<p>Some of the schools you mention are as selective as some of the Ivy League schools. I have seen these schools recruit athletes from catholic high schools. I have also seen top Ivies fall all over nationally ranked athletes with great grades from public schools. For these schools it make no difference if an athlete graduated from a catholic school with a higher GPA vs. a highly selective prep school with a somewhat lower GPA. The fact that your son really loves his school is the most important factor in deciding against a transfer.</p>
<p>I find your list of colleges interesting. For our athlete (different sport) your list represents a good example of an athletic reach (UNC), match (Duke), and safety (Vanderbilt). As others have pointed out this may not be the case for baseball. I would expand your list of schools to include more athletic safeties. I would also not be shy about encouraging your son to pursue reach schools.</p>
<p>Finally I would start working with your school and the NCAA now to resolve his eligibility issues. I would think that given time a reasonable solution could be found. The longer you wait the more difficult it may become to find a solution. I would get all decisions about this matter from the NCAA in writing.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info. As we are new to both this forum and the recruiting process, I’m not quite sure what reach, match, and safety schools are. I’m assuming a reach school is one he pretty much has little shot at, match would be a match for his athletic and academic abilities, and safety would be in case the first two categories of schools didn’t pan out.</p>
<p>Like I said previously, those are his dream schools. We define dream schools as D1 schools that are highly ranked both academically and athletically. My son always wanted to play college ball down south, so he prefers the schools from Virginia and south. I’m sure that all can and probably will change, as we have some great schools in our home state. In fact, our prep school is only about 20 mins from an Ivy and is a feeder to that school.</p>
<p>Truthfully, this NCAA eligibility thing scares me the most. All things being equal, I think a coach would pass over a kid if he had to file a waiver for eligibility. Our prep school didn’t give us any real options as far as making up the English class. They won’t let him double-up and I don’t think they offer summer classes. We are on the road all summer anyway. When I mentioned outside online courses to them, they said they would not add that course to his transcript. I’m still researching the online courses to see if it even needs to be added to his official HS transcript.</p>
<p>I am one of the parents who can testify to being careful not to make too many predictions too far ahead of time. I sent my son to a good private (with good FA) with a good reputation for sending kids to college on sports. We had a great summer after junior year with many colleges interested in my son. Then in September we literally had “a bad break” and son broke his hand badly enough to take him out for the season. His senior season. We are pleased with where he is headed now and he still has every chance of playing, but there is no doubt that the last minute injury affected his trajectory and he lost the interest of other schools who were looking at him before. Above all make sure your son has the education you want him to have. This is not advice better than that in the other posts, I just wanted to say that I am glad I chose a prep school for my son which also gave him a top notch education in case the sports did not pan out.</p>
<p>Welcome to the world of recruited athletes. Just my two cents for what it is worth.</p>
<p>All things equal, I think a college would prefer a high achieving public school student over a private, especially a public from a non-affluent area. Most colleges like to have a diverse student body and do what they can to avoid looking like a “prep school” college. That is not to say that privates are at a disadvantage. They are not. It is just what the rest of the posters said. It doesn’t matter that much where you go, but rather how you do wherever you go. Make your decision about high school based on what is right for your son, not how you think it will look to anyone or any college.</p>
<p>Tell your son to dream big, but be realistic. This is why everyone on this site says to cast a wide net. Baseball is notoriously cruel. It gobbles up shoulders and arms like it is nobody’s business. It is streaky. A coach that loves you when you are hitting may not when you are in a slump. Would your son rather sit on the bench for two years at UNC and then get cut, or be a hero playing four years at a NESCAC school (I am not saying either of these two options would or would not happen). Surely, you can assess this better than the rest of us based on where your son falls into the well-known set of objective standards (speed for 60, pop times, pitching and throwing speeds) and the awards that he has received (all league, all county, all state, all american). </p>
<p>Keep at the process and keep an open mind. If you listen closely to the college coaches (and especially what they say and don’t say when they review tapes), your son will end up slugging away at the right school for him.</p>
A top and prestigious prep school guarantees you nothing in terms of admissions at top colleges. Average and lower tier colleges would be impressed almost all the time, but Ivies and similar see many many applications from top schools, and want diversity so they reject a lot of kids from top schools.
The reverse is also true: a bad HS doesn’t mean your son can’t get into an Ivy or other top school. My best friend went to one of the worst HSs in our state, and he got into an Ivy and waitlisted to another Ivy, having taken no AP courses because his school only offered one AP course (and most HSs at that time were offering 10 or more APs).
If the money might be an issue, send him to the local Catholic school if he doesn’t mind switching. If you can afford him staying put and he wants to stay put, let him stay because it will be a disruption (but better after freshman year than later in his HS career).</p>
<p>If Ivies only considered HS quality and available courses vs. other HSs, there would be little diversity in their student populations. The rigor of your son’s courseload compared to what is available at his school is more important.</p>
<p>It’s not easy to be an admissions counselor.</p>
<p>As for baseball, get film of him in games, maybe look at a recruiting site or putting videos up on YouTube, or look for a club team that has a great college recruiting reputation. Coaches won’t find your son unless he is the best of the best of the best. But if you help him target schools he is interested in, it will help him a lot in the recruiting process.</p>