Princeton. He was a very top student, with SATs of almost 1500. His senior year, the coach told him to drop out of the full IB Diploma program because he wanted the recruit to be sure to make straight As to help offset the lower AI of some other recruits. The rigor and number of courses didn’t matter, just the straight GPA.
That example aside, most Ivy coaches want the very best athlete they can possibly squeak through Admissions. If given the choice between a 3-star recruit with outstanding academic credentials, or a 4-star recruit who just meets the minimum AI, they’ll take the latter every time.
Everything that @Ohiodad51 and @baltimoreguy are saying is my sense too. As an athlete, you just need to get into your Band based on the Academic Index. It doesn’t matter how you get there academically. Then it’s about how good of an athlete are you relative to others in the same band. There’s always the occasional case at the very top – Harvard, Princeton, Yale – where a kid ultimately doesn’t get through admissions despite the Band.
@brazos21 The APs and other considerations like extracurriculars, the application essay, and personal background will be helpful for MIT and comparable D3s. What I’m about to say varies based on the school and even the sport within the school, but generally speaking an athlete needs to get past the admissions to get into these schools. Specifically at MIT, my understanding is the coach can help give the athlete a slight bump with admissions–basically some additional attention to help him stand out from the crowd–but he’ll only do so if the kid is wanted somewhat athletically. That is, at MIT, my sense is they won’t lower the standards notably, as happens for some kids at other top D3s sometimes like NESCACs
Thus, I’d argue that it’s harder for an athlete academically to get into MIT but it’s harder for an athlete athletically to get into an Ivy. It’s just two different processes. Without a quality academic transcript, he likely won’t get into MIT