Ivy League Admissions Athletes

There was a blurb on NPR news this AM about the presidents meeting and "upping" the minimums for admission of athletes. No explanation of what that meant or any numbers. Anyone else heard any details?

Hey folks,

I've attached an article from this morning's Chronicle of Higher Education. I don't know what impact this will have on the hockey team, but I can't see it helping any.

-Mike

Ivy League Votes to Raise Academic Standards for Athletes
By WELCH SUGGS

The presidents of the eight Ivy League colleges voted on Tuesday to increase their academic requirements for students recruited as athletes, to cap the total number of athletes admitted to each institution each year, and to relax much-protested requirements about mandatory time off for athletes during the academic year.

The Ivy League has always had more-stringent academic standards for athletes than other conferences or the National Collegiate Athletic Association. During the admissions process, each student is given an "academic index" number based on a complicated formula involving high-school class rankings and standardized test scores. At any Ivy institution, the mean of the academic indices for football players cannot be more than one standard deviation below the mean for the student body as a whole.

Similar standards have existed less formally for other sports, as Ivy League admissions offices share admissions data on all their sports teams annually. The new rules will extend the model to athletes in all 33 sports sponsored by the league. Individual teams will not be required to meet the one-standard-deviation rule, but all athletes taken as a group will.

The league also has a minimum standard for the academic index that all athletes must meet to be recruited. On Tuesday, the presidents voted to raise that standard slightly but "significantly," according to one league official.

The "proposal was based on extended consideration of how best to reflect our schools' many similarities as well as their many important differences," said the presidents of Cornell University and Dartmouth College, Hunter R. Rawlings III and James S. Wright, in a written statement. "It will enhance adherence to our admissions principles, while at the same time providing for equitable athletic competition among our institutions."

The changes come in a climate of increased scrutiny of intercollegiate sports in the Ivy League. Last year, the presidents voted to require all teams to take a minimum of seven weeks' worth of breaks over the course of the academic year, despite the protests of coaches and athletes. The league also voted to reduce the number of football players admitted each year from 35 per institution to 25.

On Tuesday, the league voted to change the seven-weeks-off rule to 49 days off. Coaches will be able to schedule the breaks whenever they wish, but they do not have to be a solid week, as they were last year.

Accordiing the Ithaca Journal the "slight but sugnificant" rise in the Academic index would be from 169 to 172 or 173. The Academic index is made up of class rank or GPA and SAT scores.

This would translate to about 40 or 50 points on the SAT, according to the article, or a small increase in GPA or class rank.

[Q] During the admissions process, each student is given an "academic index" number based on a complicated formula involving high-school class rankings and standardized test scores. [/Q]

If anyone out there can elaborate on exactly what this "complicated fomula" is, it would be of interest. It can't be any more complicated than PWR, and is probably not as secret as bonus points for quality wins.

All I can say is, it's a good thing McKeown got in this year

The scores for Mckeown which were posted on the Burlington site were not his final scores. Also his high school marks were close to 90% .....Its not unusual for Canadian kids to have lower SAT scores......No matter what , i can tell you from his days with the Toronto Marlboros that your getting a quality kid.

Bonzi wrote:

The scores for Mckeown which were posted on the Burlington site were not his final scores.

I pointed that out to the guy who is making a career of posting McKeown's Board scores on the web but that didn't seem to deter him. It's now become quite tiresome.

Jeff Kahn '70 wrote:

[Q] During the admissions process, each student is given an "academic index" number based on a complicated formula involving high-school class rankings and standardized test scores. [/Q]

If anyone out there can elaborate on exactly what this "complicated fomula" is, it would be of interest. It can't be any more complicated than PWR, and is probably not as secret as bonus points for quality wins.

Jeff,
Its not that complicated actually. In A is for Admission by Michele Hernandez she describes the formula.

AI = [SAT (V) + SAT (M)]/2 + [SAT II + SAT II + SAT II]/3 + CRS


The SAT's scores (normally out of 800) are rescaled to be out of 80.
And the CRS (converted rank score) is based on the student's class rank (or gpa).

If a student takes the ACT then the ACT score is converted into an approx. SAT score. then that number is doubled (in order to replace both the math and verbal sections.

ACT score of 36 becomes an 800/800
35 --> 780/780
etc.....incrementing down by 20 points until act score of 32
32 --->710/710
Then it goes back to 20 point drops (ie 31 ---> 690. 30 ---->670, etc.)
all the way down to 15 (370)

The CRS is based (usually) off some simple formulas based on your class rank, percentile, or gpa (depending on what your college releases).
There's 2 basic formulas to put a rank into a decimal form, and then convert the produced decimal into a number out of 80.

If the school provides a rank then,
Z=[(2 x (absolute rank))-1]/[(2 x (class size))]

Absolute rank means that it takes into account weighted grades (ie difficulty of classes such as AP classes)

The lower Z is the better the rank
0.0017 is a perfect 80

0.0023 is a 79
0.0031 is a 78


For schools that give percentiles ie top 10%, top 25%, etc.
Schools don't know if you are at the top of that percentile, or the bottom. So to be fair its assumed you're in the middle.

So top 10% is assumed to be number 5 out of 100, and better than 95%.

The formula is ((100 - x%)/100) x (class size)

where x is the percent the person is better than.

So top 10% in a class of 150 people would be

((100 - 95)/100) X 150 = class rank

That calculated number is considered the students class rank.

That calculated class rank along with the class size (each on their own axis) are matched on a table to find the student's CRS.


On a related note, you can use the same table to find the CRS based on rank, the computer uses the method I described before. I suppose its because the computer only has to know the class size once, and then it can get a scalar decimal number, and from that decimal number compute the CRS.
Whereas with the human way, you must use multiple tables to lookup the crs (depending on the size of hte highschool).




Heres the table for a class size of 300-348
1.........80
2.........78
3.........75
4.........74
5.........73
6-7......72,71
8-9......70
10-14...68

etc.


And then finally if a school doesn't have ranks or percentiles they try to use the profile they have of the college which contains socioeconomic info, colleges students are accepted to, average test scores, and I'd assume more of the same type of info

If the school doesn't have a profile then GPA is converted into a CRS
A+ (98 and above) is an 80
and each point below a 98 is 1 point off the crs ie a 97 is a 79
96 is a 78
etc


Hope that helps


Dan

Thanks Dan.

Well, I guess any hockey player who can get through that formula has a leg up in calculating PWR possibilities... Not that the PWR possibilities are very hard these days, thanks to JTW!

[www.thecrimson.com]

". . . a class action suit was promptly filed in federal court in the District of Massachusetts . . ."

A target that half the class graduate with honors? That's just plain ridiculous. My guess is less than 10% graduate with honors at Cornell.

(I graduated with honors, just barely, and I was 4th in my class of about 65 in ChemE.)

JH

Al, there's another thing that's "become quite tiresome" - your infatuation with Harvard's grades. For chrissakes, you're almost 60 years old - can't you let it go? They've got a lot of wicked smaht kids, and so do we (one less today ). Your constant whingeing about grade inflation here & on USCHO makes us look just a tad bit insecure...

Post Edited (07-02-03 21:11)