[Mick]

I will say that Ivies and some D3 schools like MIT have large 30+ sport programs.  But they don't give scholarships.  And the academic breaks at least at the Ivies are fairly different from what we do.

You can say that again.  My take on the Ivies is that their test score/gpa breaks outside of football and basketball aren't particularly significant.  I know that the year my son was recruited (over a decade ago), the lowest SAT among the frosh in his sport at Princeton was 2220 and the lowest SAT among Stanford's frosh was 1880.  But it has to be that way, because the Ivies don't take sports as seriously.  The Ivies think substantial sports programs are important to their overall brand, and their athletes have had notable success, they tend to donate more than non-athletes as alums, they add to the overall college atmosphere but the Ivies don't want the compromises that an elite, serious D1 program requires.  

I had an interesting conversation in 2009 with an associate athletic director at the Stanford of the East, in which she stated that the school collectively decided to increase their admissions of well-rounded (versus "well-lopsided") applicants in around 2006, in part because a campus composed chiefly of well-lopsided individuals wasn't a particularly pleasant place.  Ivy athletes aren't typically CTOs or Nobel prize winners, but they can turn out like Bill Campbell, Bill Hewlett, Gerald Ford or Chief Justice White.  Incidentally, the current president of Stanford has noted in the past that he participated in an Olympic sport in college, though I don't know which one.

[Mick]

I will say that Ivies and some D3 schools like MIT have large 30+ sport programs.  But they don't give scholarships.  And the academic breaks at least at the Ivies are fairly different from what we do.

You can say that again.  My take on the Ivies is that their test score/gpa breaks outside of football and basketball aren't particularly significant.  I know that the year my son was recruited (over a decade ago), the lowest SAT among the frosh in his sport at Princeton was 2220 and the lowest SAT among Stanford's frosh was 1880.  But it has to be that way, because the Ivies don't take sports as seriously.  The Ivies think substantial sports programs are important to their overall brand, and their athletes have had notable success, they tend to donate more than non-athletes as alums, they add to the overall college atmosphere but the Ivies don't want the compromises that an elite, serious D1 program requires.  

I had an interesting conversation in 2009 with an associate athletic director at the Stanford of the East, in which she stated that the school collectively decided to increase their admissions of well-rounded (versus "well-lopsided") applicants in around 2006, in part because a campus composed chiefly of well-lopsided individuals wasn't a particularly pleasant place.  Ivy athletes aren't typically CTOs or Nobel prize winners, but they can turn out like Bill Campbell, Bill Hewlett, Gerald Ford or Chief Justice White.  Incidentally, the current president of Stanford has noted in the past that he participated in an Olympic sport in college, though I don't know which one.