Low GPA - Ivy league?

[Mdt117]

How do people with GPAs under 3.0 get into ivy league schools?

[Proudpatriot]

Usually the answer is no.

[Mdt117]

I know, but it happens and I want to know why

[gibby]

Those students are generally thought to be recruited athletes on the football, basketball, wrestling or hockey teams. See: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/10/9/keeping-score-eric-t-westerfield-a/

Ivy League rules prevent Harvard from accepting more than two football recruits in the top 15% of their class who don’t break 1,250. The competition for those two slots at the academic bottom of the Harvard football team, known as the first “band,” is fierce.

Also: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/sports/before-athletic-recruiting-in-the-ivy-league-some-math.html

Perhaps the most talked about goal of the A.I. is the academic credential minimum it establishes, a number below which virtually no Ivy League recruit can be admitted. This summer, that floor was raised from an Academic Index of 171 to 176, which roughly translates to a B student (3.0 on a 4.0 scale) with a score of 1140 on the old two-part SAT.

[happy1]

It may happen but it is under highly unusual circumstances. So unless you win a Nobel Prize, an Olympic gold medal, become a top recruit in a major sport, have a parent who donated a building or something along those lines, then just put it out of your mind as an option.

[moscott]

@gibby

That would be a false assumption. It IS NOT the athletes getting in with those scores…The minimum AI score is currently 176. A student with a 2.6 gpa and 28 on ACT only adds up to a 177. It’s been a false narrative going around for long time.

[Mdt117]

Would someone being famous/well known do it?

[gibby]

Let’s look at this from another angle:

For the sake of discussion, let’s assume a student with a low GPA in high school receives approximately the same GPA in college. So a high school student with a 2.6 to 3.0 GPA in high school graduates with the same GPA at Harvard, Yale, Princeton etc – which is going to place that student at the BOTTOM of their college class. Now . . . how many employers are going to hire a student at the bottom of their college class? My guess: not many!

Unless a student with a low GPA in high school is attending an ivy league school as a recruited athlete, there is absolutely no upside for that student (unless that student can do appreciably better in college).

Bottom line: It’s better to graduate at the TOP of your class at a so-so college rather than graduate at the bottom of your class from an ivy league school. So even if a student with a 2.6 to 3.5 GPA could get admitted to an ivy league school, it’s still not the best choice for that student in the long run (unless their is a side benefit like athletics or you don’t need a job when you graduate 'cause your daddy is Donald Trump and will bankroll you for life.)

[menloparkmom]

“It IS NOT the athletes getting in with those scores”
Oh really? and you know this how?
show us your proof please.
gibby does know what she is talking about when it comes to H and Y.

[menloparkmom]

Would someone being famous/well known do it?
no…

[moscott]

Could be. Huge parent donor. A break thru invention or cure. President’s daughter makes you a shoo in lol.

[sherpa]

Please note that minimum AI scores only apply to recruited athletes. There is no similar minimum for development cases, URMs, legacies, or anyone else.

Even so, I agree with @gibby that many of the lower scoring students are athletes in a few sports.

[chansu99]

There are plenty of well qualified URMs and legacies, though, so why would they feel the need to accept those that don’t meet their requirements?

[gibby]

Please note that minimum AI scores only apply to recruited athletes

That’s true. However students should note that the average AI of an athletic team cannot be one standard deviation away from that of the accepted student body, an AI is calculated on every applicants and their AI is printed right on their Admissions folder. It’s a shorthand for judging an applicant – both recruited athletes and non-athletes: http://www.collegeconfidential.com/academic_index/

There are plenty of well qualified URMs . . .why would they feel the need to accept those that don’t meet their requirements?

^^ They don’t. Several years ago, I posted the below on the Harvard and Yale forums and I stand by my analysis.

If you look through the Harvard and Yale Class of 2019 Decision Threads, you’ll see that URM tests scores are just about the same as non-URM test scores. So, there is very little bump from being a URM.

