Well, she got an offer and has about 10 days to decide. And so now we reach out to the few other schools that are as high on her list as this one and see if we can get any updated information. If our experience is at all like most rising seniors, the NESCAC schools are going to kick themselves for delaying their prereads. The timing just really works against them right now.
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Congratulations to her! I wonder if other schools will take advantage of that NESCAC situation.
Congrats! I would definitely let the other schools know of the offer and your timeline. If there’s a school that she prefers she could let the coach know that it’s her top choice.
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I was a 4:06 high school miler in the 70’s. 1450 or so on the SAT’s. High GPA. From a poor single mother home which did not work in my favor, surprisingly. 4:06 is likely equivalent to 4:02 or so today with the so-called super shoes and better facilities (I ran my fastest times on a rubberized asphalt track). 48 seconds in the 400 so helpful to a mile relay team and state champion in cross country (not my favorite). I don’t recall getting any pre-reads just lots of phone calls telling me I could get in. Some of the athletic factories told me I had double the scores as to what was required for admission. That was a turn-off for me as I worked hard in school despite not being a gifted student. A few of those athletic factories would have been better choices than the top 10 school I attended as their honors programs were excellent and they would have been a far better social fit.
But this brings me to the point which is relevant today. Athletics is time consuming and and an intense coach finds it in their interest to isolate their charges from other elements of the school, even at a D III level. Don’t be fooled that most coaches won’t try and zoom you up (men) to 80 miles a week in D III, with little monitoring of easy days to be just that - easy. Not everyone adjusts to this - whether it be injury or massive fatigue. Running 30 minutes for 10k in cross country on hilly and difficult courses- typically near the top of a race - would make me sore and massively tired for a week. I was on scholarship and had to put athletics first to renew the scholarship each year, and even I often thought of taking time off from athletics to focus on school. I guess there is nothing wrong with using track for admission but in the ideal one would choose a school just for its academics. My dream school? Carleton. My best friend in high school played both ways on the football squad and is a med school professor now. I actually enjoyed the cold weather and could have directed my training at a place like that and done well on 40 miles a week, unthinkable at the D 1 level. But there was not a snowball’s chance my mother could have afforded it. So I went with the imperfect choice, on my own since age 18.
Grad school became a necessity because I wanted to see how I could do without the huge commitment of D 1 athletics. Predictably I felt I had huge amounts of time on my hands, ending up getting good part time jobs to fill the void, and did better than anything I could have imagined. But athletics delayed my career development for at least a few years - no regrets but know what you are getting into. Of the top 10 in my event in college, only two went into professional careers. Most went into sports careers or teaching or coaching Nothing wrong with any of that - I just had no talent for this type of thing, and didn’t like it to boot.
By the way, there are examples of very average high school runners becoming national class runners. One of the leaders in the NCAA this year at 1:46 in the 800 ran 1:59 in high school. So it pays to push boundaries a bit. Have to listen to yourself.
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