Athletic Supplement on the Common Application?

Athletic Recruits
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<p>I’m trying to wrap my head around the “athletic supplement” to the common application. It sounds like if you’re recruited you don’t need it. The questions arise if you aren’t recruited/tipped/tracked but instead simply have a reasonable hope of actually playing on the college’s team. How can it help? And can it hurt you if you submit it and, the coach of that team replies, “I’ve never heard of that kid and, given the information on it, I wouldn’t want him/her”? (In other words, will the admissions officers think you’re trying to pull one over on them?) </p>

<p>For those who haven’t memorized the athletic supplement. It asks you – “if you “anticipate” playing varsity sports” -- to “List team sports played”. There’s a large text box that asks you to “list any times, records, awards, etc.”, but doesn’t indicate if you can use that for less concrete accomplishments than times (IOW, can my son list the time he struck out 11 opposing batters in a game?).</p>

<p>To put it in concrete terms, my S is in the classic position of being a great student and a decent but skinny baseball pitcher. Academics will control his final college choice, but he doesn’t have a single dream school, so he would go with a college where he has a reasonable chance of playing baseball over one where he doesn’t, all other things being equal. He’s performed in showcases before many coaches at academic D3’s (think USN&WP top-20 LAC’s), and the response has ranged from “no thanks” to “let’s talk in the Spring and maybe we’ll offer you something” to “you’re welcome to try out” to “if you’re admitted, you’re welcome to join us for our fall practices/conditioning program and see how it goes.” It’s hard to read the tea leaves in the coaches’ comments in the latter three categories and won’t likely know his chances until some time in the spring (or later) when my son will need to make a final decision, which is fine. And there’s no reason to question their sincerity – they don’t know what kind of ‘yield’ they’ll get until March, and even then with RD and scholarships there’s nothing to bind kids to them until May.</p>

<p>The immediate question is whether to submit an athletic supplement to any of these schools. (Certainly it won’t be used to express initial interest to the coaches, as he’s been in contact with all of them.) The form is a weird creature. While it requests that you submit it if you “anticipate” playing varsity sports, it asks you to list all sports you played. (My son also was on the cross-country squad for a year, but isn’t going to run in college – should that be listed? And, if so, how does he indicate he does not want it to go to the college’s track coach?) And -- just as with the arts supplement where even though you’re not going to be a Fine Arts major you may want to use that form to submit a video of a ballet performance -- he’d like to be able to explain to the admissions office that this is something that he did well and spent a lot of time on (five afternoons a week in the Spring and three during the Fall) and hence didn’t have that time available for other EC’s. </p>

<p>And if you do send it in to a school where you’re not being recruited but have been given one of those non-binding non-commitments from coaches like those described above, should you alert the coach so he doesn’t feel that he’s being “used” to enhance your application? (Perhaps you could say, “As I told you I would do, I am indeed applying regular decision and have submitted the Athletic Supplement, understanding that I have not been recruited and simply hope that there will be an opportunity to [play][try out][etc].” If the Athletic Supplement form is sent to the coach for any purpose other than giving him a list of prospects interested in playing that sport, does the coach’s response have any impact on admissions, positive or negative? Does it help for him to say, “Yeah, he’s a good player that we’re considering”? (And, dang, why can’t I submit the video of him striking out those 11 opponents as an “artistic performance”? He really was painting the corners that afternoon… 8-}) </p>

<p>Anyway, from what I’ve seen in other forums, there are a lot of athletes on the margins with similar questions about the athletic supplement, and any guidance would be helpful. I’ve searched here (including on the common app forum), at the common app site, and even via Google, and haven’t found any clear answers.</p>

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<p>The supplement is not complicated. List honest straight forward/concrete info. of sports your student played and intends to play in college.
Complete it and let it go. Think of it as an EC specific form.</p>

<p>When it comes to recruiting and OVs…it is a non-issue. By the time the Common App is being done in the fall of Sr year, the coaches have already been in touch with the athletes since July after Jr yr. So completing the supplement won’t hurt/help those OVs.</p>

<p>For other schools, it is simply a supplement to the other ECs and info.<br>
I suspect that it may help schools admissions in forwarding info to coaches. </p>

<p>Ask your student’s high school coach for more information.</p>

<p>Good luck</p>

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<p>If your son really wants to play college baseball, it sounds as if the biggest obstacle is the fact that physically he is still young. Why not take a gap year to work on his baseball and conditioning. I can attest that my son between 18 and 19 added almost 2 inches and 25 lbs as a result of workouts when his body was ready to grow.</p>

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<p>Fog, thanks for contributing your always valuable insights. Agreed that for kids getting OV’s, the Athletic Supp. is irrelevant. And for sports where walk-ons are expected (think of women’s rowing at non-Ivy schools, e.g.), the Athletic Supp performs a recruiting function. But, I’m talking about something different: kids who’ve contacted coaches but aren’t ‘recruited’ but not turned away either as of January 1st.</p>

<p>You suggest treating it as an “EC specific form”, which I take to mean treating it like the Arts Supplement, which was explained to us by many LAC admissions officers as being a way to show a different side of your kid, even if the kid wasn’t going to major in that art form. I’d accept that as an explanation for the Athletic Supplement as well, but the Athletic Supplement specifically asks you to fill it out only if you actually anticipate you’re going to participate at the varsity level. So, a kid could be a national champion in a sport and devote 50 hours per week in HS to that sport, but if she elects not to compete in college in that sport, she can only bring it up in the EC section of the application. So, it seems like the form may perform different functions for different schools, and we’re a little flummoxed as to how to approach it in our situation.</p>

