Post by Pakachoag Phreek on Mar 10, 2023 19:49:10 GMT -5
The following is from a slide deck prepared about five years ago by counselors at a Jesuit high school near Baltimore and a public high school in Northern Virginia. The intended audience apparently was other counselors and athletic coaches. In preparing the presentation with respect to the Patriot League, they met with AD staff at Loyola and AU. Unfortunately, no football schools
Of note, there is no discussion of bands. The PL floor score of 168 is dropped to 166 for football and hoops. Schools appear to have some leeway in how they calculate the scores of matriculating students, and recruited athletes. However, all schools have access to standardized test scores for nearly all students, even when the school has gone to test optional.
A simplified view of the AI.
The school-wide AI for a particular school is based on the calculated AI scores of all entering first years of the previous year. The calculations are based on the standardized test scores, and high school GPA.
The average AI of all recruited athletes who matriculate must be within one standard deviation of the school-wide AI.
For the Patriot League, no recruited athlete can be admitted if the recruited athlete has an AI score of 167 or below. (The ‘floor is 168 in the PL, and 176 in the Ivy League. (See also aforementioned exception for football and hoops.)
Harvard, Princeton, and Yale have school-wide AI scores around 120-122. Dartmouth is next. Then a cluster of Columbia, Penn and Brown in that rough order. Trailing is Cornell (there is the 'public' side of Cornell, and the 'private' side.)
One standard deviation for HYP would be an AI score of 207-208. Georgetown has a school-wide AI near Cornell. HC's school-wide AI is probably 1.5 standard deviations below the schoolwide AI for HYP.
archive.nytimes.com/thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/ivy-academic-index/
^^^ This is from the comments section in a NY Times short series on the Academic Index and the Ivies about ten years ago.. I assume HC when recruiting has in hand the standardized test scores of all recruited athletes from the Clearinghouse. When the "Admissions Officer" speaks of 'Concordance Tables' to rate the academic rigor of high schools, to me that suggests that if there are no standardized test scores, that recruits from educationally disadvantaged high schools would have to do exceptionally well in their GPA to receive a satisfactory AI score, which would allow their admission.
See also,
www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/sports/before-athletic-recruiting-in-the-ivy-league-some-math.html
From the pen of a Jesuit President of Holy Cross,
^^^ This can be found on the PL website discussing the AI. APR is very important to Holy Cross.
Of note, there is no discussion of bands. The PL floor score of 168 is dropped to 166 for football and hoops. Schools appear to have some leeway in how they calculate the scores of matriculating students, and recruited athletes. However, all schools have access to standardized test scores for nearly all students, even when the school has gone to test optional.
A simplified view of the AI.
The school-wide AI for a particular school is based on the calculated AI scores of all entering first years of the previous year. The calculations are based on the standardized test scores, and high school GPA.
The average AI of all recruited athletes who matriculate must be within one standard deviation of the school-wide AI.
For the Patriot League, no recruited athlete can be admitted if the recruited athlete has an AI score of 167 or below. (The ‘floor is 168 in the PL, and 176 in the Ivy League. (See also aforementioned exception for football and hoops.)
Harvard, Princeton, and Yale have school-wide AI scores around 120-122. Dartmouth is next. Then a cluster of Columbia, Penn and Brown in that rough order. Trailing is Cornell (there is the 'public' side of Cornell, and the 'private' side.)
One standard deviation for HYP would be an AI score of 207-208. Georgetown has a school-wide AI near Cornell. HC's school-wide AI is probably 1.5 standard deviations below the schoolwide AI for HYP.
Recovering Admissions Officer January 11, 2012 · 11:31 am
Anna, just to be devil’s advocate here–if your marginal student had done well, it would have been life changing for her and possibly her community as well. I minded less the “reach” for kids who were underprepared because their school and community didn’t have much to offer than kids who skated by at a harder school. In fact, I was often grateful to have a coach as an ally for those rural kids who were savvy enough to see beyond the closest state school and wanted to get out to the wider world.
SW–when I was working, there were special concordance tables for some districts and some schools, known for either grade inflation or deflation. They would be evaluated every year or so to be sure that they were keeping pace with changes at those schools. At some high schools, 56% of grades given are As; some schools, 10% of grades given are As. Where we were aware of such anomalies, there were special charts. There are also charts by percentage, plus special ways to calculate for an exact rank, for the 27 schools in the country that still give them. I wouldn’t worry about it–if you have a recruited athlete at the Ivies, they will get you an exact AI fast enough. And if your student is not a recruited student–the exact AI is meaningless.
Nitpicker and Crimson Wife and others–keep in mind, the Ivies don’t attract kids who only want athletics, so the AI is there to keep things honest, so to speak…the vast majority of athletes are competitive within the pool, but every applicant needs a “tip” to get in, whether it’s huge support from their teacher recs, or a boost from a coach. Nitpicker, smart you for wearing the jeans.
