<p>Hi Sherpa! I’m a rising sophomore in high school, and I’ve been fencing epee for less than a year now. My coaches want me to go the the upcoming NAC’s in october, but considering the fact that the fencers competing are extremely good, my mom doesn’t want me to go (because it’s a 14 hour flight, and I’d have to miss school). I, on the other hand really want to go in order to gain experience and learn to fence more people. Would you recommend me to just wait for another year, or do you think the practice would be good for me?</p>
<p>I was at Stanford for a symposium this past weekend and went to the athletics store to get my son a Stanford fending tee shirt. I was told that fencing is not varsity-- but club-- and so they didn’t carry any such tee shirts. Is that true? Is Stanford’s program now a club sport?</p>
<p>
No, it’s a varsity sport. They placed 10th at NCAAs last year. [Stanford</a> University’s Official Athletic Site Fencing - Stanford University’s Official Athletic Site](<a href=“http://www.gostanford.com/sports/c-fenc/stan-c-fenc-body.html]Stanford”>http://www.gostanford.com/sports/c-fenc/stan-c-fenc-body.html)</p>
<p>Yoonah -</p>
<p>If it would be a 14 hour flight for you to attend the October NAC in St. Louis, I’m going to infer that you’re an international applicant. If that’s the case, flying to the U.S. to compete in one D2 and one cadet event might not be a good use of your time and money. In any event, the January NAC might make more sense, as you could fence cadet, junior, and Y-14 if you’re still age eligible.</p>
<p>I have a senior saberist, and trying to figure out this whole recruitment thing.
D12, weighted GPA 4.26, top 10% in class, ACT 33, 760 SAT Bio Subject, an A in a college class this summer, lots of extra cirriculars and community service.
He has only been fencing competitively for a couple of years. He loves the sport, is continually improving. He’s been to JO’s twice, a couple of NAC and summer nationals this year…he did ok, knid of in the middle. Would love advice on his chances at some of these schools. We have visited a number of campus’s, met coaches, filled out recruitment surveys, sent DVD and academic info to coaches a couple of weeks ago. Of course has a list of hopefuls. He would love to go to the east coast. What do you feel his chances are for recruitment?</p>
<p>collegemama,</p>
<p>few thoughts:</p>
<ol>
<li>his academics are fine</li>
<li>he won’t be recruitable by top fencing schools like Ivies/Stanford/Duke/ND<br></li>
<li>if he has a fairly well known coach, it may be worth having the coach contact the college coach and let him know if your son’s potential for growth and improvement in the next four years.<br></li>
<li>second/third tier fencing teams with high academics may have some interest in him if they have a particular need for a saberist. Caltech/MIT if he’s interested in STEM, Haverford/Brandeis if LAC is what he wants, JHU if he wants research U. Unfortunately, some of these schools have coaches with very little pull. Others, more so. He may do well on these teams as he may be further up the depth chart (so to speak) than he would be at a stronger team.</li>
<li>Look at the team roster and see who may be coming short on saberists. JHU, for example, will be graduating 2 saberists next year so I’m sure the coach will be looking for some.<br></li>
</ol>
<p>Having said all that, first priority should be where he would be happiest academically/socially as the fencing will be ‘gravy’ for him. My mediocre fencer son was pretty firm he wanted a college with a fencing team and this significantly limited his options. My job was to steer him such that the colleges would be a good fit for him outside fencing. Fortunately, it has been, and he has really enjoyed being on the fencing team.</p>
<p>What kind of feedback have you gotten from your contacts? If the coach responds and shows interest, that is your answer.</p>
<p>I agree with everything ihs76 posted, except that I’ll take issue with her “mediocre” word choice. I’ve seen him in some pretty exciting, high level bouts.</p>
<p>Collegemama, your son’s academics should be fine anywhere. It wouldn’t hurt for him to phone/email a lot of coaches to see who may be willing to offer support. Sure, the Ivies and Stanford will pass, but there could be some welcome surprises.</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>Thank you both for your reply. We appreciate the feedback. We were focusing on the teams outside of the top 10 fencing schools. Those are the ones he is most interested in academically as well. Brown, Vassar, Haverford, BC. I thank you for the suggestion of JHU, that was not on our list. Looks very interesting. He’s had some interest and an offer of an official visit to one of these. But it seems coaches only offer support if the student ED’s. My son doesn’t know if he wants to ED - is it a detriment to the coaches interest if he doesn’t chose a school to ED?</p>
<p>He had an Ivy coach refer to him as an academic athlete, and suggested he ED with the school. He was told they would send a recommendation for him to admissions but couldn’t offer full support. As we understand it, some coaches need more academic athletes to balance out the stellar athletes that don’t quite have the grades. Do you know how this process works? It is difficult to gauge the level of interest from coaches.</p>
<p>My son is passionate about the sport, he referees, he has started coaching younger kids at his club and is very excited about the sport so attending a fencing school is important to him. Unfortuantely, most of the schools he is interested in are difficult to get into with grades/test scores alone. He is trying to decide how seriously to consider ED’ing a school that will offer support, how to gauge the authenticity of the coach to be able to effect his applications if he ED’s and how likely it is that he could be scooped up as a needed academic athlete. I know some schools and sports programs have more pull than others, but how much pull do these coaches actually have with admissions? Do you have any information about the schools I listed?</p>
