<p>I’m the parent of a current high school junior who’s an athlete and a very good student. Pomona is on the radar. I’ve found this thread pretty helpful. Thanks to all of you who’ve made it so.</p>
<p>I noticed today in the Pomona ED results thread that there are two kids who posted, one of whom was deferred and one of whom was rejected, who list themselves as having been recruited athletes – one a swimmer and one a runner. I thought that was pretty notable. As had been stated ?here or elsewhere on CC, if one’s hoping to go to an elite D3 school on athletics one has to go ‘all in’ by choosing which school to apply to via the ED route. I thought it unfortunate that these kids who appear to be talented athletes and excellent students somehow judged their chances for admission to Pomona incorrectly.</p>
<p>I think generally Pomona doesn’t give as much weight to athletics as some D3 schools and within the college some sports have more pull than others. Generally they seem to be new to the concept of sports recruiting and the system is definitely ad hoc. You have to rely on your coach to work the system. You also have to correctly judge how heavily you are really being recruited, I think. The coach will only have so much credit with admissions anyway and you need an honest assessment of where you fall of his/her list of priorities. </p>
<p>That said, my son was given a positive pre-read and was in fact accepted yesterday. The coaches were clear that the pre-read did not guarantee admission and wasn’t at all like in Ivy likely letter. They were also clear that they Really Really wanted him. He got some interest from a few D1 schools and if we’d persued that route earlier could have been a scholarship athlete. He decided early that academics trumped athletics though.</p>
<p>I had a similar experience to Kber13. I had a positive pre read and my coach interpreted it as a strong likely hood of future acceptance (which I received) but not a guarantee. The extent to which the other two students were recruited is unclear but if your S or D is highly interested in Pomona and is worried, make sure to get a pre read</p>
<p>@kber13, @EB14manu – Thanks for the thoughtful and helpful comments.<br>
We toured Pomona and Harvey Mudd this fall (when we were in southern CA visiting a sick family friend) and notably Mudd told us that they do NOT do academic pre-reads. Plus the admissions counselor really displayed some attitude regarding my son being an athlete. So it’s good to know that Pomona does pre-reads, albeit realizing that there are no guarantees.</p>
<p>My son will qualify from an academic standpoint, but Pomona is so selective that the school could probably admit half a dozen classes of academically qualified kids. He’s a bit more iffy from the sports standpoint – we’ll have to see how much his ‘times’ come down over the course of his junior year, but if he follows the trajectory of similar kids he will likely be fast enough to score at Pomona’s league meet (which I guess is some sort of standard).</p>
<p>More than anything he loves his sport, and embraces the discipline and the hard work involved. And he really loves the camaraderie of being on a team – simply loves being around his teammates. He’s such a good student that we have no worries about him in the long run – he’ll get into a good school and will be fine. But at some of those good schools he wouldn’t be fast enough to be on the team, which would be a loss for him. That’s why Pomona falls into such a sweet spot in being both an academic and a sports fit.</p>
<p>Congrats to both of you, and thanks again for your thoughts.</p>
I just sent in my transcripts, test scores, and prospected senior classes to the track and field coach. He replied just today (about a week after I sent him my stuff) saying that the admissions gave a positive yes and that I should apply ed2. He said that he “couldn’t be more confident” about my chances as long as I kept up academically (and didn’t get arrested!). Hope all goes well.