<p>Does anyone have any experience with varsity athletics and recruitment at Whitman College? If so, can you share your experience?</p>
<p>I am a parent of a Whitman athlete. So far, I can report that Whitman is a rigorous academic school with some good athletic programs that seem to be getting better. Academics clearly come first, and balancing them with a commitment to a varsity sport is not easy, but it is fun if you want to make that effort. The athletic facilities are excellent for a small LAC. As far as we can tell, there is no slack cut for athletes in the classroom and the athletes are, as a general rule, very bright and accomplished students. We cannot speak for the quality of all coaches there, but my son likes his coach quite a bit so far. There appear to be many successful student athletes who are well integrated into a very talented student body.</p>
<p>Thanks, Bogney. It’s good to hear that the athletes are integrated well into the student body, especially at a small school. I have an older son who is playing at a medium size D1 school and has found that he is very close with his whole team.</p>
<p>Can you comment more on the recruitment process? How was the coach able to see your athlete play? </p>
<p>I have heard that at some D3 schools, such as the NESCAC schools, the coach has some influence on admissions, while at other D3 schools, this doesn’t happen to be the case. How does this work at Whitman? </p>
<p>Thanks again for your help.</p>
<p>For my son, the recruitment was by videotape - the coach did not see him play in person. It was the same for the east coast LACs he applied to. He also did an overnight visit to Whitman and met the team and the coach, and hit it off with them, but I believe that interaction was purely social. The coach and some teammembers kept in touch with him by email / phone after his visit.</p>
<p>I do not know how much influence the coach has on admissions at Whitman. My impression after going through the process is that coaches at Whitman can tip the balance for otherwise qualified candidates, but not much more. Certainly, a recommendation from the coach must be a positive. I also suspect that the coach’s level of enthusiasm could make a difference with admissions, and that can depend on a lot of factors.</p>
<p>The Whitman coach supported my son but never suggested that he could “get him in.” My son fit the numbers for Whitman pretty well, so there was no need for any kind of stretch to admit him. The coach was encouraging and seemed confident that he would be admitted. My son’s timing was good because there were spots to fill from a strong graduating class of starters. </p>
<p>My son is a talented athlete, but unproven due to a rash of injuries in his last two years of high school. We looked at colleges with solid programs where he could develop, not colleges with programs where he would get lost in the shuffle. While he should contribute this year, he is a late bloomer who could be much better in four years. The team at Whitman seems perfect for him - nationally ranked in DIII and with talented players, but not an elite team stocked with four and five star recruits at every position on the roster where he might not ever find a chance to play and improve.</p>
<p>If your athlete is very accomplished now, his or her recruiting experiece may be very different. Whitman seems to be making a push for improved athletics to go along with their excellent new facilities, so athletic skill is certainly a plus. If your athlete is interested, a visit to Whitman will tell him/her a lot more about possible fit. That was the clincher for my son.</p>
<p>Sorry that I could not provide much information to assist you. I hope that helps a little. Good luck to you and yours.</p>
<p>Thanks again, Bogney. That’s exactly the kind of information I was looking for. I didn’t know if the coach exchanged information with admissions, but it sounds like he does. </p>
<p>My son is only a sophomore, but is beginning to think about what kind of schools he will like and was turned on by Whitman when I told him to look at the website. He had a great freshman year academically, but is very off this year, and if his sophomore year reflects what his junior year will be, he’ll be on the low end GPA wise (at least it’s hard to tell. His unweighted GPA will be below that of their published ‘average’ GPA, but his weighted GPA will be around their average GPA). His test scores, given his PLAN (pre-ACT), would seem to be in line. </p>
<p>I’ve looked around and it looks like the Whitman coach does frequent the college showcases he will be attending, so I think there will be a possibility for him to get seen. His club coach (who did coach college ball) thinks he would be an attractive player for a D3 school.</p>
<p>I know it’s kinda early, but I’m hoping that by us making the whole college admissions process more concrete, he will get more motivated academically.</p>
<p>I can tell you that the academics are rigorous. My son’s grades were not like high school and he worked much harder. There are a lot of very bright kids there. The better prepared your son can be from high school, the easier the adjustment to any college with serious academics will be. I know that is trite, but we just lived through it. That said, I think that he really likes it. </p>
<p>I have a daughter who will be a senior next year, and have to go through this process again. Aaaaauuuugh!</p>
<p>I can relate with respect to the whole admissions process–my oldest is a freshman who went through the whole recruiting process a couple of years ago. I’m just getting over the ups and downs of that process when I have to do it all over again with the second one. And the second one is going to be a lot more difficult, since he is not as strong academically.</p>
