Hi everyone!
I was wondering if trying to get recruited into Caltech’s D3 Women’s water polo team might help me even with my less competitive resume.
I want to major in Biology and be in the Pre-med Program.
My Freshman GPA : UW 4.0 / W 4.17
Sophomore GPA- UW 4.0 / W 4.5
Junior GPA: UW 3.66 / W 4.5
Senior GPA : around UW 3.8 / W 4.66-4.7
My SAT scores - 1450/1600
going to take the sat math level 2 and bio subject tests soon
Any tips to improve my resume and how to make sure the coach notices me would be great!!
CalTech gives no admission help to athletes. Being a woman may help more, having a good EC in water polo may help.
Are you already registered for the December 3 subject tests?
As what twoinanddone said, no help. Similar to MIT. That is the reason why I stopped communication/told off the Caltech coach because I found out about the amount of support/pull the coach/athletics have regarding admissions.
CalTech may not be a great choice for premed. GPA is essential for med school admissions.
They don’t recruit. They don’t need to.
The obviously DO need to recruit if they want winning teams. Caltech and MIT and some other schools choose not to recruit athletes.
The school is not that big, both physically and statistically. Walking the campus, you can feel that.
The focus is definitely not on sports teams; they just choose to have fun. They have enough awards in other areas that clearly makes them draw huge numbers of student applicants.
@twoinanddone – Maybe not relevant to this thread, but I did want to gently correct your post #7 above.
Our neighbor’s son across the street (and my S14’s best friend) is a basketball recruit at MIT. He’s a bright kid, hard worker, and good student, but there’s no question in anyone’s mind that he would not be there if he had not been actively courted and recruited by the basketball coach. Like all D3 athletic recruits, the coach couldn’t “make any promises”, but because MIT is non-binding early action, no alternatives were sacrificed in going through the recruiting process there.
I once heard a story that the way Caltech recruits for baseball is the coach walks around the freshman housing and asks if anyone has played little league. Based on that tale, one could conclude that athletic recruiting won’t give much of a bump with admissions. There is, however, only one way to find out for sure. Send the water polo coach a copy of your unofficial transcript and board scores and ask.
What I was responding to was Aunt Bea’s statement that CalTech and such schools have no need to recruit, i.e., that they have plenty of people standing in line to get in without recruiting. CalTech chooses not to recruit for athletes, and their teams show that (very few wins in any sport). CalTech would need to recruit if it wanted to build teams. It doesn’t. MIT doesn’t give any admissions help. It may for baseball, and I believe does for rowing, but for other sports the fact that the coach wants you gives no admissions help. That’s the party line but whether they follow it is up to MIT. MIT certainly puts more money into its athletic department than CalTech and I’m sure MIT attracts some athletes because the teams are competitive.
We did have one girl from our school ‘sign’ to play at MIT (there is no commitment letter to sign for a D3 school, but our school allowed them to participate in the signing ceremony). I don’t think she received any admissions help but just wanted to go to MIT and play.
Caltech does not recruit because having “winning” athletic teams is not important to the mission of the University.
It is first, and last, a University that cares about STEM. If an athletic team happens to win a game occasionally, like the men’s basketball team did a few years ago, then that is cause for a brief celebration, cause the odds are so stacked against them. And they DO have plenty of students sending in applications, regardless of the lack of winning athletic records.
There are PLENTY of colleges where scholar- athletes can apply and play on winning teams.
I have a friend that played women’s water polo at Cal Tech. The requirement to join the team was that you be able to tread water well enough to not drown.
" Like all D3 athletic recruits, the coach couldn’t “make any promises”, but because MIT is non-binding early action, no alternatives were sacrificed in going through the recruiting process there."
The recruiting process at MIT and Caltech is not like the vast majority of other D3 schools. Other highly selective D3 schools conduct pre-reads, and the coaches are given slots by admissions.
Even though MIT has early action, an athlete definitely does make a sacrifice by going through the recruiting process there - that athlete has given up a guaranteed admittance at another school in order to roll the dice with MIT. There has been more than one post on CC where a student gave up a LL to an Ivy only to be rejected by MIT. By the time the EA deferral/rejection comes in December, that LL is no longer on the table because it has been accepted by another recruit.