EDIT*: NM...lacrosse team.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=92982&forum_id=1#1472115)

By JANE MCMANUS

THE JOURNAL NEWS

(Original publication: October 11, 2004)

Clarkstown North swimmer Lisa Rohrs doubts she would be attending Columbia, or any other Ivy League school, this fall if she didn't excel at a sport. It isn't that she doesn't fit the profile of the smart overachiever, it's just that so many other applicants do, too.

"Without swimming, I don't think I would've gotten in," Rohrs said. "It just gives you an edge over a lot of people. You have to have something that will set you apart from everyone else, and swimming set me apart."

It has never been tougher to get into an Ivy League school, and in an area where many parents can afford the best of everything from cars to kitchens, desiring a brand-name education is no different.

Competition is fierce. Harvard, Princeton and Yale admit roughly 10 percent of applicants, so parents pay for SAT preparation classes and application consultants to increase the odds of getting that fat acceptance envelope in the mail.

The difference between success and disappointment can be as slender as a Euclidean point and more cryptic than a freshman course on Socratic discourse.

But for athletes, the process of getting in is more transparent. Excel in sports, and you're more likely to get in.

"It sets them apart from every other applicant; yes, they do have an advantage," said Chris Lincoln, who dissects the recruiting system in "Playing the Game: Inside Athletic Recruiting in the Ivy League."

For Rohrs, getting into an excellent college was the payoff for years of balancing training and schoolwork. Athletes can use their skills as leverage when it comes to college and, for the academically ambitious, there's no better place to land than the Ivy League.

"Instead of looking for reasons to reject (athletes), they're looking for reasons to accept you," said Michele Hernandez, a college consultant who graduated from Byram Hills and worked in the Dartmouth admissions department for four years.

Lou Kern has sent four athletic daughters to college. As seniors at Ursuline, Susan and Patricia were recruited by Columbia women's basketball coach Jay Butler, which gave them more favorable odds in the game.

"Because it's so competitive to get in — average SAT scores are in the 1400s or so — not only do you have to be a good student, having the coach want you definitely makes a difference," the former Fordham women's coach said.

And in a concrete way. Ivy coaches can put a certain number of athletes on a list that is often flagged straight for the dean of admissions, and those players have a better chance of getting in than your run-of-the-mill valedictorian.

Rohrs applied and got in via early decision, but through discussions with the coach, she already knew she probably would be accepted. It's knowledge her classmates didn't have. Lincoln said 50 percent to 60 percent of recruited athletes are accepted through early decision, about 20 percent more than non-athletes.

In fact, other local students might have a slight disadvantage.

Since Ivy League schools want to include students from all over the country, a qualified student from a state with fewer applicants has an edge over a qualified student from the application-saturated Northeast.

"The admissions view is that all of Westchester is the same — they're all wealthy kids who've had everything handed to them," said Hernandez, who wrote the book "A is for Admission." "If you can be that bright and come from Arkansas, that's better."

Only 16 percent of the 135,000 high school students who apply to the Ivy League schools will get in.

"It actually works against you (to live here)," Kern said. "Since (the Ivies) want to balance their classes, they don't want a whole bunch of people from Westchester. They don't want to take 20 students from Scarsdale. That's one of the reasons it's so cut-throat for the better students here."

But there is a flip side for athletes. Coaches need to find players who fit the academic profile of their school, and many students from the area are capable of doing the work.

Plenty of local student-athletes are attending or have graduated from Ivy League schools. Eunice Chao from New City's Clarkstown North plays tennis for Columbia, Matt Murray from Chappaqua's Horace Greeley plays football for Yale, and the stellar distance runners from Bronxville, Caroline and Catha Mullen, are in their sophomore year at Princeton. Olympic swimmer Cristina Teuscher of New Rochelle graduated from Columbia.

Look closely at Ivy League rosters and certain trends emerge. Last year's Cornell men's lacrosse team included three local players. Four local athletes ran outdoor track for Princeton, and three of those are from Greeley. Numerous tennis players are scattered throughout the league, and three play for Columbia, which had 19 locals on last year's sports rosters.

Lincoln's book looks at the system behind Ivy League recruiting through extensive interviews with coaches, parents, athletes and administrators, and dissolves some of the mystery in the process.

All Ivy League athletes must have a certain combination of board scores and grades, usually far above the mean for non-Ivy schools. Those numbers are added up with a few other variables, and each athlete is given an Academic Index.

