<p>I don’t think Swimkidsdad is quite right about the Academic Index, either. At least for football, there isn’t a single floor–rather there are several bands with different numbers of permissible recruits, based on number of standard deviations difference from the average Academic Index. The structure does encourage the schools to look for students who have both playing ability and stats, because they can thus avoid using up the slots for low-index students. Note that the whole purpose of the Academic Index is to restrain any of the Ivy League schools from recruiting too many weak students in order to bolster sports performance.</p>
<p>Look, it was simply my observation as an Ivy League student (and my kids have the same observation) that the range of academic abilities was wider among recruited athletes than among other categories of students. This is not surprising. Athletes have a talent that is very valuable to the university, and that is not necessarily linked to academic ability. (As I noted, the same could be true of development cases, but there just aren’t that many of them.)</p>