[Mick]

As a baseline measuring system, the Ivies use the "Academic Index" to gauge prospective athletes.  It is a 240 point scale with three factors, each counting for eighty points.  A full third of the scale goes to class rank -- if your high school actually ranks students, and an increasing number of them refuse to do so.  The other two are grades and test scores, naturally.

To your other point, I would generally agree that the most select colleges want to see achievement in scholastics and one other category, but I'd like to offer a caveat to that concept.  When my oldest was applying to college in 2009, I spoke to an associate athletic director whose primary function at a top Ivy was to get student-athletes admitted.  She dealt regularly with admissions, and she said that for years prior to 2003, her University sought chiefly "well-lopsided" students over "well-rounded."  They actively preferred students who had great academics and were all-world in one other thing.  They noted, however, that there was a tendency for these individuals to overfocus on their passion to the exclusion of all else, and that the campus atmosphere was the lesser for it.  So in her terms, she said "(our school) has to have a place not just for the best pianist in the world, but the 4.0/student body president/tennis captain; the student who has mastered every category but isn't necessarily the very best in any one category."

That description fits both of my sons, who attend/will attend an Ivy (not hers).  So I think there's room for both student profiles.

[Mick]

As a baseline measuring system, the Ivies use the "Academic Index" to gauge prospective athletes.  It is a 240 point scale with three factors, each counting for eighty points.  A full third of the scale goes to class rank -- if your high school actually ranks students, and an increasing number of them refuse to do so.  The other two are grades and test scores, naturally.

To your other point, I would generally agree that the most select colleges want to see achievement in scholastics and one other category, but I'd like to offer a caveat to that concept.  When my oldest was applying to college in 2009, I spoke to an associate athletic director whose primary function at a top Ivy was to get student-athletes admitted.  She dealt regularly with admissions, and she said that for years prior to 2003, her University sought chiefly "well-lopsided" students over "well-rounded."  They actively preferred students who had great academics and were all-world in one other thing.  They noted, however, that there was a tendency for these individuals to overfocus on their passion to the exclusion of all else, and that the campus atmosphere was the lesser for it.  So in her terms, she said "(our school) has to have a place not just for the best pianist in the world, but the 4.0/student body president/tennis captain; the student who has mastered every category but isn't necessarily the very best in any one category."

That description fits both of my sons, who attend/will attend an Ivy (not hers).  So I think there's room for both student profiles.