<p>The school my kid is at is very intense academically, so he will know what it’s like to be surrounded by smart kids in a rigorous environment. As an example, he scored in the 90 something percentile nationally on one subsection of his PLAN, but with respect to his school, the score was only in the 60 something percentile. But this year, he’s decided that he doesn’t need or want to work as hard as he did last year, and his grades are off. Don’t know if it’s a maturity thing or what, but he still has the rest of this year and next year to turn it around. </p>
<p>But if he keeps this up, a place like Whitman won’t be a good place for him anyway, even if he could get in (which may be doubtful), so he’ll have to rethink his plans for college. He wants to play soccer and go to a small school, but we aren’t wealthy people so he’ll need to get some sort of merit scholarship or significant need based aid to make it possible even if he gets in. If that doesn’t happen, then we’re looking at our big state school, which we could afford, but then he has to realize that it that doesn’t have a varsity soccer team. I worry because he really needs a small school to thrive.</p>
<p>Thanks again for your insights. I’m thinking we will try to visit schools in that area this summer–we’re not from the West Coast so it will be a hike. But as I said, he wants a small school, he liked what he saw on the website, so I’m hoping it will be worth it to go.</p>
<p>Good luck. I read that the frontal cortex develops later in boys than girls, and often not until the mid-twenties! I have observed evidence supporting that hypothosis in my own children. Then, one reads about frat boys at Columbia arrested for allegedly selling heroin. One can only imagine what their parents must be going through - so smart and so stupid at the same time. Flagging academic motivation is a bummer, but worse things do happen. </p>
<p>Some kids have the ability to engage in long term thinking and planning, some kids don’t but will at least listen to their parents, and some kids both live in the moment and compound the problem by refusing to accept their parents’ advice. All three types can end up doing very well, but the third alternative is more harrowing for the adults observing the process - as I have been. </p>
<p>The good news for your son is that the strength of the high school should help him once he gets to college. I hope that he can turn things around this year. I don’t really know the strength of the soccer team at Whitman. My son is good friends with several of the freshman players, some of whom are exceptionally bright and well qualified, but he does not play soccer and can’t comment on the quality of the team or the coach.</p>
<p>I suspect that admissions officers understand the quality of the school issues. My son was a big fish in a small pond - or perhaps a smart fish in a dumb pond. However, he was not nearly as well prepared as some of the students who were behind him in class rank, but where competing with far superior students at much more rigorous schools. His SATs were decent, his AP scores respectable, and he has athletic potential, so he was a solid prospect for schools on par with Whitman - but not a spectacular one. </p>
<p>If you have not already read it, I highly recommend the book, “Colleges that Change Lives.” That is where I found Whitman, which appeared to be an excellent fit for my son. There are some good small schools listed there that are supposed to provide top notch educations for kids who are not academic superstars. They tend to be small and rigorous (the schools that is, not necessarily the students, and certainly not my son!). My son was offered a substantial merit scholarship by one of them, but Whitman was his first choice, and was also much better in his sport. Unfortunately for me, he was not in the running for any merit scholarships at Whitman. </p>
<p>Among the schools surveyed in that book, Whitman and Reed are toward the top end academically, but Reed is probably even more rigorous academically and does not have intercollegiate sports. Whitman’s admission percentage is pretty high, but their scores / grades are on par with colleges like Bates, Colby, Haverford, and Colgate. I suspect that geography keeps Whitman from being more sought after - though it is a beautiful place once you get there. My son has already been on a couple of spectacular weekend camping trips. Whitman receives fewer applicants than other colleges with similarly talented students, but the who choose to attend Whitman seem very well qualified academically nonetheless. </p>
<p>There are a lot of other quality schools listed in the book for “B” students. My daughter is going to look at Goucher, another school touted by the author. She is a better student than my son, though not as clever at finding ways to turn B pluses into A minuses. I suspect that she will have a lower class rank thanks to a less competitive nature, and to taking AP Calculus as a jurnior (son skipped it in favor of Statistics), but that she will do just as well, if not better, on the SATs. Goucher has a program that she is very interested in, and Whitman does not so she won’t apply to Whitman. Goucher does not have the same reputaton as Whitman, but I think that she could do very well there, might be able to get some scholarship money, and should come out very well educated if that were to be her choice.</p>
<p>With colleges, I have needed to bring myself to consider, “What’s in a name?” and recognize that other colleges may smell as sweet even if they do not have the name recognition of other schools. I graduated from one of the best, and loved it there. However, it really did not make much difference to my career path. There are some great choices despite their relative obscurity. </p>
<p>I also have wanted my kids to go to small schools out of a bias holding that a better education can be had in a more intimate teaching environment. I don’t really know if that is true, but I tend to think that there is more accountability for attending class and keeping up with the homework at a minimum. The expense is extraordinary and we are merely upper middle class, not rich, so I feel your economic pain. </p>
<p>Again, good luck.</p>