<p>Does Bowdoin give Athletic Tips? DD2 is slightly below average GPA and ACT scores for Bowdoin, but would be a good swimmer for them. Would that improve her chances?</p>
<p>P.S. This is not for this year, in case you are going to say that she missed the deadline.</p>
<p>I am not sure on your question regarding if athletics will help her but I do no that they are test optional. So if her ACT scores are below the profile I would recommend that she applies without sending the scores.</p>
<p>My question is, does Bowdoin support the applications of recruited athletes? </p>
<p>So, for example, if the average ACT for accepted applicants is 33 and she only has a 31, she might still have a decent chance to get in if the swim coach endorses her</p>
<p>If she’s recruited, she could have an ACT of 27 and get in. Weak rigor, 3.7 UW GPA, no problem, if they want you.</p>
<p>Yes, the hook is that big. I’ve seen it in action. They don’t have that many passes like that to give out, however, and I’m not sure how much pull swimming has, but an athlete they want with a 31 ACT should have no problem.</p>
<p>Depending on the strength of the rest of her application, 31 ACT isn’t even so far off the mark that she’d need a coaches pull to get her in, tho’ I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt.</p>
<p>Thank you for the information. </p>
<p>I am trying to develop an initial colleges list for her, and she is very interested in continuing sports. At this point, she is a good potential D3 athlete, but not quite a D1 athlete. Based on her PLAN results, her counselor is estimating her ACT in the 30-33 range. I know that is a solid ACT score, but it might not quite be up to the standards of a school like Bowdoin, so I thought I would ask the question. </p>
<p>As the time gets closer, we can contact the coach and see if they have any interest in her. </p>
<p>Thank you again.</p>
<p>Bowdoin, like all other NESCACs, has a structured system of “tips” and “protects” for recruited athletes. The system is very arcane but having the coach’s support will make a big difference for a varsity caliber athlete and can make a huge difference if the athlete is an “impact” athlete. Generally athletes are admitted through the ED process so your daughter should connect with the coaches at her target schools in the summer before her senior year.</p>
<p>Not sure this post is legal, but some NESCAC schools do look at beRecruited. Might not be a bad place to start.</p>
<p>And for the record, the schools NEVER talk about the recruiting process in general info sessions. If normal kid parents knew how much of a tip athletes (or legacies) got, there would be a riot.</p>
<p>One needs to be careful about citing exceptional examples of recruited athletes as representing the norm for athletes at Bowdoin (i.e., a “riot” would break out). In general, the athlete at Bowdoin is no different academically from other students. They have the same high grades and scores as other students. The school newspaper, the Bowdoin Orient, published an article last year with input from the school administration that said grade point averages of athletes and non-athletes at the school were essentially indistinguishable. Bowdoin also placed the highest number of athletes of any school in the NESCAC on the all-academic list this past fall. 90 fall varsity athletes from Bowdoin registered grade points of 3.35 or higher. I wouldn’t debate the point that Bowdoin and other schools like it in the NESCAC will bring in some very talented athletes with academic credentials that are not in line with the norm – that is certainly true – but the numbers are small relative to the size of the overall student body and even these students have strong records that put them in a position to be successful.</p>
<p><a href=“E”>quote</a>ven these students have strong records that put them in a position to be successful.
