While some teams and more frequently the male gender in specific may have a history of lesser performers, do athletes as a whole really differ that much from the average Midd student? I would doubt so. Start by looking up the Academic All American honors of the past by both individual student athletes & teams.

Regarding athlete’s “…academic credentials are weaker coming in”
A quick Googling for information reveals rough numbers of:
1 million SAT takers in a given year
20 individual perfect scores on average with the annual 90th % falling at 2100 or better, equaling approx 100,000 students
To fill all the beds at the top 20 schools would be approx 60-70,000? students before one considers the Service Academies and the likely number of 2100′ers who choose state school’s full ride / honors college programs.

If the so called highly-selective schools were to go to an “Admission help blind” protocol, and only admitted 21 and ups, could Middlebury reasonably expect to fill its 2350 beds? Yes, I know that SAT’s are not the determining factor in admissions but they provide national averages in support of the question.

A more interesting blog post would be one comparing the number of sub-2100 athlete admits, to the number of sub-2100 full pay admits. Then a broad brush overview of the 4 year records both academic & social of the aforementioned groups. I’d be willing to bet that the typical Sunday AM resident of Parton is more often non-jock than jock.