<p>Cornell - recent coach.</p>
<p>Again, I don’t want to out kids… So, no names please.</p>
<p>Past two years, they have been loose with their numbers for tennis,
and the kids ( two of them ) haven’t really been able to swing it academically.</p>
<p>@cbw123,</p>
<p>Gotcha. That is unfortunate. My son is a baseball player but I do follow college tennis a lot. I played many years, and I’m familiar with many of the top kids in my area…I actually hit with some of the top juniors in our area. I don’t fault the kids. That is clearly on the coach and the administration if it is systemic IMHO.</p>
<p>cbw123: Coaches being “sleazy about their numbers” is not confined to Cornell.</p>
<p>In reading comments here (on the unrelated cheating scandal at Harvard):
[More</a> Than Half Of Students Charged In Harvard Cheating Case Forced To Withdraw > cheating, Harvard, Harvard Crimson, plagiarism, punishment | IvyGate](<a href=“http://www.ivygateblog.com/2013/02/more-than-half-of-students-charged-in-harvard-cheating-case-forced-to-withdraw/]More”>http://www.ivygateblog.com/2013/02/more-than-half-of-students-charged-in-harvard-cheating-case-forced-to-withdraw/)</p>
<p>this post came to my attention:
The real egregious cheating at Harvard is being committed by the men’s basketball team and its flagrant violation of Ivy League rules concerning the Academic Index. This past recruiting cycle, Harvard recruited and enrolled (in September 2012) a prep school player who had not even made his high school varsity team. Harvard matriculated a high school JV player just to add his sky-high SAT scores to the team average. That speaks to how low the AI scores of the Crimson’s other players are – you know, the ones who are asked to actually touch the ball. There aren’t enough technical fouls in the world to call against what Harvard is doing.</p>
<p>And this from another poster, referring to the same athlete:
He may well be the first high school JV player ever recruited by a college program which at the time was flirting with a national Top 25 ranking. His high school senior year, he made the varsity squad but rarely saw court time, averaging 1.7 points per game and scoring a total of 46 points all season. Nevertheless, he was admitted to Harvard and announced as part of the six-player recruiting class of 2012 in a standard press release dated August 1, 2012 under the headline, "Men’s Basketball Adds Six Newcomers to the Fold for 2012-13 Season. Shortly after arriving on campus in September, coach Amaker informed the young man that his services would no longer be welcome and he was asked to leave the team. He remains a freshman at Harvard. Interestingly, Amaker’s attention to detail extends to going back to the archives of the team’s press releases. Today, if you search back to August 1, 2012, you will find a boilerplate press release with the headline, “Men’s Basketball Adds Five Newcomers to the Fold for 2012-13 Season.” The young man has been officially erased from his brief history on the Harvard varsity basketball team.</p>
<p>A quick google search for Academic Index Ivy League yields much literature, most drawing the same conclusion: “some Ivies have been known to pad their teams Academic Indices by recruiting athletes with 1550 SAT scores and virtually no chance of ever seeing game action.”</p>
<p>While not the same as what the Cornell tennis coach apparently did, but equally distasteful and perhaps more so, since it appears to be S.O.P.</p>
<p>Here are two (relatively) recent articles on Academic Index and the Ivy League:</p>
<p>Dec 2011
<a href=“Before Athletic Recruiting in the Ivy League, Some Math - The New York Times”>Before Athletic Recruiting in the Ivy League, Some Math - The New York Times;
<p>and the author’s follow-up article:
Jan 2012
[A</a> Rare Glimpse Inside the Ivy League’s Academic Index - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/ivy-academic-index/]A”>A Rare Glimpse Inside the Ivy League's Academic Index - The New York Times)</p>
<p>and how the AI is calculated:
<a href=“Calculating the Academic Index - NYTimes.com”>Calculating the Academic Index - NYTimes.com;
<p>The “average AI index” approach is interesting. A few years ago I investigated the IVY league recruiting rules and the recruits were managed by slots in AI bands instead of the AI average. I like the AI slot approach much better; it lessened the amount of games that could be played to bring in low AI recruits … IMO it’s unfortunate the IVY league changed their approach.</p>
<p>3togo - the AI band system is alive and well but it’s exclusive to football. Individual teams will compile their team-wide AIs. This is from one of the NY Times articles:</p>
<p>" In a response to a commissioned report on Brown athletics issued this year, the university’s president, Ruth J. Simmons, said that for the four most recent admissions classes throughout the league, Brown had seven sports with average A.I.’s under 200; Dartmouth and Penn had 5; Columbia 3; Yale 1; and Harvard and Princeton none. Simmons did not mention Cornell in her written response."</p>
<p>And of course the AI of the overall population of athletes has to be within 1 standard deviation of the AI of the student body as a whole. </p>
<p>So what does a 200 AI look like? It’s about 670 per section on the SAT and a 3.0 GPA. </p>
<p>Now fourtops was talking about posts he’d read about a Harvard basketball recruit with a low AI who was balanced by a higher AI recruit. Yeah, that happens. A kid isn’t getting in under 176 (540 per section sat, 3.0 GPA), but a coach will occasionally go after a top national recruit near that AI floor and have to balance it out, so it happens.</p>
<p>^ I believe the old system was the football team had a slot allocation … and the rest of the sports program had an overall slot allocation. Schools could allocate the limited non-football low AI slots how they wanted across the non-football teams … so schools could emphasize different sports if they wanted. The average AI process seems to have popped up in the last 5 years or so … a move in the wrong direction IMO.</p>
<p>In the football band system, I can take 3 guys in the 176-185 range, 5 guys 186-194, 8 guys 195-204, etc.</p>