Different schools have different floors and target averages for athletes and teams. Yet Lincoln estimated 30 percent to 40 percent of athletes are admitted with A.I.s lower than those of their average fellow Ivy freshmen.

Mike Kach, a basketball player from Carmel who spent a year at Winchendon (Mass.) Prep after graduation, got explicit help from the Penn basketball coaches who recruited him.

At Carmel, he was 209th out of his class of 306 with a 1070 on his SAT. It was a period in which his brother, John, lost a foot and his fingers fighting off bacterial meningitis. Those numbers didn't make him a candidate for Penn, but a strong academic year at a prep school boosted his grades. As for the SATs, coaches told him he needed a combined 1190 to get in.

"I didn't think I was going Ivy League," Kach said.

But he loved Penn and continued to study for the test. On his fifth try, Kach boosted his SAT to 1250, and this season he'll be wearing the Penn jersey.

"They really stuck with me," Kach said.

In the past, coaches have pushed their advantage in admitting students. In the 1960s, Lincoln reported that Dartmouth was so interested in preserving its football reputation that 117 players were recruited to a freshman class that is just more than 1,000 students.

That's an old and extreme example, but Lincoln said there is always speculation that one school or another is fudging the numbers to get the best team possible, usually in one of the revenue sports such as basketball, football or ice hockey.

The system attracted enough criticism for the Council of Ivy Group Presidents to have it strengthen academic requirements for athletes and lower the numbers each coach was allowed to list. Now the Dartmouth football coach is limited to 30 players.

"I think the rationale has been the growing awareness that over time, an increasing fraction of the admitted classes at Ivy schools was recruited athletes, so there was some interest in putting a cap on that trend," Yale president Richard Levin told the Yale Daily News. "There's also a concern that the athletes be more representative of the rest of the class as far as academic potential and performance."

Susan Kern, who will be a senior on the Columbia women's basketball team, said that once she got in, she realized that the student body had a definite opinion of athletes.

"Teachers and students look at athletes like, 'How did they really get in?' " Kern said. "So you have to prove yourself. ... Our school newspaper bashes athletes. It's tough having your own newspaper write against you."

But AAU coach Lou Kern said that Ivy coaches don't have that impression of local athletes. In fact, it's just the opposite, he said. Ivy coaches will be on the benches of local tournaments because, Kern said, players here are more likely to have the board scores and grades.

"Westchester has an advantage because coaches know they're going to be able to do the work," he said.

He said parents of gifted athletes will go far to make sure their kids shore up that advantage, sending them to camps or hiring personal trainers. For many in this area, the fact that the Ivy League doesn't offer scholarships isn't a deterrent.

"Everyone wants to go, and more people can afford it," said Mark Greenstein, founder of Ivy Bound Test Prep, which prepares students for the SATs.

Ivy League coaches told Lincoln the system is still ripe for manipulation by the best athletes, usually in the revenue sports. Coveted athletes who say they will attend an Ivy school are issued a "Likely Letter" from the admissions department, which is a practical guarantee that they will be admitted to the school.

When a recruit is wanted by more than one Ivy, things get tricky for coaches who have only a finite number of spots on their lists and can't afford to waste them. Lincoln said some coaches have backed a recruit in the admissions process only to have him or her pick another Ivy.

"They've set up a system that can be manipulated, and it is manipulated," Lincoln said.

There is no corresponding letter of intent on the part of the athlete, and once athletes are in, they aren't required to play for the teams that recruited them. Since there is no corresponding scholarship for sports participation, the school has no recourse.

Critics of the numbers-based admissions system say there are still fewer opportunities to admit minorities and students from socio-economically diverse backgrounds — even as athletes. Two-thirds of the admissions criteria are scores suburban kids often improve with prep classes.

Then there is the financial-aid package, which arrives after an acceptance letter. Applying for early decision locks applicants into the school before they know if they can even hope to afford it. Very high-need students tend to get enough assistance, and the wealthy can pay for room and board, but middle-class families tend to get squeezed.

"We didn't get anything — no scholarship," Rohrs said. "So my parents are paying $40,000 a year."

Still, Greenstein said there is a measurable benefit in giving up a scholarship offer for an Ivy education: Graduates are more highly recruited for first jobs, and the connections with the sons and daughters of the well-heeled can be invaluable.

"Over the course of a lifetime of earnings, getting into Columbia over SUNY is worth millions," he said.

Reach Jane McManus at jmcmanus@thejournalnews.com.Reach Jane McManus at jmcmanus@thejournalnews.com.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=92982&forum_id=1#1472154)