I’m filling out a recruitment questionnaire for one of my target schools, and they asked asked me about my top three college preferences. Realistically, this school isn’t one of my top three. How honest should I be with this question? Would it be bad if I didn’t mention this school?
Are they asking which colleges within the university you are interested in? Engineering, arts and sciences, business, journalism?
This type of question used to appear on college apps (i.e., list the other schools to which that are applying). The likely purpose for the question was to help predict yield. We heard anecdotes about how it hurt a given applicant, but that probably was spin based on outcome. We always left the question blank.
Yeah, I think if the school isn’t one of your top 3, best to leave it blank. If you list Princeton, Stanford and Southeastern Delaware Tech, coach will see right through it.
We either left it blank, or put down what we knew were similar / competing schools. Coaches get very competitive with their cross-choice schools!
I hate when I see these questions on recruiting forms and on college applications and I think they should not be allowed!! Judge my kid on his or her merit, please, not on who else he/she is interested in. I always counsel my kids to leave the question blank, or, if it is a field that must be completed, putting undecided. I know coaches want to know who their competition is, or gauge the athlete’s true interest level, but as I’ve told my children, are the coaches sharing with us their depth chart along with player names? Recruiting is a delicate dance and I don’t see why the player should show his/her hand. Just this winter, my DD and I were on an unofficial visit to a college that was recruiting her pretty hard. We were in the office and the coach was going through some questionnaire-style questioning, which my daughter was answering. Then the coach got to the “what other schools are you looking at?” question and my daughter froze, b/c she knows that is a hot button for me. I piped up and let the coach know that I have counseled my children not to answer this question, and I told her why. I was respectful and hopefully didn’t come off as one of “those” parents. Other than that, the visit went very well and my DD had a very positive impression of the school and she and the coach had continued contact afterwards.
I’ve also seen this question asked when she is registering for a recruiting tournament. Sometimes the player profiles are posted on the website and we can see everyone’s basic information including their top three college choices!! How long would a coach from ABC College keep an athlete on his/her recruit list if ABC is not listed as one of the athlete’s top three on a recruiting tournament online form? Also, we’ve seen players with whom we are familiar, listing schools that are way out of their league skill-wise. Wishful thinking? Delusional? Trying to create buzz? I see no up side for the player.
Coaches could see three schools that are ranked just above her team and really want that recruit! I know D’s coach would go after a recruit if she saw that the student was interested in a similar type of school. D goes to a STEM school, so the coach would love it if someone listed schools like GaTech or Illinois Tech. Not everyone listing the Ivy league schools is going to get into those schools. We just had another similar type school join our conference. You bet that our coach would go after anyone who listed that school as it would indicate the students has a STEM interest, doesn’t mind a smaller school, doesn’t mind the ration of male/female to be lopsided.
Yeah, we always tell but it’s the conference and a couple Ivies-so they know we are looking too!