The Ivy League! It’s made up of Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, UPenn, and Yale, but we think you probably already know that if you’re here. You might think it just is a collective term for those eight schools in the Northeast known for their academic rigor, selectivity, prestige, and exclusivity. And sure, that might be the present-day connotation, but it’s actually the name of their athletic conference.
Not only are Ivy Leagues among the most exclusive top-tier colleges in the nation, but their sports teams are D1, meaning their teams are made up of the elite of elite athletes. The cream of the crop of the cream of the crop. “So what I’m hearing,” you say, “is that if I am super good at my sport and have good grades, then I’m basically already admitted.” Wrong. Oh my god, so wrong. If you’re trying to get into an Ivy league and get recruited to one of their teams, keep reading.
History of the Ivy League
Because we’re nerds, we did a bunch of research on the Ivy League and think it’s super interesting and want to tell you about it. If you’re like “I’m actually a jock, not a nerd,” then you can scroll down or whatever, but athletes who get recruited to Ivy League schools are both jocks and nerds, so keep that in mind.
Pop quiz: Which sport made up the first collegiate athletic conference in the United States?
Cricket
Basketball
Rowing
Wrestling
Baseball
Track and Field
If you guessed rowing, you’re right. The origins of the Ivy League started with Yale challenging Harvard to a boat race in 1852, and that was actually the first competition between university students in the whole history of the United States. Harvard won.
In 1858, Brown, Harvard, Trinity, and Yale were going to have the first-ever multi-college regatta, but then a guy on the Yale team drowned, so they held off for a bit. Other schools wanted in on the whole deal, and in 1870 the Rowing Association of American Colleges (RAAC) was formed. They had one rule: only undergraduate students were eligible to represent their college in the regatta. This remains the central tenant of NCAA recruiting today.
Original members of RAAC included (and you have no idea how hard it was to find this info. We had to email baby boomers who run a rowing history blog to finally get it. Why did we do that? We’re dedicated, that’s why.) Yale, Harvard, Amherst, Massachusetts Agricultural College (now UMass Amherst), Williams, Bowdoin, Brown, and Wesleyan. Later on, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Trinity joined in as well. Can you imagine if UMass Amherst was Ivy League today? Random!
RAAC eventually became the Intercollegiate Rowing Association, but now has switched from a conference to the governing body of all men’s collegiate rowing teams. Here’s a fun list of famous people who rowed at Ivy League schools: Neil deGrasse Tyson (Harvard), Anderson Cooper (Yale), Edward Norton (Yale), Teddy Roosevelt (Harvard), and of course those guys who said they invented Facebook, Armie Hammer Cameron & Tyler Winklevoss (Harvard). Enough about rowing, moving on.
In 1906, the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (which would eventually become the NCAA) was formed because President Theodore Roosevelt noticed that a bunch of kids were getting gravely injured or dying while playing football (hmm, .wonder if that’s still an issue) and he wanted everyone to agree on the rules of the sport. Only two of the 39 charter members of later became Ivies, UPenn and Dartmouth.
Soon wrestling, baseball, basketball, and cricket leagues made up of the future Ivy League schools would pop up. Before the official formation of the league, there was an “unwritten and unspoken agreement among certain Eastern colleges on athletic relations,” and all of the current Ivy League, minus Brown, was consistently pushing for an official athletic league to unite them all. In 1937, each school ran a matching op-ed in their papers that argued for it:
“The Ivy League exists already in the minds of a good many of those connected with football, and we fail to see why the seven schools concerned should be satisfied to let it exist as a purely nebulous entity where there are so many practical benefits which would be possible under definite organized association. The seven colleges involved fall naturally together by reason of their common interests and similar general standards and by dint of their established national reputation they are in a particularly advantageous position to assume leadership for the preservation of the ideals of intercollegiate athletics.”
