Editor's Note: This is the first installment in a three-part series about Dartmouth's athletic programs.
For Dartmouth, the intermixing of athletics and academics to produce a well-rounded education can be traced back to the Ivy League's founding. While college athletics as a whole have seen tremendous change and competitive growth over the past 50 years, the Ivy League's strict academic regulations have remained virtually unchanged, forcing its member universities to find alternative recruiting methods, according to athletic director Harry Sheehy.
These methods include strong financial aid programs and increased transparency between athletic and admissions departments to combat a growing athletic disadvantage.
History
The first recorded athletic event between two Ivy League institutions, a crew race between Yale University and Harvard University, occurred on Aug. 3, 1852. For the next century, the eight Ivy League institutions participated in various loose athletic associations and enjoyed considerable success on the national stage.
In the 1936-1937 season, Dartmouth's football team was invited to attend the Rose Bowl, but then-College President Ernest Hopkins declined the offer in deference to academics, setting a precedent for Dartmouth football teams to forgo postseason games.
The Ivy League was officially founded in 1954, when the Ancient Eight applied pre-existing football regulations to all other intercollegiate sports. The regulations re-emphasized academic, athletic and financial rules, including the prohibition of athletic scholarships and postseason football play. The first season began in 1956.
Today, all of Dartmouth's 34 varsity athletic teams, along with their Ivy League counterparts, compete in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Conference, the highest level of collegiate athletics. NCAA athletes are considered amateurs, meaning that they cannot accept outside monetary prizes or endorsements. The Ivy League, with only eight members, remains the smallest athletic conference in Division I.
"The focus of the Ivy League is on intra-league play," Ivy League executive director Robin Harris said.
Admissions Practices and Recruiting
While the NCAA broadly regulates the academic aspects of recruiting, the 346 Divison-I universities vary greatly in terms of individual school and league policies on recruitment and admissions processes for college athletes.
"Recruiting nationally is neither sane nor thoughtful," Sheehy said. "We're very thankful that we've found some middle ground that enables us to be competitive but isn't adding to the lunacy."
Ivy League institutions offer only need-based financial aid and do not grant any athletic scholarships, making it unique among athletic conferences.
Ivy League athletes must also meet certain academic standards in order to be considered for admission.
"The academic nature of the institution is a point of separation," Buddy Teevens '79, former Dartmouth quarterback and current football head coach, said.
One way universities identify athletes' qualifications is a system known as the Academic Index, which helps gauge a recruit's academic merit.
While the exact formula varies across the Ivy League, the AI combines a prospective applicant's test scores and high school GPA to generate a number between 60-240, according to Bob Ceplikas '78, deputy director of athletics and a former admissions employee.
The combined average AI of all athletes at a school must be within one standard deviation of the combined average for the rest of the student body, he said.
After all athletes are admitted, the Dartmouth Admissions Office calculates an AI for the entire admitted pool of athletes and submits the number to the Ivy League Office. The Ivy League Office then helps determine whether the admitted group of athletes is representative of the rest of the student body, according to Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Maria Laskaris '84.
"We don't change admissions decisions, but we have to report this information to the league after the admissions season has completed," Laskaris said.
Ceplikas said the average difference between athletes' AI and the normal student body's AI is within 10 points at Dartmouth.
"The system is designed so that your requirements for your student-athletes are linked to the student body," Ceplikas said. "So as Dartmouth's student body has gotten stronger in terms of academic credentials, the requirements for our student athletes have as well."
As a result, the necessary average AI that athletes must meet varies among different teams at Dartmouth.
Football player Nick Schwieger '12 said he was encouraged to score at least 1800 on his SAT. Among the three possible categories recruits are placed into based on their AI score, he was a "low-band" recruit, he said.
Dartmouth usually targets "high-band" recruits, according to Schwieger. Colleges also recruit less-talented athletes with higher AI scores in order to offset recruits who might be more athletically talented but whose test scores would hurt the team average, according to players interviewed.
"[University of Pennsylvania] was recruiting me really hard because I would raise their average up," Corey Schafer '13, Dartmouth's No. 1 ranked women's squash player, said.
Among the Ivy League institutions in which Schafer expressed interest, including Penn, Cornell University and Dartmouth, Dartmouth's squash coaches required the highest AI, according to Schafer.
Chris Hanson '13, Dartmouth's No. 1 ranked men's squash player, said he believes the high AI standards at Dartmouth can create an obstacle for potential squash recruits and added that a lack of strong recruits puts teams at a disadvantage.