Harvard Class of 2019 SCEA Decision Thread http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/1714730-official-harvard-university-2019-scea-decisions-only-p1.html

11 - Female, Black, deferred with ACT 29

21 - Male, Hispanic, accepted with SAT of 2220 and ACT 35

29 - Female, African American, accepted with SAT 2240

30 - Female, African American, accepted with SAT 2130

39 - Male, African American, deferred with SAT 2230

40 - Female, African American, accepted with SAT 2400

44 - Female, African American, sibling, accepted with SAT 2140

47 - Male, African American, deferred with SAT 2010 and ACT 25

57 - Male, Hispanic, deferred with SAT 2220 and ACT 32

62 - Male, Black, accepted with ACT 32

63 - No gender listed, African American, accepted with ACT 32

Harvard Class of 2019 RD Decision Thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/1752941-harvard-university-class-of-2019-rd-results-p1.html

1 - Male, Hispanic, accepted with SAT 2300

3 - Male, Hispanic, accepted with ACT 33

6 - Male, Hispanic, waitlisted with ACT 35

7 - Male, Hispanic, rejected with SAT 2340

10 - Female, African American, accepted with SAT 2100

21 - Male, Hispanic,accepted with ACT 31

33 - Female, African American, accepted with SAT 2380

Yale Class of 2019 SCEA Decision Thread
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/yale-university/1713050-yale-class-of-2019-scea-decisions-p1.html

3 - Male, African American (Questbridge), deferred with SAT 1940 and ACT 35

15 - Male, Hispanic, deferred with SAT 2400

17 - Male, Hispanic, deferred with ACT 33

18 - Male, African American, accepted with SAT 2230

33 - Female, Cuban, accepted with SAT 2270 and ACT 33

34 - Male, African American, rejected with SAT 2030

35 - Female, Hispanic, deferred with SAT 1980

46 - Female, Mexican, accepted with SAT 2170

Yale Class of 2019 RD Decision Thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/yale-university/1752938-yale-university-class-of-2019-rd-results.html

9 - Male, Hispanic, rejected with SAT 2170

11 - Female, African American, rejected with SAT 2100

14 - Female, Latina, waitlisted with SAT 2200

20 - Male, Hispanic, rejected with SAT 2300

22 - Female, African American, accepted with SAT 2240 and ACT 35

23. Female, Hispanic, accepted with SAT 1910 (ranked 8th in her class of 465 students with an UW 3.9 GPA)

Based upon the College Confidential data, my take: Harvard seems to attract more URM’s with top scores – and those students are rejected and accepted with about the same frequency as non-URM students. Yale seems to attract more URM’s with lower test scores (possibly because of Questbridge), but for the most part URM’s with low test scores are not being accepted. And just like Harvard, URM’s with top test scores are rejected.

[Particlez]

I know a guy from ecuador who got into columbia with a low gpa dont remember how low it was but he was basically extremely active during HS: atthelete, joined a bunch of organizations, president of some clubs, etc. Plus a lot of good recommendations, the guy just knew everyone in HS very social and helpful too. That’s all I remember from him.

[sherpa]

Since international admissions is extremely competitive, a low GPA Ecuadorian likely had a “hook”. I’ll speculate that it was athletic talent.

[suburbancat]

With the level of competition where it is, even students with 4.0 GPAs sometimes do not get into Ivy League schools. Thus, the probability of getting into an Ivy with less than 3.0 is near zero unless your parents can make a million dollar donation.

[sherpa]

I wrote - Please note that minimum AI scores only apply to recruited athletes.

@gibby replied - That’s true. However students should note that the average AI of an athletic team cannot be one standard deviation away from that of the accepted student body…

That’s precisely my point. Athletes are the only group held to a quantitative standard. There are no similar rules for development cases, oboe players, or kids from North Dakota.

I happen to believe the rules are appropriate, for the simple reason that I’d prefer these schools be academic rather than athletic powerhouses.

But the rules do result in some curious side effects. Since the AI is based on the school rather than the conference, the most academically strong schools are more limited in their recruiting. The quarterback who can barely squeak in under Upenn’s AI is unrecruitable at HYP.

One other point worth noting: assuming a conference school is 25% recruited athletes, and further (erroneously) assuming that none of the athletes were academically above average, that would still leave 1/3 of the nonathletes below the mean AI of the school.

[gibby]

@suburbancat wrote" “With the level of competition where it is, even students with 4.0 GPAs sometimes do not get into Ivy League schools.”

^^ Correct. I wrote this on another post yesterday, but’s it’s appropriate to repeat here as well.

Having a stellar academic record is a prerequisite for any top college. For example, Harvard has stated that 80% of all applicants could do the work on their campus and 40% of all applicants have an absolutely stellar academic record.

Let’s do the math: 36,000 applicants times .40 = 14,400 applicants with a stellar academic record, which includes GPA and test scores. However, Harvard only has room for 1,660 incoming freshman. So, approximately 13,000 students are rejected every year with stellar academic records – meaning perfect GPA’s and test scores or ones that are near perfect.

However, as the articles I quoted in post #3 demonstrate, some recruited athletes are not required to have stellar academic records, which is how some kids with low GPA’s get admitted to an Ivy League school (which was the OP’s question). That’s not the case for the majority of students.