Hey guys,
So I was wondering how the D3 recruiting process works. I’ve read that athletes must get accepted first before they can actually commit. If that’s so, then what’s the point of establishing contact with a D3 coach when they can’t necessarily help you get into that college?
Thanks
If you look up the guidelines for D3, or specifically for the NESCAC league in Div 3, you will see how recruitment works. The NESCAC site spells out its guidelines clearly. A weak academic candidate will not be admitted to NESCAC no matter how good they are at tennis, but up to two candidates who are just a tad below the school’s profile can get an ‘assist’ from the coach. Moreover, the coach’s assessment of a candidate’s potential to contribute to the team will be considered as one of many factors by the admissions office. So, yes, if you want to play on a division 3 team, it may help to contact the coach right after the end of your junior year. The coach will be trying to shape a team. If you want to play tennis in college, by all means talk to the coach.
Thanks TheGreyKing! So does that mean a D3 coach can “help” me out, or “assist” me as you have described? I m still confused because on the Johns Hopkins website, it specifically said that the coach cannot influence any college admissions or speak to the admissions officer. So that’s why I find that contacting a coach may not have as much worth. But thanks for your reply. It helped a lot.
@TheGreyKing ^ sorry, forget to tag you.
My girls were found by their state ranking. They both received emails from coaches asking them if they were hoping to play college tennis.
They were asked to maintain their grades and to apply to their colleges if interested. After app season, they were contacted again to see if they were interested in the schools. That’s about it. We were told that the coaches would have no influence in admissions.
It depends on the school and the conference within D3. Without knowing specifics about tennis recruiting, I would think that now is the time to start reaching out to coaches at a range of schools, researching rosters at your target schools to see the background and ranking in high school of their players, to see where you fit in. The conversation for most D3 sports, as far as we can see, picks up junior year and continues in intensity through fall of senior year.
My kid is playing D3 soccer, and spring junior year started contacting coaches, with film, academic and sports resume, and then met with them in spring and summer, did recruiting camps that summer, maintained contact throughout fall season with coaches where there was mutual interest, did on-campus visits to watch games, visit class, interview, meet players. By end of his fall soccer season, he had roster spot offers from a number of programs, decided on his top choice, applied and was admitted.
NESCAC has specific procedures about “tips” and “slots” for admission for recruited athletes, whereas at other D3 conferences it may not be as well defined. The key is to research programs at schools you are interested in, see if you might be competitive based on your current rankings, and reach out to coaches.
Good luck.
There is an art to D3 recruiting. Mind you, there are a few D3 schools where coaches have little to no pull. By reputation, the Claremont colleges, MIT, and Chicago come to mind. However, most D3 college coaches have sufficient pull to help a good applicant get a bump up into a great school. These threads are full of success stories where applicants were borderline (or even below the line) and athletics helped them get in to their chosen school.
It is true that D3 leagues – including the Nescac – do not permit coaches to make the final determination on whether an applicant is admitted, but that is a far cry from saying that the coach does not have pull. Therefore, when athletes say that they have “verbally committed” to a D3 school, it usually means that the athlete has agreed to apply early decision in exchange for the support of the coach during the admissions process. Depending on the school, coach and quality of the athlete, coach support can be an extreme help in admissions, especially at the elite D3 level.
Aunt Bea’s experience does not resemble the typical D3 recruiting experience. D3 recruiting is like finding a job. It is a lot of work. Since D3 schools have minimal recruiting budgets, the work falls on the athlete. The typical recruit will fill out questionnaires, send out high school resumes to coaches, reach out by email and telephone to coaches, have skills tapes made and circulated to coaches, go to several showcases or camps, make appointments to meet coaches in person, and have overnights at the colleges. The work can be frustrating and confusing, but usually ends up rewarding.
It is up to you to decide whether you want to play sports in college. If you are not recruited, it is more difficult (though not impossible) to play a varsity sport. If you do want to play a varsity sport, I would advise putting in the legwork now.
The Claremont colleges, MIT, and Chicago tennis coaches have a pull. You can easily infer this by looking at their teams ITA ranking and quality of their players. JHU coaches should have some pull too.
CCDD,
My conclusion about the Claremont Colleges come from a discussion I had with a Pomona coach in a different sport. My conclusion about MIT and Chicago comes from the legion of stories about these two schools, anecdotal to be sure. I am not saying these coaches have no admissions pull, but by reputation they have far less pull than the NESCAC with its program of tips and slots. In my experience, there is no comparison.
My son was recruited by both Claremont teams and the top NESCAC teams for tennis and is currently playing at his school of choice. For all schools mentioned, he needed to pass an academic preread, which occurred summer prior to senior year. You can be sure that these coaches strongly recruit players. The caveat is the player be academically admissible. I was specifically told that rarely his coach can bring in a player with slightly lower academic scores, but the student would need to be an outstanding player, like a five star or blue chip.
