<p>Asking for a friend:</p>
<p>In many private colleges, being recruited as an athlete will boost your chances incredibly - one could almost say it guarantees admission even to Ivies as long as you meet some basic quantitative pre-requisites. </p>
<p>Is this also true for top New England prep schools such as Andover, Exeter, Deerfield, Hotchkiss, etc...?</p>
<p>My friend is nationally-ranked in Canada for swimming and is a Canadian citizen. She scored 93rd percentile on her SSAT's, if the coach would like her to swim for the school, does she almost have a guaranteed acceptance?</p>
<p>She's applying to go into 9th grade.</p>
<p>Deerfield has strong athletic teams, please scroll through the pages using tabs at the bottom of the first page. Deerfield won many swimming and waterpolo championships.</p>
<p>[Deerfield</a> Athletics](<a href=“http://deerfield.edu/category/ontheteam/athletic-features/]Deerfield”>http://deerfield.edu/category/ontheteam/athletic-features/)</p>
<p>Would it then be safe to say, for Deerfield at least, that the swimming coaches communicate with the admissions committee and will push favorably for swimmers that they’d like to recruit?</p>
<p>From what I’ve seen on this board, being a recruited athlete factors very heavily in admissions. There was one really arrogant dad this year who posted a few days in advance of the 10-March decision date that his son was aggressively recruited and accepted by Exeter & Andover.</p>
<p>This guy’s posts were so obnoxious that many posters complained about him, and the CC administrators took down his posts because his early notification by the schools was in violation of the the schools’ rule not to inform before 10-March.</p>
<p>Athletic recruits may have advantages. They must meet the minimum academic qualifications of the school, and hope that there are not many others competing for the same athletic spots. If a school has 40 superb swimmers applying (and it may, the bigger schools get over 3000 applicants), it may not need that many, and will not offer admission. Any “niche” recruited applicant will have a better chance if they fill several diversity characteristics - being a swimming oboe player from Montana will be better than being just a swimmer, for example.</p>
<p>We are friendly with a young person who is not a star in terms of school (good not great grades, no significant EC’s), but she is a very good hockey player. Recruited and admitted to PEA for 9th grade, among other usual suspect schools. Our son’s interviewer at PEA actually spent some of his interview asking what he knew about the hockey player - was he a good kid, was he well-respected, etc.</p>
<p>From what young hockey-kid told our son, YH-K had okay SSAT scores overall and not-great math section score (not close to OP’s canadian friend’s overall score) - the math section is a major factor in PEA admissions decisions apparently. Or, at least, major if the applicant doesn’t have useful skills in a sport that BS supports.<br>
None of this is sour grapes - our son was thankfully accepted to PEA. We were just a bit surprised that the academic standard seemed to be lowered somewhat in order to admit a kid who is really good at a sport.<br>
So I’d say - apply!</p>
<p>Hockey player? Yeah. He will get into Harvard too. Trust me on this one. Not sure about swimmers though…</p>
<p>I can honestly say that swimming helped me a TON for admissions. I felt like i rushed every application, and still managed to get accepted by my schools. Both would be considered “HADES” schools. I had no other “wow” factor besides my sport and that im a twin. I am asian and blend in with most. Knowing this, I knew that swimming would probably be the main factor for my admission. That being said, PA tried to recruit one AMAZING ninth grader to replace one of our seniors, but he was rejected in the end. And to answer the previous post, at the big swim schools of the east coast (Peddie, Germantown, bolles, baylor, andover, exeter, deerfield, choate, suffield, etc), there is some heavy recruiting for major d1 schools (hypsm, ivies, cal, etc.). In conclusion, athletics do help, but don’t garuntee. Keep in mind that many of the athletic recruits are rediculous at their studies!!</p>
<p>Yes, I can speak to the fact that at Peddie, the team is quite good and has won 2 Swimming and Diving Eastern Championships in the past 4 years, as well as countless MAPL championships. The graduating seniors are attending: US Naval Academy (1), US Military Academy (1), Princeton (1), University of Tennessee (1), Georgetown (1), Johns Hopkins (1), Dartmouth (1), Wesleyan (1), Florida Gulf Coast University (1), and University of Mary Washington (1).</p>