<p>I have read all the previous posts and have learned so much. We really appreciate the insights shared here. Thank you!</p>
<p>Collegemama,</p>
<p>If you ask the Ivy coach directly, if he or she has had success with admissions with a letter of recommendation, they should be able to give you some odds. You can also ask specifically about the need to apply ED, but it is almost certain that s/he will tell you that they have more influence in the ED round. I would not count on a letter of recommendation making much of a difference at an Ivy, especially if you are passing up more certain offers. </p>
<p>One other thing to consider is what your son wants out of his college fencing experience. If fencing NCAAs is very important to him, then he might not want to be at a school with a deep team – he may never see any NCAA action.</p>
<p>I don’t have any experience with any of the other schools you have listed, but PM me if you have questions about a specific Ivy (or Duke).</p>
<p>^^ thx Sherpa… I thought so, but the comment of the Stanford official surprised me…</p>
<p>If some one knows the Stanford Coach he might want to make the University’s athletic marketing people aware that is IS a varsity sport–not a club sport. Otherwise people like me will be told differently.</p>
<p>Collegemama, I believe what the Ivy coach was referring to was the Academic Index (AI), which is a calculation that all the Ivies (and a few non-Ivies) use to come up with a single, combined number for every athlete, for initial academic evaluation purposes. It takes into account their SAT scores, their SAT 2’s, and their high school GPA or class rank. There are plenty of threads and sites that discuss how to determine a AI, including here on Collegeconfidential, and there are even online calculators, but in a nutshell, the Ivies have an agreement that the AIs of their athletes within an individual sport must be higher than a certain minimum level (thus disallowing athletes whose AIs are objectively too low), and the average AI for all athletes within a particular school’s sport must be at a certain level. Thus, an athlete with a high AI would be able to offset one with a lower AI (provided that the athlete with the lower AI is still above the minimum), and keep the team at the target average. These target AI numbers vary by sport (lower for the helmet sports, higher for fencing and some others) and by school (highest for HYP). A kid’s AI is not everything, but it’s a pretty crucial number for even initiating the process of becoming an athletic recruit at an Ivy.</p>
<p>etondad: the top fencing recruit for this year will be going to Stanford this fall.</p>
<p>collegemama: I sent you a PM</p>
<p>sherpa: Oh you flatter him. He went downhill this spring but that may have been the (now ex)girlfriend that was distracting him.</p>
<p>3boysssm: i can’t seem to reply to your PM. seems i haven’t made enough posts to use PM, though i did receive your message…anyway…my son ended up getting great support from the vassar coach. our experience with the coach has been great. after a recruiting trip which involved meeting the team, getting to sit in on classes and staying with another fencer in the dorm, my son returned home wanting to apply early decision. he was accepted and is very excited about joining the fencing team next year. we did visit/talk with a number of coaches in our process, if you have any questions about a specific school, i am happy to try and help. good luck! and many thanks to all who sent me PM’s with my previous querries. i really appreciated all the insight and knowledge! it was all very helpful. thank you!</p>
<p>…again…really odd but college confidential is not allowing me to return PM’s until i have 15 posts…but i was able to PM last august…anyone know what that is about? </p>
<p>thanks schoolhouse- i really appreciated your insight and feedback about your experiences on the recruiting trail. it is certainly a learning experience. unfortunately my kids all do different sports so now i am learning about the next sport…sailing…which is completely different from fencing…ah a new adventure. i have to say, the fencing community has been a really great all around.</p>
<p>geekwriter1–I know nothing about fencing and none of my children participate in the sport. However, an EC of my D’s brought me to the facility where the fencing coach at Stevens gives lessons to middle and high school students. He and I happened to start chatting one day and spoke for an hour or more. For whatever it’s worth, he impressed me as a highly-qualifed, and really nice person.</p>
<p>I wonder if there is ever any place on a college team for a high school fencer with an assistant coach (Assistant Moniteur) certificate from USFCA ? My high school senior is hoping to continue fencing at college, but has no tournament experience. The high school club and our town recreational fencing club are more fun than competitive, and she hasn’t gone to any away tournaments.</p>
<p>Not looking for a scholarship, but are there school teams that would have a place on the team for her in any capacity? Academics are excellent; 4.0 gpa, 800-790-770 on the SAT and 5’s on 8 AP tests.</p>
<p>Interesting question, but I don’t know the answer. I’d recommend she contact coaches at some of the academically competitive schools to see if they’re interested and how they might support her.</p>
<p>Hey, I got accepted to Fordham University in NY but unfortunately it doesn’t have a fencing team. Do you think it’s possible to fence and join other college fencing clubs… say NYU for example? And maybe get recruited by them?</p>
<p>I have a question on fencing recruiting. Is there anyone out there that can help me with my question?</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p>Hi, I have a question if you can help. I have a daughter who is a C rated foilist. She is trying to get recruited can you give me some pointers. We have visited some schools and spoke to some coaches but not sure how this recruit game works.</p>
<p>Can you tell me about your son and far has his skill level and what my daugher needs to be doing to try and get recruited.</p>
<p>Thanks</p>