<p>if you haven’t already done so. Sherpa’s posts #5 and #12 should answer most of your procedural questions.</p>
<p>With a ‘B’ and no points, I doubt you would be recruited by Harvard, or any of the Ivy’s for that matter. You could probably be a walk on and be on the team, after being admitted on other merits. My ‘B’ son only contacted one Ivy coach and we never got a response and we were not surprised. </p>
<p>For info on the caliber of kids recruited at various schools, see </p>
<p>Thanks for the reply. Another question, does potential have any bearing? I’m a B, but I got there in my 1 1/2 years of fencing with no coach or formal training. Would that be worth mentioning to a coach?</p>
<p>I agree with ihs76; a unranked B is recruitable, but probably not at Harvard.
Ironically, that’s probably a disadvantage. College coaches like their recruits to be well schooled in the fundamentals. Better to let your B11 speak for itself than to point out that you’re relatively untrained. As it is, epee has a reputation of producing a lot of random results. An epee “B”, especially if earned in a local tournament by a untrained relative beginner, might be discounted as a fluke result.</p>
<p>With your academic credentials and your B11, you’ll have a lot of options. Duke, Vassar, Haverford, maybe even Penn come to mind, add Cornell if you’re a girl.</p>
<p>^^ Hey, don’t forget Johns Hopkins too :D. You would definitely be recruitable there.</p>
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<p>This was my son’s case also. We did tell the coaches so they knew what to expect. Truth in advertising, so to speak. In fact, his college coach made it clear at the beginning of his freshman season that they would be spending the year working on his mechanics and form, and that it would take at least a year for him to lose his bad habits. He is at school this summer doing more work with it. Fact is, you can become a ‘B’ with some luck, talent and athleticism, but to get beyond that, you need things that only a coach can provide.</p>
<p>Being at a school with an average team, son is one of the top fencers and the coach feels it’s worth his while to invest in my son. If he was at a top fencing school, I doubt he would get much attention from the coach at all. So depending on where you want to go with your fencing, that would be another aspect to consider.</p>
<p>No, were in the Midwest and don’t have access to the best coaching persay, but do have access to the best programs having fenced/attended campus at ND/OSU/PSU and Northwestern. It doesn’t hurt having won a SN championship and placing in a few NAC’s. It’s just interesting to see how a non-revenue sport approaches the process versus that of revenue sport and what makes our situation a little different is that we recorded the 4th fastest 200 meter high school time in the country last year and the track and field recruiting is more aggressive, in your face and laudatory.</p>
<p>Fencing recruiting isn’t aggresssive at all. I heard it put this way: “You have to recruit yourself.” One fairly highly ranked USFA fencer told me he expected to be bombarded by interested coaches on or around July 1 after junior year, but only heard from one, even though he’d filled out the online questionaires and sent athletic/academic resumes to a lot of coaches.</p>
<p>You need to be proactive.</p>
<p>A SN gold is great. I’m guessing D2 or D3? D2 would be awesome.</p>
<p>BTW, ihs76 assumed Utah because there’s a strong club there called Schoolhouse Fencing.</p>
<p>I wanted to see if I could get a little “evaluation” as well.
I am in the IB program with straight As. I have several ECs and a few interesting hooks as well, but I want to have my fencing evaluated. Right now I am a male, B rated epee fencer, who is about to take off with my great new coach (he has trained top tier fencers). I am still a freshman in high school with a long way to go. Any tips on what I should do from here? How can I attract attention of different colleges?</p>
<p>Goal Schools: Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, U Penn, Dartmouth, and a few others.</p>
<p>If you want to be recuitable, your first priority should be to maintain a strong academic profile. As for your fencing, you’re on a good path. A “B” as a freshman is good. That alone can get you recruited at some schools. For the schools on your list, you should aim to be at least on the junior NRPS, preferably have senior points.</p>
<p>Hm…I didn’t realize. Didn’t they have it at one point?</p>
<p>Anyway, thank you very much for the information. Is there are specific area on the NRPS that I should be on? I had been imagining for it to be at least top 20.</p>
<p>One of my good friends, currently a Princeton fencer, suggested that the same thing! Thanks for the advice!</p>
<p>I don’t know about Dartmouth, except that they haven’t had it for at least 5 years. As for the NRPS, the higher the better. Top 5 in U20 (with strong academics) can probably write their own ticket.</p>
<p>Yes, that makes perfect sense. However, what happens to those who aren’t top 5? Does anyone NOT on the top 5 have a fair chance at getting recruited for fencing?</p>
Absolutely. Kids who aren’t on the NPRS at all can be recruited, depending on their academic qualifications, fencing ability, and the college. Not at HYPS though.</p>
<p>On another site Fencing.net the yearly recruits for fencing are compile in a PDF format by school, gender and weapon. That should give you a good indicator of who went where and the weapon. I think it list fencers going to fencing and non-fencing schools(club) so it might not be a pure admission indicator site, but still it’s useful.</p>
<p>I have 2 sons (15yr, 13yr) whom recently started fencing (3 months) but I believe they started way too late to have any impact for college admissions. My sophomore is not on a varsity team at school and his GPA is slightly above 3.2 after freshman year and hopefully will bring it up to 3.5 by end of sophomore year. He is a member of a few clubs at school and has gone on several missions trips in the last 3 years. He started fencing to become “more attractive” to some of the colleges that he normally wouldn’t get into without Fencing but with his late start, I don’t even know if it’s going to even matter whether he fences or not. He enjoys it but it is stressful and time consuming. He is already competing b/c of his late start and will be at the DIVIII Nationals in Ohio this March. We don’t expect him to do all that well but at least he is competing and getting exposure to it. My question is whether all the money, time, and effort is worth it. I spend approx $1000 per month on lessons, classes, equipment, tournament fees, etc on the 2 boys. My 13yr is doing Foil so it requires 2 private lessons and 3 classes per week. My 15yr is doing Epee and attends 3 classes per month. </p>
<p>He is very interested in attending Duke, UNC (Chapel Hill) and Johns Hopkins. Are these schools acheivable? He will have only 2.5 yrs of fencing experience by his first part of senior year. I am so unsure whether all this time and money is worth it. Any feedback is greatly appreciated</p>
<p>Just to clarify, Dartmouth does have a fencing club. I’m not sure if the club fields a team at any competitions, but they do practice several times a week. I have a former student there now, and she seems to be enjoying it quite a bit.</p>
<p>Your kids can’t be fencing just to be attractive to colleges. They need to fence because they want to fence, not because it will get them into college. If they don’t have a passion for it, they will not become good enough, fast enough, to be recruitable. </p>
<p>With good coaching, they probably can be good enough to be recruited at some of the colleges you mentioned within your time frame, but only if they love fencing <em>and</em> have natural talent for the sport.</p>
<p>It’s not about getting into college but doing what you want to do. And to continue to fence in college, the time commitment, it takes dedication and passion.</p>
<p>My son started halfway through freshman year in HS but knew very quickly that it was the right sport for him and that the sport fit him, physically and mentally. He pushed us to keep him fencing and if we said no, would have been quite upset with us. We had no idea about college recruitability until just before Sr year of HS. His development was slowed by lack of any classes/coaches within 500 miles :D</p>