With your child being a junior, you need marks by June or July of this year. (You could even use August marks I imagine). I don’t know whether you will have a spring season, so I hope you do. Even if not, there are many independent summer meets to enter assuming they aren’t cancelled. Or worst case a trusted coach to time.
It’s a confusing time period with so many gap years of athletes abs some schools holding the tips/slots firm.
While I said earlier Pomona has two slots, and for the rest it’s less probable, that’s not true at the NESCAC’s. Lots of wisdom in past threads between slots and tips and preferences; but understand if the coach likes your times and submits you for a pre read (gpa, transcript, test scores, school profile), then you get the official overnight - or covid equivalent - and then the Fischer offers you support if you ED1, then you can be highly certain you are admitted. Other LAC’s have only softer less certain support. You need to ask questions to determine which.
I don’t know what they are going to do about terms scores given covid abs more schools going test optional but it was an essential part of the pre read.
However, you need to be communicating with the coaches. The D3 coaches vary in responsiveness. Cast a wide net.
However if your times aren’t competitive in the conference, then there won’t be that much enthusiasm.
The key is how to get junior year/summer times up.
Yes, there wasn’t really an outdoor season in 2020 (aside from perhaps some early icebreaker type meets in warm weather locations). Earlier years are better for assessing typical top ten times, etc.
Also, be aware that athletic.net, while great for HS results esp. on the west coast, is spotty for college results. Tfrrs.org is the go to site for college results.
Yes, I agree that’s a good approach. Athletic.net or milesplit are good for that. Also pretty easy that way to guess which athletes at these schools received support and which didn’t.
So demonstration of interest should be shown, if you are a top athlete. My son just started the speed training after two months of rest due to the hamstring injury. He was sore, and speed was not like before, but hopefully he will gain the speed. He will need to get back in a shape and try not to get injured. It sound like next 4 months are the most crucial time for him. Thanks for the advice.
My DS22 was selected as one of forty high school athletes invited to Mecalester’s Athletic department’ s online meeting last night. The coach stressed out that kids need to apply ED especially in the COVID years. The school experienced 40% increase in application this year. He told a story about this female high school athlete this year who has very good academic stats. He thought she will get in easily if she applied for ED, but now she won’t get accepted because she decided to RD. She probably applied as ED to other school, but it seems that simply get accepted to schools become very hard this year. My son needed to hear this. All the sudden he realized that he will have to apply for ED in 6-7 months. That’s not a lot of time.
Huh . . . I might suggest that every admissions decision is fact specific. “Very good academic stats” means different things to different people. I might be missing something, but key factors for an athlete’s admission at most very good liberal arts colleges (i.e., not the most elite LACs) would probably include: (a) academic fit (look at the 25/75 for test scores if available); (b) athletic support; and, (c) financial need/full pay status. The more a HS student needs support or financial aid, the more imperative it is to find the right fit for EA.
With that said, applying EA to one college with 2-3 backups is an enormous advantage for recruited athletes (and their families) when compared to students applying to 10+ colleges and not getting admissions decisions until April of their senior year.
I’ve been told by multiple D3 coaches that they will want you to apply ED. They want to be sure that you’re coming, since there isn’t any LOI. They will do an academic and also financial pre-read before hand (usually in the summer) so you have an idea of what aid (financial or merit) would be awarded. The biggest obstacle is for schools like Washington and Lee and Emory that give merit aid but they are competitive scholarships that are not awarded until the spring. We pretty much have crossed those off our list because we need merit and won’t qualify for financial aid. We don’t want to be applying ED then finding out that she is not being awarded one of these very competitive scholarships and we’re on the hook for $75k
The issue of applying early has been debated numerous times on this forum. If you expect coach support with admissions, you also should expect to apply early. I have no problem with this quid pro quo. Coach support can carry lesser qualified applicants over the line. It only seems fair that if your application is getting that extra lift, you should commit to attending the school. It also seems like the only way to be fair to non athletes. Think how many athletes a coach would have to recruit without ED. If a coach needs five new players each year, he or she can find the recruits and rely on them attending if they apply early. If all of the recruits applied RD, a coach might have to recruit 20-25 to get five. Or maybe all the 25 would choose to attend, overwhelming the roster and precluding non athletes from gaining admission. Given how much recruits have to gain, ED is a very fair trade-off.
That said, Macalester was one of the few in our experience who said “you don’t have to apply early.” It was my general impression that the midwestern LACs did not ask for early applications in recruiting. It is expected at most D3s, although there are exceptions to every rule.
Yup, that’s us. We are full-pay. We’ve already ended one conversation with Carleton even though the coach was great and the school is awesome but we can’t afford $75k and they don’t award any merit, only financial aid, which we don’t qualify for. But if you qualify, go for it!!
As far as Mac is concerned, my D21 planned to apply EA. The coach suggested if she applied ED it would help him with recruiting for the team. As we already had prereads and she was sure about her choice, it was an easy decision. He in no way insisted on it but most schools I believe, do.
Can I ask what your daughter’s academic stats were to pass the preread? I have to ensure that my son DS22 will meet the academic standard for Macalester. He wants to go there.
The coach for your son’s sport should know roughly what the standards for admission are. (That’s why coaches start asking for grades/scores early on, certainly by 10th grade)
She has 4.0 UW, 4.6 W, full IB diploma programme, NHS, four year varsity letter, various average ECs. We did the preread at the end of her junior year. She had planned on an ED lottery ticket at an Ivy but fell in love when we visited in July.
My DS21 was an athletic recruit to CMC, applied and accepted ED in December 2020. My sense was that high academics were just as important as athletic performance in recruiting. Standards for pre-read seemed higher at CMC than at schools I would have thought would be just as competitive academically. Not sure if this is true across all sports.