"I think we could afford to maybe drop how high the point standard is and let in someone a little more talented and a little less smart," he said.
Ceplikas, however, said he believes Dartmouth has found the right balance.
"We take great pride in that Dartmouth doesn't compromise on our academic standards," he said. "We want to win, but we want to win the right way."
Christian Kader, a freshman rower at the University of California, Berkley, contacted all eight Ivy League schools but was not signed as a recruit because of his relatively low test scores.
Kader said Ivy League coaches told him he needed a combined SAT score of 1850 to be accepted.
While the official AI score is not calculated until October of each year and is not the sole factor in admissions, the academic evaluation and recruitment of athletes begins much earlier, in part a response to the ever-competitive national recruiting process.
The Admissions Office can begin informal evaluation of an athlete on July 1 of the athlete's senior year of high school as regulated by the Ivy League, according to Laskaris.
Most Dartmouth athletes interviewed said they were asked to send in their academic transcripts in the early stages of recruiting, at which point they were told whether they needed to improve certain aspects of their application in order to increase their likelihood of admission.
"Our desire is not to bring students here who struggle," Sheehy said. "It just isn't profitable for anyone."
Between four and five members of the admissions staff act as liaisons with Dartmouth coaches regarding potential recruits' admissibility, according to Laskaris.
"The coaches will come to us with a set of credentials and some of the preliminary parts of students' applications, and we will give them a sense of whether a student is recruitable," Laskaris said.
The Admissions Office can begin to give formal "likely letters" to athletic recruits starting on Oct. 1 as per Ivy League rules, according to Laskaris.
Potential Ivy League recruits, however, receive offers from non-Ivy League schools as early as their junior year, especially in sports like lacrosse, according to Sheehy.Ivy League schools, unable to offer official decisions that early in the process, have the majority of their athletes apply under the early decision program to help offset their recruiting disadvantages, Laskaris said.
Scholarships
The Ivy League is the only Division-I conference that does not offer athletic scholarships, which has historically been an obstacle, but this is now increasingly offset by strong need-based financial aid programs, according to Laskaris.
Given the competitive financial aid packages awarded in the Ivy League, athletes are able to play for Ivy League teams without affecting their family's financial stability, she said.
"There's no doubt that Dartmouth financial aid initiatives have played an important role in our ability to go to head-to-head with scholarship schools," Ceplikas said.
Ethan Shaw '12, a cross country runner also recruited by Georgetown University, said that financial aid played a key role in his decision to matriculate at the College.
Teevens, who previously coached at Stanford University, Tulane University and the University of Florida, said introducing athletic scholarships in the Ivy League would change the nature of recruiting.
"At a bigger school, it's a much more business-like approach," he said. "A player is more of a commodity than an individual."
Abbey D'Agostino '14, a member of the women's cross country and track teams who placed third at the 2011 NCAA Cross Country Championships, said that introducing athletic scholarships in Ivy League recruiting would alter the sport's amateur nature.
"What sort of turned me off about Division-I non-Ivies was that it tended to be more competitive because of the scholarship part of it," she said. "When there's sort of that inter-team competition for scholarships, there tends to be more tension. It kind of interferes with the team dynamic."
Athletic scholarships can also create a wider gap between the academic performance of athletes and that of the rest of the student body, according to Teevens. When players' enrollment is tied to their athletic success, the scholar-athlete has less freedom in shaping his or her college experience, according to Ceplikas.
"Our athletes can pursue all other interests on campus, which they do," he said. "They don't have to keep playing their sport if they don't want to. We end up with student-athletes who are playing their sport because they love it."
Some athletes interviewed still believe the lack of athletic scholarships truly holds Ivy League schools back from competing at a national level across all sports.
"I hope in a few years the Ivy League will change their rules and allow scholarships," Shaw said. "Ultimately, it's impossible to be a legitimate contender without scholarships."
Tennis player Mike Jacobs '13 said the team has trouble competing against schools that give athletic scholarships.
"What has to happen is because we're not necessarily getting the best talent, we just have to work harder than everyone else," he said.
Ceplikas said he expects the recent increase in financial aid and alumni donations to help close the gap between powerhouse institutions that offer athletic scholarships and Ivy League schools.
"With stronger financial aid programs, it has put us in reach of the more talented students," Ceplikas said. "When you look at how successful Ivy League teams already are on a national scale and that's competing as the only Division I conference with no athletic aid if all of Division I had no athletic aid, I think the Ivy League would dominate."
