My Daughter/son fortunately has multiple offers for visits from top high academic D1 and Ivey schools and is really struggling trying to determine which ones to accept. She currently has 6 offers to visit and will likely get 1-2 more over the next couple of days. We started out with a list of about 10-12 schools that we initially contacted. We have never visited any of these schools before schools before and interaction with most of the schools has been thru brief phone calls from the coaches and with one in home visit that a coach made to us. We are in the process of getting financial pre-reads from the Ivey schools. For the D1 schools we have heard nothing about scholarships amounts and I’m told that usually only happens at the end of the OV. My child is really open to any of the schools and is struggling on should we try to visit only 5 and cut a few off the list or visit some as unofficial visit. My child feels they will only really know which one they prefer after interacting a lot with the coaches in person and meeting the teams and seeing which is the best fit. My child has always had a good close relationship with their high school coach and that is really important also. Any suggestions on how to narrow the focus on which schools to visit? 1-2 are easily within driving range so they would be easy to unofficial. We are preparing a list of questions for the our child to ask more in-depth questions to the coaches that hopefully will help but open to any other suggestions. I also assume there is no good way to try and get a feel what type of scholarship the D1 schools may offer as that could make a big difference in differentiating between some of the schools
This may sound like a simplistic answer, but my daughter had 8 offers for Official Visits. We accepted the 5 offers that were the farthest away as official visits. The schools flew her to their campuses and paid for everything during the weekend. The 3 closer schools, we drove to ourselves and paid any associated fees involved with her stay on campus.
Did the schools that you went on unofficial visits feel like they were being slighted by not getting an official visit? We are in track also
D found “fit” with the coach, teammates and academic aspect of schools very important. Can she narrow down the list? By this time, my D had already made unofficial visits to schools recruiting her. Have your D ask the coaches about financial prereads.
One caution about choosing based on coaches - they leave! My daughter really liked several coaches and all of them left their schools either before she would have started or during her freshman or sophomore years. At the school she chose, the assistant coach left after 2 years and it was pretty devastating to her because she didn’t really like the head coach that much.
There are no guarantees, so just make sure you are looking at the entire coaching staff, the methods they use, the other things about the school.
I’d think about how you’d rank your list if track wasn’t part of it. As mentioned, Coaches move around all the time. If you have a list of 6-7 schools, chances are good 1-2 of those programs will have new coaches by the time your child shows up on campus. So make sure the school is a good fit if the coach changes. That means academic, social, financial fit in addition to athletic. That might help you figure out how to divide up officials and unofficials, in addition to the suggestion about travel distance already mentioned.
Run the Net Price Calculator at the Iveys. Often HYP will be the best deals because their FA is excellent. Generally other Iveys will match HYP if the athlete is recruited by HYP. If your kid loves Dartmouth it’s a good idea to find out if an OV to Princeton is necessary to get the FA match.
Find out the attrition rate at each school. Some schools recruit a lot of track kids and wash a lot of them out. Are you counting on the scholarship $?
Talk to your kid about life after track. College is when almost all athletes transition from the sport to adulting. Ask your child which schools would they go to if she wasn’t running track.
Good luck!
I agree with twoanddone and politeperson. Had a D/S that was a top track recruit at Ivy, top academic & top D1 programs. Ended up at a HYP. The track program, coach, etc. was certainly part of the equation but the academics, academic reputation and feel for the school outside of track were the main decision factors in narrowing down the schools. And as others above have said, many of the track coaches that were recruiting D/S , including the school they ended up at, had moved on to another program after a season or two.
Also, you can get a lot of info and a good feel for the school & coaches with unofficial visits so I would do as many as you can ASAP which should help to narrow down the list.
You mention scholarships. As far as track scholarships outside of the Ivys, I would ask the coach. I am not sure of the event and level but keep in mind that in general there is not a lot of scholarship dollars for track. It is spread aorund a large team.
We have been able to schedule a few unofficial this week, so hopefully that will help narrow it down a little. Two of the Ivy schools are HYP so helpfully that will help with the financial pre-read at the other one.
Sounds like a good plan. I think it’s fine to raise the issue of finances with the potential scholarship schools. Just let the coach know finances are an issue (if they are) and you’re wondering what the timeline is for deciding on scholarships, whether something might be in the picture. You might not get an exact amount but you can learn a lot from how coaches respond to those questions. As has been mentioned, there’s not much scholarship money for track (12.5 for guys and 18 for women for the entire team, assuming a fully funded program). So it can be chopped pretty thin. If the Ivy aid looks good, that’s often a better deal for many athletes.
My son was a top track recruit, but a one event athlete. We talked finance with coaches before he went on his visit. No reason for him to fall in love with a school we couldn’t afford. His offers were all over the place, the highest being 60% of COA down to books and fees with academic money only.
He went to an OV at his first choice first, which was good, because by the time he flew home from his visit he had an email with a written offer with a 14 day response time. So he only had time to take one more visit to confirm his choice. So if you go on a visit just make sure you will still have time to take the others that may be of interest before being forced to decide.
The schools our daughter chose as Unofficials understood the reasoning for it. I actually felt it gave us more leverage because the schools knew she had more than 5 schools interested in her.