@gointhruaphase , It seems DIII schools mentioned above can successfully compete against NESCAC schools for tennis recruits. Look, for example, at the links below:
http://www.tennisrecruiting.net/article.asp?id=1953
http://www.tennisrecruiting.net/article.asp?id=1959
In 2016 Chicago is on target to bring in another recruiting class ranked #1-2 for both boys and girls. Not sure if it is related to improved finaid.
CCDD,
I suspect we are all talking about the same thing here. I am fairly familiar with NESCAC recruiting. In the NESCAC, there are tips and slots. To be sure, there are no locks. However, a slot is fairly strong admissions support. Tips also are helpful, provided the applicant is within admissions range. Let’s take an example, let’s say a coach is recruiting an impact football player. His GPA is 3.0 and his ACT is 27. He could be given a slot at a NESCAC school, say Amherst. He probably wouldn’t get into Amherst without the slot. I was told by a Claremont coach (and again, this was not tennis) that the recruit needs to be in the admissions range to get in. I am guessing this impact football player would not get into Pomona no matter what kind of impact he could have on the team. I am guessing that Pomona would be looking for a 3.8 and a 33 GPA. What the Pomona coach might do is suggest the applicant apply to Pitzer to get in and then pull him on the team (Remember Pitzer teams up with Pomona and Claremont McKenna teams up with Scripps and Mudd). But I was told by the coach, and this is confirmed by other posters here, that the Claremonts do not have a lot of admissions pull. Trust me, I do believe the Claremont schools recruit and I do believe that they would be competitive in tennis against other D3 schools. I just don’t think they vary their academic standards much for athletes (i.e., reduced coach influence).
MIT tales rebound about the limits of coach support. I am not saying that coach support doesn’t happen. But I just don’t think that 3.0 GPA ACT 27 athlete is getting into MIT. MIT has so many gifted scholars, the athlete must also pretty much be a gifted scholar. I understand that Chicago is the same. Being a D3 school, Chicago can’t give athletic scholarships, although you hear tell of folks from D3 schools that get disguised needs based aid.
Once again, not saying that these terrific schools don’t have great tennis players. I am just saying by reputation the coach support at these schools is not as persuasive with admissions as with other D3 schools such as the NESCAC.
The post above is mostly accurate, but a bit exaggerated.
If you are a great athlete, the Ivies are easier to get into than any academically elite Division 3 school. The Ivies will bend admissions to the limit permitted by the academic index to get a player they want.
In Division 3, the NESCAC coaches have a bit more pull with admissions than do the coaches at Pomona and Chicago due to the slotting system, but the difference is not nearly as big as is being suggested. You still have to be in the range, and no one is getting into Amherst with a 3.0 and a 27 ACT, even with a slot. Of course, not all of the NESCAC schools are the academic level of Amherst and Williams. A 3.0 and a 27 will get a recruit into Connecticut College or Trinity, but that is because those admission qualifications are not far outside the range of the other students at those schools.
Likewise, although the coaches at Pomona and Chicago have a bit less pull than the NESCAC coaches, they do have some pull, and recruited athletes do not need a 3.8 and a 33 to get into those schools. The 25 percent - 75 percent ACT range at Pomona is 31-34 and at Chicago is 32-25. That means that a full quarter of the entering class gets below that range. Obviously, some of those are athletes.
It also is correct that Pomona coaches will try to channel students to Pitzer if they aren’t sure they can get them into Pomona.
We probably should define here what “pull” is. I meant pull as the ability of the coach to convert a crapshoot admission process to a highly deterministic process for a desirable tennis recruit with the academic stats close to the averages of the student body. This contrasts with the “process” mentioned above when the coach just invites player to apply and then inquires if he is still interested to play if he was admitted.
I really do not know anything about recruiting of 3.0GPA/27ACT football players. Quite possibly NESCAC schools are better at that than UChicago, MIT or Claremont colleges.
I assisted a DIII swim coach with recruiting. The way it worked was he submitted a list of recruits to the admissions department, which was factored into the admissions decision. Additionally, he was allowed to select 2-3 recruits as preferred recruits, which gave them an extra bump in admissions. But even that was not going to get you in if you were not at least on the low end of grades/SAT range of the admitted students.
CCDD, agreed that we should define pull. Unfortunately, your sane definition of “coach pull” may not help out as much as it should. Bottom line, in my experience, recruiting certainly helps with the crapshoot, but never as much as you would hope. By reputation – which admittedly is not a scientific sampling – the schools I mentioned provide less in the way of comfort in that crapshoot than other schools. A recruit, however, can do certain things to increase certainty (and reduce risk) in the crapshoot (see the questions below). Most of all, recruits need to be protect themselves from coach doublespeak. Recruits need to know that coaches not only recruit, they also help admissions with increasing the numbers of applicants. So, comforting words like “I think you should apply,” or "I will support you as best I can, or “you can try out if you get accepted” may only serve to increase the crapshoot in lieu of increasing certainty.
