You may have heard about the higher academic standards at Ivy League schools. This article gives a detailed look at some of the lesser known facts about playing and qualifying in the Ivy League:

Before Recruiting in Ivy League, Applying Some Math

By BILL PENNINGTON

Published: December 24, 2011

The New York Times

The Ivy League, which is experiencing an athletic revival with several teams ranked nationally, is a doggedly atypical N.C.A.A. Division I sports conference. For starters, the eight members are virtual heretics in the landscape of American big-time college sports for fielding about 280 teams in 35 sports without athletic scholarships. The league also restricts activities like off-season practices, discourages weekday games and prohibits postseason play in football.

But there is one thing the Ivy League does that truly sets it apart from its sporting brethren nationwide: it tracks and scrutinizes the finite, detailed academic credentials of every recruited athlete welcomed through the doors of the eight member institutions. And it has done so for more than 25 years — creating a dossier of grades and test scores for more than 40,000 student-athletes.

To accomplish this, the league came up with a measurement called the Academic Index, which gives all prospective high school recruits a number, roughly from 170 to 240, that summarizes their high school grade-point averages and scores on standardized tests like the SAT. To read the rest, go here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/sports/before-athletic-recruiting-in-the-ivy-league-some-math.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=sports