Their efforts failed, as the University presidents did not want to form a formal league for football like they had for other sports, but basically told them to “try again later.” It wouldn’t be until 1945 that the eight Ivy League schools we know today would sign the Ivy Group Agreement, which set academic, financial, and athletic standards for their football teams. Then in 1954, they were like “screw it. Let’s make all the intercollegiate sports part of this agreement.” And so, the Ivy League was like, official-official.
So what does this have to do with you? idk, we just thought it was interesting. Moving on to the stuff you care about like:
How Do I Get Recruited to an Ivy League School?
A lot of sports are represented in the Ivy League: baseball, basketball, cross-country, fencing, football, golf, hockey (ice and field), lacrosse, rowing, soccer, softball, squash, swimming and diving, tennis, indoor and outdoor track and field, volleyball, and wrestling. If you’re really good, and we mean really, really, good at one of these sports, then you’re like 5% of the way there.
Look, we all know it’s student-athlete and not athlete-student, and there is no better embodiment of this sentiment than the Ivy League. If you couldn’t get into the school without sports, then you’re not an ideal candidate for recruitment. You need the amazing grades and scores and extracurriculars that the NARPs (non-athletic regular people) who are getting in have, too. So here’s our advice:
Have the grades and the scores
These schools are exclusive. And we mean exclusive! Very few schools publish the GPAs they accept, but we can guarantee there aren’t any 3.2s in the bunch. And if there are, that kid probably has a Nobel prize or something. Aim for perfect grades in the hardest classes you can take. Your athletic prowess will not make them overlook a B average.
We’ve done a ton of research on the middle 50% data for each of the Ivy League schools, and we can tell you that the lowest that middle 50 goes is 32 for the ACT and 1450 for the SAT (both stats from Dartmouth, btw). Quite a few of these schools’ 75% percentile is a 36 or a 1570, which means there are at least 25% of people submitting test scores that are perfect or very near perfect. We recommend at least a 35 or a 1550 to begin to think about being a competitive applicant to an Ivy League school.
Have the extracurriculars
And that’s just stats! That doesn’t include the extracurriculars you should be engaged with outside of your sport. Every student should spend their high school years figuring out what they are interested in, developing their passion, and participating in activities that show their prospective school that they’re finding their niche and engaging earnestly with their academic goals. We know this can be challenging amidst your busy schedule, but it’s worth it if you’re shooting for the Ivies. So what does this look like in practice? If your end goal is med school, maybe you want to major in bio, so you do things that support that statement. It could look like doing internships, summer programs, being bio club president, conducting research, placing well in a national science fair, etc. By the end, you should have a better idea than just “doctor” as your end goal.
Have a strong application
That means not just your stats and extracurriculars, but how you present them. It also means you need to have a really solid Common App essay. Every single Ivy requires the Common App, and they generally have more than one supplement to get through. If your Common App essay is cliche (or god forbid, about your sport), you don’t have much of a chance to stand out. The best Common App essays are creative, often funny or charming, stories about small moments in your life. We’ve had clients write about commutes, hot dogs, and hedgehogs.
Have the athletic talent
Duh. Look, if you’re not being actively recruited or don’t have the scores/times/PRs/whatever that other recruited athletes have, we advise not wasting any more of your time on the sport and instead dive into activities that meet your academic goals. We don’t hate sports (we did just write a very long article about how to get recruited!), but we don’t want you to have impossibly lofty goals or too high of expectations. But if you’re here, we’re willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Before we go, a few final pieces of knowledge
Every sport has its own (extremely confusing) rules about the recruiting process. This includes stuff like ‘the coach can email you first but only you can call them before the third week of your senior year.’ Before you dive headfirst into it, register on the NCAA Clearing House and do your research
The Ivy League does not offer athletic scholarships, to anyone, for any reason, at any school. All financial aid or scholarships are need-based.
An Ivy League coach will not give you an offer if they don’t believe you have the potential to get in. This should be all the more incentive to keep your grades and scores sky-high.
Good luck, champ!
If you need help strategizing for college admissions, navigating the process, or writing your essays, reach out to us today.