Apropos of that, in response to vistaj, it is always recommended that recruits ask coaches the hard questions when being recruited: 1) will you support me through admissions? 2) will you submit my transcript admissions for a pre-read; 3) how many people are on your recruiting list (i.e., if it is a list of 20, that should tell you something); 4) where am I on your list; and 5) do you require recruits to try out (put differently, do you cut recruits).
Thankyou, I did not intend for my example to be a statement of what type of student would or would not be admitted to Amherst. You are correct that it was an exaggerated hypothetical to underscore the point. My point was that perhaps a 3.0, 27 ACT student will be admitted with a slot, but almost certainly would not be admitted without a slot. My experience – limited perhaps – is that coach support in the mentioned schools does not help the applicant as much as in other D3 schools.
This is all anecdotal but I am currently a tennis player and I have 1 friend who has committed to play at CMS and is going there next year and 1 friend who was waitlisted at MIT. They were both of similar tennis levels but the guy that is going to CMS had a 2050 superscored SAT and a 4.0UW 4.7W GPA. The guy that was waitlisted from MIT had a 2390 SAT taken once and similar GPA. This leads me to believe that the CMS coach has much more pull admissions wise than the MIT coach. I have also spoken with some NESCAC coaches and they told me that if I have a 32 ACT I am pretty much guaranteed acceptance. Again, this is all anecdotal but in D3, some coaches still have a decent amount of pull.
Hey guys,
Thanks for the great responses. Extremely helpful. Academic wise I think I am pretty strong. 2190 superscored sat, weighted gpa of around 4.6 to 4.7 given that i get straight A’s this junior semester. I will take the ACT to see if that would be the better option to send to schools. On a totally different note, my parents keep telling me that with my grades and tennis currently, which isn’t D1 level (low 4-star, only top 300 in nation), that I could get into the ivy leagues, along with good essays and recommendations of course. But ehhh, I don’t really believe them because looking at the profiles of ivy league students, they are very good at something specific, whether it be in sports, science, etc. I mean my tennis is pretty solid, but not enough to impress the ivies in my opinion. Let me know what you think about that as well in addition to d3 recruiting, as I am still deciding whether I will want to play college tennis.
This is a great stream. I really appreciate it. Other more “trustworthy” sites provide good information, but do not address the subtleties that you guys do.
Thanks!
You are wise to be cautious about Ivy league admissions – many of us parents grew up at a time when it wasn’t that hard to get into the Ivies or other top 20 schools so came into this process the first time around thinking that, a smart kid with good scores and activities stands a chance for acceptance. Scrolling through the trail of heartbreak and disbelief on some of the other boards here will show that it is a real disservice to tell kids nowadays that, “they are smart, good scores, sure you’ll get in wherever you want.”
My own experience, with two kids through this, is figure out the type of school you are looking for, and then build a list with safeties and matches first, then add on the reaches, since those are pretty easy to identify. Have the finances talk with your family, now. That is another area where things have changed, and most of us parents do not really appreciate that the total cost for full pay families is more than $250,000 (most schools average around $60,000 year now, and will increase over the next few years). Get your parents to run the Net Price Calculators on some schools’ websites to see if you qualify for financial aid, at all. If you don’t, but your family isn’t in a position to write $60,000 checks for four years, then you are looking at finding schools which will give you merit awards. That means, focusing on schools where your record puts you in the top of the class. Some schools don’t give merit awards at all, including the Ivy League and NESCAC (Amherst, Bowdoin etc).
Sports recruiting does affect this process, mostly in terms of timing. Figuring out where sports fits in your priorities, as well as the type of school you want, is a priority. If you want a big university, I am guessing those will largely be D1 and will have wrapped up recruiting for the Class of '17 by now, or will soon, though I admit, I have no familiarity with tennis recruiting specifically. D3s tend to pick up now, and get finalized by Sept-Oct, with ED decisions being made for the Nov 1/15 deadlines. So my advice would be, focus on how much tennis matters to you in college – is it leverage to get you into a certain type of school? Or is it so essential to your experience as a college student that you will go where you can play?
Some smaller schools are D1, including Davidson, Lafayette, Bucknell, Lehigh, Colgate. Some bigger schools are D3, such as MIT, University of Chicago, Brandeis, Emory.
Good luck, and take the opportunity to talk with your family about college finances and about how the application process has changed since their day.
Being a low four star with high stats won’t give you enough push to be recruited to Ivy’s in my opinion. My kid, with a TRN ranking of about 130, got no interest from Ivy’s. His GPA was the same as yours but test scores were higher. You may have significant EC’s besides tennis, which could change the equation. The Patriot League is a great place to look if you are trying to expand your search. We were offered money at a few schools with the combination of high stats and sports. Your scores are strong enough that you won’t be kept out of any top D3 school, but for the strong tennis schools, you want to be in the four star range to be recruited. You can PM me if you have any more questions.