I agree with everything superdomestique posted. You might want to contact Atilio Tass at Brown too.
Best of luck in your process.
Thanks a bunch for those answers! I really appreciate them, and will take them to heart. I just emailed the coaches at Stanford, and will work on contacting the other schools suggested soon.
During the college application process how did you guys handle communication between your club coach and the college coaches. Was it a supplemental letter of recommendation attached to the common application or informal communication (emails, phone calls etc…)or both?
Ours was very informal. There was never any formal or written recommendations from our club coaches to the college coaches or their admissions committees.
During our son’s junior year, after he had some initial success (top 32 finishes in JO/NACs) with the new club, we met with the head coach of our club to discuss potential colleges.
We are very fortunate that our club is very well-known and our coaches (both head and assistant) have ourstanding reputations in the fencing community. As a consequence, they have positive relationships with all the college coaches and know both the strengths and weaknesses of all the programs. Most importantly, they were aware of which programs have influence in admissions and which do not.
Our club coach’s primary concern was with our son’s grades/scores as they felt he could fence at any academically-elite program he wanted to the degree his academic record permitted.
Given our son’s interest in fencing in college, his list included the academically-elite fencing powerhouses (HYPS/Stanford/Duke), as well as the academically-elite D3 programs (JHU/Haverford/MIT). My wife and I wanted him to consider some academically-elite schools without fencing programs just in case, but no one listened to us.
In our conversation with his coaches, our son listed his college preferences and we were fortunate that his first choice happened to be the academically-elite school that our club has sent 3 fencers in the last 4 years. Our coach said he would make a call, but it was more likely he would see this coach and others at an international event in the near future so he would better be able to discuss our son’s viability at that time. As mentioned in my previous posts, my son did not fence internationally, however his club coaches have active WC schedules, so they crossed paths with other coaches regularly.
Several weeks passed, but the month before SN, our coach told us to try to make appointments with the college coaches at SN in Columbus to talk after our son’s events at SN were completed. We were able to make appointments with all but one of the coaches. This one coach (at an Ivy powerhouse) said it didn’t make sense to meet as only needed one fencer in our weapon and he already knew who he was going to take. While disappointed, we appreciated his candor.
At SN, we were fortunate that our son had two podium finishes, confirming our club coach’s support of our son’s college potential. All of our post-SN meetings went as well as could be expected and we were grateful to our club coaches in paving the way for these meetings.
As we were leaving SN (we were at the gate at the airport) our club coach called us to say that the college coach who did not meet with us called him directly to express his interest in our son as a recruit. While we do not know exactly what happened, it appears his first choice committed to another program at SN, so our son was now being considered for that single position (a real Maverick & Goose/Top Gun situation!).
That college coach did not have our contact info, so he called our club coach directly to get us the message that he wanted to recruit our son before we made any decisions. While we were not able to meet with that college coach in Columbus, we did eventually visit that program the following month and that school was on our short list when made our final decision in August.
I guess the reason I bring all this up is that anything can happen and good communication between your club coach and college coach can be very helpful.
Bumping for the Class of 2017 (current HS Juniors).
TO THE MODS: I know rehashing old threads is frowned upon, but this is arguably the best/most informed thread on the net regarding this topic.
Once again, give us some credit. 
Bumping time-sensitive threads is frowned upon, but timeless topics are not.
Hi everyone. Great information. Approximately how many letters of support for academic admission do fencing teams in the Ivies and Stanford get per year? What year in high school are fencers often recruited? Is there a list of verbal commits somewhere? Thanks!
Fortunately college fencing recruiting is still very old school.
NCAA and Ivy rules/restrictions/deadlines are still adhered to, and for the most part binding recruiting commitments are made after July 1st prior to the fencer’s senior year.
The madness of early non-binding verbal commitments and websites that track these commitments has not hit our sport yet, and I for one, hope it never does.
As has been outlined in many of the posts on this thread, official recruiting usually begins after all your fencer’s last event is over at SN before your senior year. Most college coaches attend NACs, so while they cannot officially talk to you or your fencer, if your fencer is getting results, it is noticed.
It is generally recommended that your fencer begin writing to coaches with fencing results and academic updates during their junior year (usually beginning in Nov).
With regard to how many supported positions each school has, it varies year-to-year by weapon and gender. Some of the academically elite schools occasionally don’t take anyone in a given year if they can’t find a good academic fit.
In the newly matriculated class of 2019, at the extremes Stanford took 15 new fencers (9 men/6 women) while Harvard only took 5 (1 man/4 women).
For the other academically elite schools who have posted 2015-16 rosters: Princeton took 9 (5 men/4 women), Yale took 10 (6 men/4 women), Penn took 10 (6 men/4 women), Columbia took 10 (5 men/5 women), and Duke took 12 (4 men/8 women).
For the Ivy schools, I would imagine that the majority of these recruits were supported by LLs.
Here we go again with the fencing recruit season,this is an FYI for the graduating class of 2016, WF. The class yielded 13 fencers spread among the top 8 finishers at NCAA and 11 of the top points list WF of 2012. Two have an NCAA championship, one is a two time ncaa champion, three are big fish in small ponds(Northwestern,Stanford USAFA) and five went powerhouse programs and have yet to fence in the top 24 for Ncaa’s And of those five / six only two have had a chance to showcase their talent. The others have had no coaching with weapons coaches quitting or getting fired,because they aren’t following a head coaches instructions. The Irony is PSU won the championship went the weapons coaches managed the program, the same with Columbia and we remember all the turmoil when three years ago they went to a coach manger style only Princeton has remained stable with a coaching staff…
So you really wanna fence in college?
