<p>If your school performance matches your ACT performance, I think you stand an equally excellent chance at both.</p>
<p>My school performance is the worst part of my app. I have gotten 6 Bs total through highschool, so I have a 3.89 and I am 13/476. I have taken 11 AP classes (4 junior year, 7 senior year). My senior year grades on the mid-year report are all A's so it was pretty much my best year, hopefully it helps.</p>
<p>You look fine for those schools Dbate.</p>
<p>3togo, here's a recent article from Dartmouth, where athletes are 18-19% of every class and is known to bend the least of the ivies for athletes (Harvard bends most):</p>
<p>TheDartmouth.com</a> | Ivy League recruiting practices: Does Dartmouth lower its standards?</p>
<p>
[quote]
athletes are 18-19% of every class
[/quote]
athletes and recruited athletes are not equivalent measures. When I ran in college over half the team was walk-ons ... that was also true of the women's swim team. In my case the coach certainly knew my name and encouraged my application ... but I did not use up one of the jocks AI band slots (I wasn't nearly a good enough runner ... and didn't need an AI beak). The 17% athlete number looks reasonable for all the schools other than Penn and Cornell (which are quite a bit bigger) ... I'm wondering how many of those are recruited.</p>
<p>The Dartmouth numbers are recruited athletes and so is the 17% number that comes up in books.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The Dartmouth numbers are recruited athletes and so is the 17% number that comes up in books.
[/quote]
I'll buy the 17% recruited athletes at Dartmouth ... if that is true the % appears to be much lower at the other schools. Here's why it seems so</p>
<p>The IVYies tend to have about the same number of teams (in basically the same sports) and I'd assume about the same number of athletes. Cornell had 1100 varsity athletes. If Dartmouth also has 1100 varsity athletes among it's 4000 students that is 28% of the student population (which is a lot) ... and I'll accept that 17% of the students are recruited athletes ... that means about 680 of the 1100 varsity athletes are recruited (which sounds about right ... about 2/3rds).</p>
<p>OK ... if each school has 680 recruited athletes among 1100 varsity athletes</p>
<pre><code> (1100) (680)
</code></pre>
<h2>School # Students % Varsity % Recruited</h2>
<p>Dartmouth 4000 28% 17%
Princeton 4600 25% 15%
Yale 5300 21% 13%
Brown 5800 19% 12%
Harvard 6600 17% 10%
Columbia 7000 16% 10%
Penn 9700 11% 7%
Cornell 14,000 8% 5%</p>
<p>So, to me, the 17% number looks legit for Dartmouth but does not appear to be representative for the IVY league at all ... 10-12% is much more representative. A few random thoughts.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Recruiting on the IVY league is highly regulated so the schools should have very similar numbers of recruits</p></li>
<li><p>As my kids school, at least, a fair number of the top students are also athletes ... much more true on the girls side ... the 10-12% recruits in the IVY league is a little high compared to top student-athletes at my kids HS ... but not a ton.</p></li>
<li><p>Clearly the recruits become a bigger issue the smaller the school ... so I'd think at LACs that have a ton of teams (the NESCAC schools (Williams, Amherst, etc), for example, which also have 30+ varsity teams) that the % of athletic recruits could be much higher than in the IVYies.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>I'm not going to debate this anymore, but I do believe all the books are telling the truth, and they say 17%.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Would you think I stand a better chance at a school like Yale as compared to say MIT.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>DBate
If you are a URM and strong in math/science, MIT will definitely fight for your application. The reality is that there are not that many URMs with the qualifications to get into MIT AND with an interest in technology. </p>
<p>No top school recruits by major so it is not a particularly helpful strategy to target a less science focused school with the hope you will stand out from the crowd. Even at Harvard 75% of engineering majors change concentration before graduation. </p>
<p>Don't apply to a school where you are not sure you will be happy if admitted. I am not saying Yale is a bad place for science or engineering majors. It is just a school where such students are in a small minority and take most of their classes off the main campus up on Science Hill.</p>
<p>Would getting a international award be considered a hook if everything else in your application is perfect?</p>