USRowing, the sport’s governing body, counts as members about 650 teams and clubs focused on high school athletes. About half are high school varsity teams. By comparison, more than 18,000 U.S. high schools sponsor basketball teams, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.

To fill empty spots, college rowing coaches recruit heavily from abroad, especially from the U.K., Australia and New Zealand, and often from elite prep schools such as Eton College and St. Paul’s.

Crew, and other exclusive sports, are one reason that elite college student bodies remain so lopsidedly wealthy. At Ivy League colleges and some other elite universities, more students come from families in the top 1 percent of income than from the bottom 50 percent combined, according to research by Harvard economist Raj Chetty and others.

While sports like basketball can add to economic diversity, Ivies offer an unusual number of minor sports that do the opposite, including fencing, squash, sailing, water polo and both lightweight and heavyweight crew.

Title IX
Rowers must be tall and strong and the sport requires an exceptional amount of discipline and grit. Grady’s high school team practiced three hours a day, taking only Christmas, New Year’s and some Sundays off. And unlike other minor sports such as fencing and squash, crew coaches have many spots to fill. The average Division I men’s squad last year had 46 rowers while women’s had 63.

Because of Title IX gender equity rules, colleges are far more likely to have a women’s crew team than a men’s squad. Athletic departments use women’s crew teams to balance out male sports like football and wrestling. Unlike men’s rowing, women’s crew is an official NCAA sport with a sanctioned championship. Women’s Division I rowing teams are allowed to hand out the equivalent of 20 full scholarships, more than any other women’s sport.

For Grady, who only visited Ivies, scholarships weren’t in play. Ivy League schools don’t give out athletic scholarships, but their coaches can still offer something of value -- help in navigating a fiercely competitive admissions process. Yale, for example, only accepts 6 percent of applicants.

Likely Letters
So-called likely letters are one way for schools to give athletic recruits a wink that suggests acceptance is imminent. Grady was told by a Yale assistant coach that the rowing team had eight likely letters to hand out that year, though she didn’t get one.

Still, the presumption of an applicant joining a sports team can be a decisive factor even if coaches don’t officially designate an athlete as a recruit. A lawsuit playing out in the same Boston courthouse as the Varsity Blues proceedings helps demonstrate that.

Filings in the case, which alleges discrimination against Asian-American applicants to Harvard, show how applicants are rated on their academic, extracurricular, athletic and personal qualities on a four-point scale. Experts hired by Harvard and the plaintiff, Students for Fair Admissions, analyzed years of data. While admissions officers officially get final say on all applicants, court filings show recruited athletes who score highly on academics have an 83 percent chance of getting in compared with 16 percent for non-athletes -- a 67-point boost. Legacy applicants and low-income applicants had a 40-point and 9-point boost, respectively.