I’ve got some questions about next steps in the college search for my high school senior.
My son is a B rated foilist. He’s currently not on the Senior or Junior points lists, but he does have a couple of nice results from SN (a 3rd Place Div III SN and a 3rd Place Div II SN) and good number of ROC medals. He was on the cadet point list his last year as a cadet.
Academically, his (honors) weighted GPA is 3.4. He had a couple of C’s his freshman year because he was getting used to a private HS after attending a large urban public middle school. Since then he’s been all A’s and B’s. This term he’s on track for straight A’s. SATs 2080.
We’ve had some good college coach conversations, but nothing committal. One school’s admissions office early read result was that he was borderline academically. They said a good senior semester might tip the scale.
Should we just take this at face value or is it too late in the season to realistically think he’s on any coaches’ radar? Or do they hold their cards close to their chest until they see how their top tier recruits land after the ED season? What influence do coaches have in admissions beyond the NCAA official Letter of Intent category of recruiting?
This might be just rhetorical questions, because he’s tenacious enough to keep the communications open with coaches. But as a parent, I was just wondering what realistic expectations should be at this time of the year.
How should he concentrate his efforts at this point?
Dear all,
Just want to ask which academically-elite schools allow admitted students ( not recruited fencers) to walk-in and join the team ? My son is A2015 epee fencer but with very little national points in Junior, so it seems impossible for him to be recruited in to the fencing teams in any academically-elite schools by now.
He hopes to join the college team to continue and facilitate his fencing practice and tournaments. Without being able to join a team, he has to find an outside club which makes his fencing less possible to continue or at least to be fully engaged in.
Here is the rank and possibility i heard. sorry for my limited knowledge, i am not sure about stanford, yale, cornell, Dartmouth and brown’s fencing team ranking
1 Columbia only the best fencer who won international medals, walk-in is impossible even for A rated fencers
3 Princeton only the best fencer who won international medals, walk-in is impossible even for A rated fencers
4 Harvard
6 Northwestern
9 Pennsylvania
10 Duke walk-in is welcomed for A rated fencers
?? Stanford
?? Yale
?? Brown
?? Cornell
?? Dartmouth
thanks you very much
sorry i forgot the add the list :
?? MIT
?? CIT.
if you know the ranking of those schools that i don’t know. I really appreciate if you can let me know.
I agree that if your son is a senior and he hasn’t had any serious recruitment discussions, it is late in the game.
That being said, if the anecdotal evidence from the 2015-16 college rosters is any indication, walk-ons do happen at some of the schools you have mentioned.
Some broad observations:
Northwestern and Cornell only have women’s varsity squads, the men’s team is club.
Dartmouth only has a club team.
Princeton, Yale and Brown appear to have some walk-ons this year.
Stanford and Duke tend to run larger rosters so the potential to walk on is always there.
MIT and CIT coaches have the reputation of having very little pull with admissions, so I would imagine the majority of their teams are probably walk-ons.
Harvard and Columbia seem to get everyone they want/need out of the recruited ranks. Both squads have relatively small fencing facilities so they tend run lean rosters.
Hope this helps. Good luck. Let us know what happens.
Penn also appears to have walk-ons this year.
thanks very much !
here is my summary for the 14 colleges, 8 of the team & 4 club have walk-on possibility :
Club only (4) :
(6) Northwester: only have women’s varsity squads, the men’s team is club
Cornell: only have women’s varsity squads, the men’s team is club
Dartmouth: only has a club team
U Chicago
Get everyone they want, lean Rosters, walk-on unlikely (2) :
(1) Columbia
(4) Harvard
Some walk on:
(3) Princeton:
(9) Pennsylvania
?? Yale
?? Brown
larger rosters so the potential to walk on
Stanford
Duke
Most are walk-ons
MIT (Div-III)
CIT (Div-III)
just curious :
what are the ranking of Yale , Brown, Duke, Stanford fencing team ? any of them are stronger than others ?
Do they also have epee rank in additional to the team rank ?
any of those clubs are strongest in Epee, or have a epee head coach ?
I think every Ivy takes walk ons for the simple reason that Ivy League rules limit the number of athletic recruits resulting in, at most, barely enough recruits to fill a roster, and often less. One injury or one recruit quits the team, and they need a walk on. Realistically a coach needs to be at least 4 deep in every weapon, but it’s impossible to get that many recruits.
When coach emails mention
(1) may be offer a recruitment spot
(2) to send to admission officers a supporting letter on your behalf.
are those the same? once the letter sent, is there any binding agreement for the fencer and also for the coach ?
thanks a lot for your kind help
Those two things are usually different, but it depends on the school and the coach. Generally speaking, an offer of a recruitment spot is stronger than a letter of support.
The athlete is only bound if they sign a letter of intent at a scholarship school or receive an ED acceptance anywhere. A school is only bound by an acceptance, although a likely letter could also be considered binding.
An offer of support from a coach and an athlete’s commitment to that coach may be mutually binding on an ethical level, but there isn’t anything “legally” binding in either direction.
thanks so much for your quick reply.
I heard that " All the ivy league schools do most of their athletic recruiting via ED. The reason is that the admission office let’s the coaches know that they can help their recruited student-athletes in ED but in RD there is very little help. A letter will still be sent, but the chances still decrease considerably in RD.
Is this totally true for fencing?
Is there a general observation how many % of RD letter / admission of fencers comparing to ED ? are those RD offers simply because of early ED offers decided to not apply ED?