At most universities that participate in Division I athletics, being a good athlete is usually enough to be offered admission and a full or partial scholarship. For Hopkins' Division III athletes, (everyone but lacrosse players), it takes a whole lot more for a quarterback to get in than just a stellar arm.
"Admitting athletes is the same as admitting any other student," said Dean of Undergraduate Admissions John Latting. "We look at a range of factors, and athletes just have an additional piece of information that can add to the decision."
One of the big criticisms often hurled at universities is that they grant special status to athletes in the admissions process, accepting those with lower credentials more often than they would accept any other type of student.
At Hopkins, the Office of Admissions works to maintain the same academic standards for both recruited athletes and all other applicants. Each year the coaches give lists of preferred students to admissions officers who retain the final say over who is admitted and who is not.
"Coaches wait for decisions and they live with them," said Latting.
Latting has also worked to improve communication with coaches on campus so that they are aware of the high academic qualifications they are looking for. If a recruit didn't take a challenging curriculum, had average grades and did so-so on the SAT, coaches won't pursue them, with the full knowledge that such applicants would be outright rejected by the admissions office.
"As coaches are recruiting and they gather information about prospects, they can come to my staff and ask 'Is this someone who is in range?'" said Latting. "We want coaches to know the type of academic characteristics we look for."
When coaches submit their lists of preferred students to admissions, there is no guarantee that they will get who they want.
"Do we turn down people at the top of the list? Yes," said Latting. "We also accept people from the bottom of the list."
A faculty committee that oversees admissions at Hopkins recently initiated a study to compare the high-school records of admitted athletes versus those of non-athletes.
The results showed that when all the factors where taken into account, including grades, difficulty of curriculum and SAT scores, admitted athletes and non-athletes were of relatively equal academic quality. About 10 to 12 percent of the student body participates in athletics.
Jim Margraff, head coach of the football team, has the most recruiting responsibilities of any coach on campus. With a team comprised of over 80 members, Magraff looks to recruit about 22 to 25 athletes a year to his program. He relies mainly on national databases of high school players and then targets those with sufficient academic credentials to try and get them to come to Hopkins.
"We try and find the best students we can and [Dean of Admissions John Latting] gives me a good indication of what he looks for in the transcripts," said Margraff. "We want great students because we also don't want to worry about eligibility problems."
One of Margraff's selling points is that Hopkins' football team produces more doctors than probably any other football program in the nation. Considering the difficulty of the pre-medical curriculum at Hopkins, that is no small achievement.
Margraff has also managed to develop high loyalty to his program among the players. At Division I schools, players sacrifice their scholarships if they quit the team. At Hopkins, students do it for the love of the game.
"The kids have very strong bonds to their team and their fellow players," said Margraff.
Most teams are composed of recruited athletes, while a few are comprised of more walk-on members, like fencing and crew. The programs which compete at the national level in Divison III, like soccer, swimming and football, rely almost entirely on recruited student-athletes.
The successes of most sports programs are directly correlated to the amount of effort a coach puts into recruiting. According to Latting, the coaches of the best programs at Hopkins are "fanatic" about attracting talent and can spend up to one third of their time in recruiting activities, such as traveling the country and talking to prospective students.
Scott Pennewill, a second-year coach with the women's volleyball team, spent five years coaching at a Division I program at Drexel.
"I feel I have the least amount of control [over admissions] than I've ever had, and that's to be expected at a place like Hopkins," he said.
Pennewill spends a lot of his time traveling to club volleyball tournaments looking for qualified athletes for his program. But if a prospective athlete doesn't have adequate grades, he doesn't even bother approaching them.
"I'm looking for quality athletics and academics, which eliminates 90 percent of the field already," he said.
Last year Pennewill submitted a list of 16 prospective athletes to the admissions office that he would have liked to see accepted. Of those, only seven were actually offered admission, and of that number, only one eventually decided to enroll at Hopkins. The entire team is composed of only 12 players, three of whom were unrecruited walk-on members.
In the end though, the decisions are out of the coaches' hands. Margraff put it best.
"Dr. Latting doesn't tell me what to call on 3rd and 4 and I don't tell him who to accept."
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