Crimson Wife, I strongly disagree with your assertion that the lowest AIs were “diversity” admits. Maybe true for the “Crimson” but at the school where I worked, that is patently false. As the analyses were run for the class as a whole, the numbers showed that racially, the lowest AI bands were pretty proportional to the class as a whole. My apologies if my point that the lowest AIs in the class rarely belonged to athletes suggested that.
Finally, Susie Watts: I will never forget one of the former deans of admissions at Swarthmore College talking to a group of juniors, reminding them to break out of stereotyping “what colleges want.” Where do you think it’s more important to be a varsity athlete applicant, he asked, Swarthmore or Michigan? Obviously Michigan, right? Wrong. 1% of Michigan students are varsity (college) athletes. 40% of Swarthmore students are varsity athletes. But you don’t hear people complaining that Swarthmore has too many jocks, and yet they have some extremely successful athletes and teams. Harvard gets laughs when they say they have more varsity teams than any other school in the country, but they do. People forget, if they ever knew: the Ivy League is a football conference. Athletics are valued here. So are many other things. Even the Rhodes competition values athletics. (Though after the Yale QB this year, they may not for long.) It’s a roll of the dice for acceptance to any of these places. I wish you the best in counseling your students (and their parents!).
Anna, just to be devil’s advocate here–if your marginal student had done well, it would have been life changing for her and possibly her community as well. I minded less the “reach” for kids who were underprepared because their school and community didn’t have much to offer than kids who skated by at a harder school. In fact, I was often grateful to have a coach as an ally for those rural kids who were savvy enough to see beyond the closest state school and wanted to get out to the wider world.
SW–when I was working, there were special concordance tables for some districts and some schools, known for either grade inflation or deflation. They would be evaluated every year or so to be sure that they were keeping pace with changes at those schools. At some high schools, 56% of grades given are As; some schools, 10% of grades given are As. Where we were aware of such anomalies, there were special charts. There are also charts by percentage, plus special ways to calculate for an exact rank, for the 27 schools in the country that still give them. I wouldn’t worry about it–if you have a recruited athlete at the Ivies, they will get you an exact AI fast enough. And if your student is not a recruited student–the exact AI is meaningless.
Nitpicker and Crimson Wife and others–keep in mind, the Ivies don’t attract kids who only want athletics, so the AI is there to keep things honest, so to speak…the vast majority of athletes are competitive within the pool, but every applicant needs a “tip” to get in, whether it’s huge support from their teacher recs, or a boost from a coach. Nitpicker, smart you for wearing the jeans.
Crimson Wife, I strongly disagree with your assertion that the lowest AIs were “diversity” admits. Maybe true for the “Crimson” but at the school where I worked, that is patently false. As the analyses were run for the class as a whole, the numbers showed that racially, the lowest AI bands were pretty proportional to the class as a whole. My apologies if my point that the lowest AIs in the class rarely belonged to athletes suggested that.
Finally, Susie Watts: I will never forget one of the former deans of admissions at Swarthmore College talking to a group of juniors, reminding them to break out of stereotyping “what colleges want.” Where do you think it’s more important to be a varsity athlete applicant, he asked, Swarthmore or Michigan? Obviously Michigan, right? Wrong. 1% of Michigan students are varsity (college) athletes. 40% of Swarthmore students are varsity athletes. But you don’t hear people complaining that Swarthmore has too many jocks, and yet they have some extremely successful athletes and teams. Harvard gets laughs when they say they have more varsity teams than any other school in the country, but they do. People forget, if they ever knew: the Ivy League is a football conference. Athletics are valued here. So are many other things. Even the Rhodes competition values athletics. (Though after the Yale QB this year, they may not for long.) It’s a roll of the dice for acceptance to any of these places. I wish you the best in counseling your students (and their parents!).
archive.nytimes.com/thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/ivy-academic-index/
^^^ This is from the comments section in a NY Times short series on the Academic Index and the Ivies about ten years ago.. I assume HC when recruiting has in hand the standardized test scores of all recruited athletes from the Clearinghouse. When the "Admissions Officer" speaks of 'Concordance Tables' to rate the academic rigor of high schools, to me that suggests that if there are no standardized test scores, that recruits from educationally disadvantaged high schools would have to do exceptionally well in their GPA to receive a satisfactory AI score, which would allow their admission.
See also,
www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/sports/before-athletic-recruiting-in-the-ivy-league-some-math.html
From the pen of a Jesuit President of Holy Cross,
In the Patriot League, to which Holy Cross belongs, each school calculates an academic index (AI) based on the SAT scores and high-school rank or grade-point average for each recruited athlete. Both individual AIs and team averages are expected to be consistent with those of the student body as a whole. Each year the presidents review the results and hold one another accountable for any exceptions. A similar system is used in the Ivy Group. Once they matriculate, these student-athletes are held to the same standards as other students, both in and out of the classroom. The result is the highest graduation rates reported by any league in Division I athletics and student-athletes who consistently go on to become successful leaders in their chosen fields after graduation.
^^^ This can be found on the PL website discussing the AI. APR is very important to Holy Cross.