<p>Williams requires better stats than most schools simply because it is so much smaller than other schools. Also, it’s harder for athletes because it’s DIII - so the school isn’t as invested as it would be in a DI school. However, back to the 1800 SAT score… that is the MINIMUM. You need at least that score to be looked at.</p>
<p>To follow PacHeights observation, I agree! We learned that Williams would require mid-700s SATs from an athlete they are truly interested in having - the explanation being that the class size is so small, no room for exceptions…unlike an ivy that might have around 1600+ in the freshman class, so a few spots going to athletes with scores in the high 600s/low 700s isn’t going to change the standards of the class in any way.</p>
<p>Anyway, it makes one wonder about how schools like Williams and Amherst can even get athletes - they have to be not only exceptionally bright, but good enough for a strong Div. 3 program, and maybe turning down merit scholarships elsewhere, or the status of the ivy league. Pretty great that Williams makes it work though - more power to them!</p>
<p>To add on to these observations, what I found is that at the top LACs you need better scores but usually don’t need to be quite as strong of an athlete. And as for making it work, they all place an emphasis on sports - look at the percentages of athletes on these campuses. These athletes just happen to be exceptionally qualified to make it in.</p>
<p>the only school thats more difficult to get into then williams for an athlete (excluding b and f ball) is stanford. u gotta be superhuman. 2200 plus, at least 8 ap’s and 3.7uw and the best nationally or internationally in your sport.
geeeeeez</p>
<p>^really? I don’t have much experience but I thought that because Stanford isn’t bound by the Ivy rules it could take kids the Ivy’s couldn’t get, and that it forced down the average stats of the student body because they took so many athletes to compete for national titles across the board (going for, and getting, that director’s cut). I agree that you have to be a superhuman athlete, but I’m not so sure about academics. A few kids I know couldn’t get pre-reads at H &Y because of academics, but wound up at Stanford. But I could be very wrong…</p>
<p>Also, to be fair, Williams and Amherst have 66 true slots (I believe that’s the number) that don’t need those superhuman stats, just excellent ones.</p>
<p>I’ve seen some super-students get a tip - or at least some sort of coach support - at Williams, but also one very good female athlete who got in with about a 3.3 and 30 or 31 on the ACT. Her parent told me she was told to aim for the 25th percentile mark on testing in order to get the tip. And this was definitely a true slot or tip. So no, I don’t think every Williams athlete has to have amazing academic qualifications. I think it’s much the same at other NESCAC schools.</p>
<p>D is getting recruited to Stanford, and frankly it was somewhat of a surprise. She’s very strong, but it seemed to me that Stanford gets national champions, kids who’ve gone to the Olympic trials, etc. and she’s not nearly that good. She’s not even a state champion (yet). I read an article about their athletic recruiting in which they said that out of the top 100 kids in a sport, only 10 have the academic credentials for admission. So basically Stanford has to look for the diamond-in-the-rough type of kids whom they think they can make stars out of. Unlike the Ivies, in D’s sport Stanford makes the student apply and be accepted first before being offered an official visit, though granted the application gets sent in a special athletic envelope so that must help. Maybe they can bend the requirements slightly for precisely the national champion kids, and everyone else has to meet very stringent academic standards?</p>
<p>By the way, for D’s sport the Williams roster was huge, so they must have a similar philosophy and thus welcome lots of walk-ons to see if they can develop any of them into stars.</p>
<p>FauxNom, That is interesting - and hopeful for many (!) information about the excellent Williams athlete just needing to get in that 25% range - and I suppose, like for everyone else, it really matters just how much need/want that athlete.</p>