<p>And, as others have asked/commented as well, the form does not ask for “honest straight forward/concrete info,” as it’s not clear: (a) if you list sports that you don’t want to compete in (and if you don’t, that would defeat the “EC” function you describe), (b) if you list teams you played on outside of your high school setting (for example, many girl soccer players eschew their HS teams to play on touring/tournament teams to get better exposure), and (c) if the “times, records, awards” section can include narrative descriptions. (Heck, the term “records” alone is extremely vague – are you talking about, say, won-loss records if you’re a tennis player, or records in the sense of setting a state or national record in a timed or scored even, like holding an age-group record in the 880 run?)</p>

<p>I have a sense that you think I’m over-obsessing about what should go into the form, but when you’re talking about the risk of making a blunder with both the coach and the admissions office, I’d rather err on the side of getting the best information available from folks like you who know a great deal more than I about the process. I guess if we’re uncertain, my son’s application can provide more information rather than less and make it clear that he’s uncertain about how much information the school wants and is just trying to be as transparent about his athletics background as possible.</p>

<p>Stemit, I appreciate your advice and story. You actually are describing my growth pattern, which my son may well emulate.* (Alas, I married a short woman, so her genetic contribution may hold him back; but she did provide the brains, so I think I made a good choice overall. 8-} ) But, like most kids with top grades, taking a year off simply to enhance his athletic skills is not an option. The ability to play ball in college is a minor consideration in his college plans. If it helps him get into a college, great (but it probably won’t). If it enhances his college experience the way that it has in high school, even better. And if he skips baseball altogether to attend a major conference - D1 school that’s his best academic match, he’ll shoot for club ball.</p>

<hr>

<p>(*Not sure if you’re aware that Hall-of-Famer Tom Seaver (from my home town of Fresno, CA, BTW) had a similar story; after high school he joined the Marines and then went to a junior college to get some growth, before he finally was big enough to get a scholarship at USC.)</p>

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<p>UrsaMajoric–You ask excellent questions, and I’d love to hear the answers, too!</p>

<p>I’ve never gone through this before, but I’ll contribute what my son did–on the athletic recruiting questionnaires on each college’s website, he used the box for times, records, awards, etc. to list some of his tennis accomplishments, providing more information than just his tennis ranking. He wrote the same thing on all, and would probably use the same information on the athletic supplement. My theory is that if the form gives you an open-ended question, you won’t be penalized for writing an answer that is specific to your situation.</p>

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<p>Ursa - just wondering why taking a year off to pursue something he loves - in this case baseball - would in any way slow him down in eventually getting to the real world. There is no rush in getting to your post graduate career; however, there is no further collegiate athletic opportunity post-graduate. Gap years are universally accepted.</p>

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<p>Hi Ursa,</p>

<p>My oldest son is now a college junior, at a Div. 2 LAC. He was a standout on his high school lacrosse team, but because we live in CA, a state with NO Div. 1 lacrosse teams at all, and only a couple Div. 2 and Div. 3…playing college lacrosse seemed unlikely. It’s a comparatively new sport out here and east coast lacrosse coaches don’t need to look west of the Mississippi :slight_smile: Since it’s a spring sport, like baseball, we figured he’d need to pick a college long before his senior year lacrosse stats were even out there. S dutifully filled out the recruit questionnaires on the websites of all the colleges to which he applied, some that only had club lacrosse teams, but wasn’t holding his breath. </p>

<p>Then…Surprise! He heard from a coach in March of senior year, at this school we never thought we could afford. Coach had secretly scouted our son, and none of us even knew he was at the games. In one head-spinning week, S toured the school, met with the coach, and was offered a nice partial athletic scholarship. He took it.</p>

<p>My thought in your son’s situation: the athletic supplement to the CA doesn’t mean squat, fill it out or not, your choice. According to our S’s college coach, it’s much more important to fill out the college’s OWN recruit form. Have your kid apply to schools he wants academically. Have him go to the athletics page on the websites of those schools and fill out the recruit questionnaires there. Many sites allow players to attach video as well as list stats. The Div. 1 talent is recruited early, as others here have noted, but I can tell you that Div. 2 and 3 coaches are pretty busy filling their rosters in the spring. Good luck to your boy!</p>

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<p>SJR, thanks for the feedback. I actually went back and looked at the web site of every LAC my son is applying to, and it seems that in fact most don’t count on the athletic for anything. Many go to great lengths to discuss the arts supplement but don’t reference the athletic supplement at all. In fact, the only one that expressly referenced the athletic supplement was Haverford, which instructed that it be sent directly to the athletic department (thus making it clear that it played no role in the admissions decision). So, frankly, it sounds like my fretting is for nought, and I probably owe Fog an apology for snapping at him. I do wish the Common App site and schools would make it clearer what they’re looking for (or not) in that supplement. </p>

<p>And, yes, we’ve filled out every questionnaire and given links to videos to the coaches. The issue about the supplement is whether it will have any impact on the admissions process; the athletic department’s questionnaires don’t help that.</p>

<p>I too am in California and am discovering that lacrosse is becoming the up-and-coming sport out here, even though colleges don’t seem to have caught up. It seems to attract the small but fast kids who haven’t been playing soccer since they could walk and thus can’t compete beyond high school at it. Glad to hear it worked out so well. </p>

<p>Stemit, the issue of taking a gap year probably would be better served as a separate thread. I have no idea whether a college coach would be willing to take a new look at a kid who’s sitting a year out, or whether a college (unless it had expressly accepted the kid and then deferred admission) would find a student more attractive after a gap year unless he’d gone on a mission or joined the Peace Corp or something like that. Suffice it to say that my wife wouldn’t permit it. And, I’m not optimistic that he could find gainful (i.e., non minimum wage and mindless) employment fresh out of high school in this economy, as contrasted with dealing with finding a job after graduating from college with a degree from what hopefully is a fine college.</p>