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<p>I know how to read a Naviance scattergram, I can guarantee you that this is an absolutely false statement in at least a few cases, and I don’t think our HS is the exception. (It’s not just Bowdoin, there are shockers in our scattergrams at other top schools as well.) And it’s not all that difficult once that student is at the school, to insure they do just fine in classes. Yes, UNC, we’re looking at you.</p>
<p>Bottom line is, if you can handle a ball, you can get in to top schools with scores, GPA, and rigor that no ordinary student can. Winning, it turns out, is more important than academic integrity, and it’s a universal disease.</p>
<p>^ How do you feel about URMs and first generation college students with well below the median credentials getting an admissions “tip”? Is that part of the same disease? Or a different disease?</p>
<p>Different disease, the disease of white guilt and political correctness. </p>
<p>I have a problem with letting in the children of URM doctors and lawyers with substandard test scores, grades, and rigor. However, I have no trouble admitting students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, regardless of race or color, who show great promise, despite their dire circumstances.</p>
<p>Give me an inner city kid who has a 29 ACT and a 3.9 GPA in the most difficult classes their run-down school has to offer, and I’ll take them every day over a prep school kid who has a 27 ACT, a 3.5 GPA, never took an AP, despite 20 on offer, but knows how to wrestle or intercept a football.</p>
<p>^No disagreement here, except with your characterization of the (and I assume we’re talking about Bowdoin) 27 ACT/3.5 GPA/no AP athlete. No doubt there are knuckle-dragging, underachieving, dunderhead athletes at a lot of schools, but I seriously doubt you’ll find any at Bowdoin. I would love to see the data. Until then, I will continue to assume that those points out in space on the scattergrams represent a broad demographic, and not just recruited athletes.</p>
<p>Those are the stats of a Stanford admit.</p>
<p>Trust me, there are the equivalent at Bowdoin. And Admissions doesn’t like it one bit, but orders are orders.</p>
<p>Ummm – that doesn’t comport with what Bowdoin coaches say about the constraints that apply to recruiting quality athletes.</p>
<p>Small school, 1800 kids, nearly 40% of which play at least one sport. Admissions rates are usually under 15%, retention rates are super high (96% return as sophomores…I assume that means that kids aren’t flunking out in droves) , the school maintains a very high reputation for rigor and routinely makes public the team gpa’s, which as ReallyOK mentioned, usually run extremely close to their “non athlete” counterparts…So I’m not sure how much ordering around the coaches are doing in the admissions wing. Ever? No doubt…but at a school this small, if large numbers of “under-worthy” kids were getting in it would become clear pretty quickly methinks.</p>
<p>What you don’t get is that a 27 ACT is not stupid - they can do the work. One only needs a 27-28 ACT to have the intelligence to become a doctor, so someone with that test score can undoubtedly do well in most undergrad programs. The problem comes when you tell ordinary kids who are academic superstars, sorry, your 3.95 UW, 12 AP, 32 ACT isn’t good enough, you wasted your time studying, we need someone who can catch a football or run fast, despite their stats - that kind of plays against the reputation these schools have as institutions of learning. </p>
<p>Give a kid a break of 1 or 2 points because they’re an athlete, fine, you can make a case for that. Start handing out admits to kids of 5 or 6 points off the median, who had no rigor, and a 3.5, and I’d say you’ve compromised your academic integrity, no matter how much you want everyone to believe you haven’t.</p>
<p>Coach (not swimming)told our kid, he could help him, but only if he applied ED. So, they must have some ability to influence admissions.</p>
<p>That’s exactly how they do it, through ED. Our HS had a kid who was recruited by Bowdoin, but he refused to commit ED, so they dropped him. </p>
<p>If you read through other schools on CC, you’ll find that a tremendous number of ED admits are athletic recruits, which explains why the admit percentages are higher, and test scores, when available, are lower than for RD. They always say that they don’t compromise during ED, what they don’t tell you is, ED is mostly for special cases like legacy and athletes, not your average scholar kid. They get rejected or deferred. </p>
<p>A word out there to next year’s crop, try ED if you want, it might just work at your school, but I and others have discovered there’s not much advantage to it unless you’re one of those special recruits. Do not get your hopes up, but take a shot, there’s always a small advantage, but it’s not nearly what it appears to be.</p>
<p>You will find useful Nescac recruiting information in the Athletic Recruits section of this Forum. I know from recent, direct experience with my daughter that Nescac coaches can exert a great deal of influence with their top recruits. They work within a fairly well defined system that caps the total number of recruits and assigns the recruits to different bands depending on academic credentials (and their are subcaps within those bands). My daughter ultimately decided to accept a slot at Yale, where she was recruited and has now been admitted for next Fall, but she came close to going to Amherst and the Amherst coach was quite clear that as long as she had 650 on each section of her SAT and maintained her 3.7 GPA with a rigorous course load, there would be no issue with admissions. While her actual GPA and SAT scores wound up be much higher than that, the stats specified by the Coach would otherwise be at the 25 percentile level for Amherst, and based on current competition for admissions, an applicant with those stats would be very unlikely to be admitted failing another type of hook (eg, legacy, URM, etc.). So in a nutshell, if you are a top recruit at a Nescac, even in a non-revenue sport, and the Coach is supporting you with a “tip” or “slot” (the nomenclature can differ) and you are willing to apply ED, you are in very, very good shape. The tragedies happen when the recruit doesn’t listen carefully to what the coach is actually saying or fails to ask the hard, direct questions, and then winds up getting left at the alter because in fact they had less Coach’s support than they believed they had.</p>