<p>TheGFG, Your Stanford information is very interesting - and I agree about the tremendous level of the athletes they take. In my D’s sport, just about everyone on their team is doing Olympic level stuff in their “free” time! Stanford is expressing interest in my D, but they also made it clear what their academic expectations were, and they were a whole lot more direct, and perhaps expecting more academically, than many of the ivies and other elite D1 schools who are also in the recruiting process with my D. It seemed hard to picture the extreme academic excellence Stanford wrote about in their letter to her along with the Olympian level of skill also expected. My D was slightly put off though as there was a HUGE athlete-student picture presented, as opposed to student-athlete - we didn’t get the feeling that there would be much of a college experience if one was an athlete at Stanford. However, it should also be explained that Stanford is #1 in the nation in my D’s sport, so needless to say, the bar is set very high…</p>
<p>what are “ivy rules”?</p>
<p>i believe stanford’s academic standards for athletes is higher than harvard’s. and gfg is right, most of the athletes recruited are national or world junior champions</p>
<p>^Ivy rules regarding AI and who they can take. I think the 600 minimum may be officially written by the league as well, but not positive. All I meant was that Stanford can literally take anyone they want, not that they necessarily do. I find it hard to believe that Stanford has higher academic standards and still manages to field national champion teams featuring Olympic-caliber athletes, but as I don’t have direct experience I’ll concede to those who do.</p>
<p>The D-III football coaches S2 has contacted were very impressed with a 2290 and 4.25 W full IB diploma student.</p>
<p>
I doubt it’s mid-700s high. I asked a Middlebury coach what scores he was looking for and he told me he was looking for 2100+, preferably 700+ per section, or a 31+ ACT, and that he was generally able to get athletes with those scores in. Mid-700s scorers are already near the 75th percentile at top LACs; needless to say, somebody has to occupy the 0-75th percentile range!</p>
<p>Yeah, I’m pretty sure Stanford’s standards for its athletes are not exorbitantly high, although definitely a lot higher than many of its athletic competitors. On Yahoo’s Rivals website I looked at the profiles of some of its football players and I saw a lot of mid/high 20s ACT scores and 1100-1200s SAT scores. Of course this is football but Stanford has many top athletic teams that would be impossible to sustain if Stanford recruited solely by Ivy standards. This is not to say that Stanford does not get a lot of Ivy-caliber athletes as well.</p>
<p>I don’t think there are any “rules” the Ivy has to play by as far as minimums. A friend of ours has a neighbor who is being recruited by Dartmouth for football. He was told 1700-1800 would be acceptable. He is a highly recruited athlete and possibly for two sports (baskeball as well).</p>
<p>Actually there is a minimum standard for Ivy athletic recruits. An Academic Index of 171 is the non-negotiable floor. Also, an Ivy League school can’t just load up on kids barely meeting the minimum, a certain number in each AI “band” are required. The bands are calculated based on the standard deviation from the mean AI of the student body iin general.</p>
<p>Straight 600’s in SAT I and Sat II, 2.5 gpa in a class which doesnt rank (hypothetical class size of 1000) gives an AI of 171. Of course, that athlete needs to be a strong candidate for All-America as a freshman – meaning that the athlete is one of the best incoming freshman in the country and has pretty good scores when compared to the entire country.</p>
<p>Becoming the best in an area is pretty hard – whether its football, tiddlywinks, violin, or chemistry. </p>
<p>(BTW, 1200 combined SAT I [two parts], is one of the (several possible) criteria for awarding academic aid which does not count against a school’s athletic aid. For an athlete in a category of possible all-american as a freshman, a 1200 is quite a decent number.)</p>
<p>varska has it right … the IVY league (and the NESCAC (Amherst, Williams, etc)) are two leagues that have very specific rules about how much of break athletes can get, and how much at each level of a break.</p>
<p>Are those distribution requirements within each sport or are across all athletes?</p>
<p>I believe each sport must meet the distribution requirements. In other words, you can’t bring on a whole bunch of high AI tennis players in an attempt to free up your low AI band for the football team.</p>
<p>^But most sports don’t get a huge group of athletes. Tennis typically gets 2-3, and there are a lot of similarly small sports, so I don’t see how they could really meet distribution requirements in bands. My *guess *would be that the school is upfront with the coaches in each sport so that hard sports get most of the low AI kids and soft ones require AIs in other bands. Also, why else would the idea be perpetuated that hard sports have much easier standards than soft ones? I would hope my AI could make room for a low-AI football recruit… lord knows we needs it ;)</p>