Hi, I was wondering my chances to get in any D3 or possibly D2 college with my swimming times.
My main stroke is the freestyle and the breaststroke.
100SCY Free is around 52 seconds
100SCY Breast is around 1 min and 15 seconds.
Since D3 colleges don’t only look at athleticism, my academic side is, to me, above average.
Academics:
SAT: 1500
GPA: 3.7UW, 3.8UW(uc scale)
APs:
AP World History - 3
AP Seminar - 3
AP CSP - 5
AP CSA - 5
AP English Language and Composition - 5
AP Research - 4
AP Macroeconomics - 5
AP Physics C Mechanics - 4
AP Calculus BC - 5
SAT Subject Test: Math II: 780
EC: (i have more ecs but these are the only ones related to swimming)
Varsity Swimming Captain (all throughout highschool)
Have you set up an account at https://www.collegeswimming.com/?
You could have a free account or pay an one time fee of $20 for a varsity account, it will answer whether your swim time is competitive for D3/2 schools.
If you are male, and is a junior/senior, those two times are not competitive for MIT, Williams, or Chicago. if you are female, 100-free time is competitive. You can find these info for the schools you are interested in all there, and much more.
As noted above collegeswimming.com will be a good resource for you and will allow you to see the schools/programs where your times would be competitive, and see the profiles of other recruits.
Fill out the online recruiting questionnaires. Then email the coaches introducing yourself, your academics, swimming stats, and go from there. You will find that coaches have varying levels of influence in their school’s admission process.
If you are trying to get an admissions bump through athletics, it is whether the coach wants to recruit you as an athlete first. If he/she does, then you have to qualify academically for that school. If you are not a recruited athlete, sports are just another EC.
Caltech coaches have limited pull even if you are a recruit. S had equivalent test scores, much better GPA and was a top rated recruit by the coach. He and the AD told him 50/50 with full support. Don’t know coach’s pull at JHU or CMU for swimming, but in any event they have to want you as an athlete first.
At Caltech, you can’t get any help from the coach unless you meet a certain academic criteria first. If you meet that threshhold, you’d probably want a time in the top 3 for the team. For the 100 free, 50.00 would have put you 8th on the team last year.
You need to do your research at collegeswimming.com and schools’ websites to find out where you might fit swimming wise that also fits you academically, socially, geographically, etc.
There are so many schools that we can’t list them. Here is what you need to do:
go to the website collegeswimming.com
search for schools you are interested in and check out the times. Look at their top swimmers in each event and what it takes to score points at their conference championship.
go to the school's swimming website and fill out the recruiting questionnaire.
email the coach a brief bio.
Since you are a junior you still have time to drop a bit and get on a team’s radar.
You might want to pick a couple conferences, based loosely on geography and academic standards, and go look at the conference meet results from the last year or three. It’ll show you the quality of the programs, the numbers it’ll take to succeed and maybe provide a name or two of schools you haven’t considered before. There are a lot of swimming rosters in D3 at all levels of performance and academic challenge, so you can certainly find somewhere to swim. Be open to non-famous names so you get the full set of options available.
I went to Hopkins and the swimming team is generally in the top 5 in division 3. You would have to be a good swimmer for them to be interested. It isn’t at all like MIT or Caltech though. Recruited athletes get a big preference.
CMU is almost as hard to get into as an Ivy for CS, but probably it is much easier if you are a recruited athlete.
Your academics looks pretty good. I don’t know anything about it, but the times don’t look in range. If no college coach has contacted you, it doesn’t look good. I assume you could call the athletic department at some D3 school and ask to speak to the swimming coach. They are probably interested in recruits and should give you information on what they are looking for.
If you are recruitable, I would look at some other schools. Those 3 would all be difficult to get into for you, for different reasons.
Your current times are not recruitable for JHU (#4 in NCAA D3), CMU (#9???), they are not competitive enough for CalTech (which is NOT strong in swimming) either. Swimming is getting very competitive at all levels, including highly selective colleges.
The somewhat good news is, you still have this short course season to drop some time and become more competitive. No matter what people say, being a recruited athlete will give you a leg up, some big, some small (like at CalTech), but the help is meaningful, you just have to be competitive enough.
And for CalTech, you need to have subject tests (Math and a science), stronger SAT, and some STEM experience.
Lots of boys drop time in their junior/senior years as that’s when their body start to grow. Focus on swimming/dryland, check out the collegeswimming website, and add more schools that are match/safety. Good luck.