<p>So I still have to balance my low recruits with higher band athletes. I’m not sure I understand how this is a better system than saying, “I need a 205 team average, and you don’t get anyone below 176.” In either system you have the high AI balancing the low AI, right?</p>
<p>varska - that was my initial point in the op.</p>
<p>For football, Harvard is limited to the following number of recruits in band 1-4: 2, 5, 10, 13.</p>
<p>For Dartmouth, the numbers are: 2, 8, 15, 5.</p>
<p>I don’t have the numbers for Cornell, but I am assuming that they are allowed even more lower band players than Dartmouth.</p>
<p>Thus, Cornell has by far the most latitude in recruiting of all the Ivies (ie, the largest potential recruiting pool) and should have more lower band impact players than the other Ivies and should, at least theoretically, dominate.</p>
<p>^ I know what you’re saying, MLD. And I don’t want to break bad on any Ivy program because, while the model isn’t perfect, collectively i think they’re doing a better job of recruiting true student/athletes than just about anywhere else in the world of D1 sports. <hat tip="" to="" stanford=""></hat></p>
<p>That said, when you talk about an Ivy League school having access to a larger pool of potential recruits because the AI requirement isn’t as high, you have to also assume that those same kids are getting scholarship offers from other schools. So you might have a situation where the Ivies with the stronger FA packages (HP) are cherry picking the upper bands, and the scholarship schools are going after the power recruits in the lower bands and able to give full-rides.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Assuming is where this is going off the tracks. Your initial comparison was between Harvard and Cornell. Today your assumption is that Dartmouth and Cornell are vastly different. They may be different but only slightly, and not by an amount that is going to allow them to recruit hordes of top level student athletes that seek an Ivy education. </p>
<p>I still maintain there are two tiers HYP and BCCDP. Within that first tier you have H and P who are winning the majority of athletic events (I’ve given you the numbers in my earlier post on this topic). Y has put less of a policy emphasis on athletic competition, and it shows in their numbers. Cornell is third (out of eight) in athletic competition behind H and P, so your assumption is out the window because Cornell is doing rather well (thank you very much) in Ivy athletic competition. They more than hold their own is another way to put it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>varska,</p>
<p>You and I are on the same page here. I couldn’t agree more with your statement.</p>
<p>My two cents…I think the better athletes at all Ivy schools are getting multiple D1 scholarship offers. This presents them with at least a couple choices and options to consider. In some cases these other D-1 offers can be less or inline with Ivy FA. In other cases it is an academic decision. I don’t think many of these top athletes are picking Ivys to become professional athletes. They realize they can get a great education, get lots of playing time & experience, and possibly have a comparable financial commitment than they would have with a traditional D1 on a year to year basis. If the opportunity presents itself to become a professional athlete after an Ivy educations, then so be it.</p>
<p>Obviously, H & P do a very good job of recruiting based on the number of Ivy championships. Our first contact with any Ivy school was H. For whatever reason they seem to do the best job on a lot of fronts. We met the H pitching coach at a winter camp in Virginia during my son’s junior year. A few months later I’m introduced to the H head coach in East Cobb, GA at an event. H was at many of the initial events that we were at, and there was genuine interest on both sides. However, when a savvy recruit realizes H is interested then you’ve opened up Pandora’s box to talk to the other 7 Ivy schools plus any other schools. For my son’s sport, I think Harvard had done the best job of initially targeting recruits, reaching out and following up. I know many people with similar stories about H recruiting in my son’s sport. This may explain why they do so well in athletics. Just a thought.</p>
<p>Well, this is interesting. Dartmouth. Mens Tennis.<br>
Just verbally took a junior today.</p>
<p>I haven’t seen that done yet for the IVY’s as not all the scores are in for junior year.</p>
<p>The kicker is the kid is not from the country.</p>
<p>Overall D1 Mens Tennis - about 70% foreign now.</p>
<p>^ you’ll see all sorts of early verbal commits posted online. LAX, hockey, soccer…
But they’re all pending review by admissions after final transcripts and scores are in.</p>
<p>Cornell’s done just fine in lacrosse too.</p>
<p>all this index BS aside,is there a measure or indicator that measures competitive drive, sports situational analysis etc…</p>
<p>people the desire to win or success is not something that you can quantify in an exam or reduce it to a formula, it just happens with a little luck sheer will etc…I know for all you Ivy wanna be’s that might be something that you just can’t wrap your head around but that is what it is.</p>
<p>
I’m not aware of any, and frankly I think this is why many recruits are overlooked…coaches haven’t figured out how to measure this. They go on hunches, which is not very scientific. I’ve seen it first hand. Top recruits (I call them show ponys) that were supposed to be can’t miss (or drafted) end up being lazy thinking everything is supposed to come to them. On the other hand you have the “not so top recruit” or “walk-on” that is willing to do anything to get on the team or even an opportunity to play. For my money, I’ll take the recruit with the desire every time. </p>
<p>Fortunately or unfortunately the Ivy conference has rules and metrics for its recruits. It is what it is. I think there is parity in some sports and not so much in others. A lot of that has to do with recruiting talent and some of it has to do with team chemistry. Every year you are turning over roughly 15-25% of your roster (in son’s sport), so I’m not sure even the coaches know what they are getting until the first month of practices. We’ve had three different Ivy champions in three years in son’s sport.</p>