<p>My D is interested in participating in varsity athletics in college. She has been approached by coaches from colleges of interest. However, in D3, there are no letters of intent to ensure that if you go to a college you will make the team. I would appreciate any experiences that female athletes (or their parents) have had in being recruited for D3. Also, can anyone recommend schools with good women's athletics in the Mid-Atlantic region?</p>
<p>nvdad, </p>
<p>Been there; did this. Just racing to a meeting but will reply later.</p>
<p>SBMom will give you good information. A lot depends on your daughter's academic strengths AND on her particular sport. Williams is a little further north, but has strong academics and athletics. The coaches in my son's sport seemed very honest and straight-forward. There is such a range of DIII schools- NYU and Chicago are also DIII.</p>
<p>My daughter is a very good -- but not outstanding -- student. She has an A- average from an academically strong private high school. She took to two AP's as a junior (chemistry and English language) and got 4's on the exams. She has 4 AP's this year (English literature, physics, economics, and statistics) plus standard calculus and is getting all A's for the first semester. Her SAT score is 1350 (M+V) and she has a 31 on the ACT. My daughter plans to major in economics -- or at least thinks that what she will major in.</p>
<p>She plays both basketball and volleyball. She has been on varsity every year. She has been a basketball starter for two years and a volleyball starter for four years. While basketball has been her main sport (she's played year round since 7th grade), she's won more honors in volleyball (MVP, All-Region, All-State).</p>
<p>While I had zero interest in sports as a young person, my daughter's view of herself is as a scholar-athlete. If she finds herself at a school where she doesn't make at least one team, I doubt that she'll stay more than one semester before transferring. We'd support her in that but would just as soon make the right choice the first time. We just don't have enough experience in this to help her ask the right questions and give her the information she needs to make the right decisions.</p>
<p>Curmudgeon's daughter is a basketball player and talked to a number of DIII and DI coaches. You might want to send him a PM and get his read on things. Your daughter is a strong academic candidate (this forum might make you think otherwise, but, trust me, she is strong). I assume she has done her applications- what are the coaches telling you? Has she been strongly recruited by one or more schools? Feel free to send me a PM if you want. I just went through the process with my son, who wound up choosing to apply ED to Penn, who recruited him as a runner.</p>
<p>nvdad,</p>
<p>My D was a similar student and had the same SAT level. The good news is she is "over the bar" of recruitability at all the most academic schools; these top schools like to see a 1300+ if possible. My D was a one sport athlete, but had been 4-year varsity, all league for 3 years, & her team went to their Division championship twice with one win. Like your D, my D loved the athletics, and very much wanted to continue in college. She is now playing for an academic D3 and loving it.</p>
<p>One important question: is your D a senior or a junior? I assume a junior?</p>
<p>Here is what I would suggest.</p>
<ol>
<li> RESEARCH HER ATHLETIC LEVEL Talk to your local coaches (whether HS level or college level) and see if they can help you determine your D's athletic level regarding colleges. You want to know what sort of college team would view her as a big asset. There is an immense range within D3. (We went to a regional D3 tourney in her sport and saw kids who would not make JV at my D's HS as well as kids who were arguably qualified to play D1.) NAIA and D2 can be rough equivalents of D3 by the way. You can also go see tournaments and get a good idea about which teams you D would be able to play for.</li>
</ol>
<p>Our club pro used to coach D1 and he gave his opinion. I also had my D play with a local college coach (NAIA) who assessed her ability. They told me the local teams they felt she could play for. Then I looked up those teams and found out where they were ranked nationally, and what teams were ranked in that tier from other regions (we really wanted her to have the experience of going far from home). In this way I was able to extrapolate which teams elsewhere would be good athletic matches for her.</p>
<p>One more idea, you could go to the regional mid atlantic D3 championship tourney in each sport, to get a good look at all the teams.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>RESEARCH FIT Put aside the sport altogether and look for colleges your D would enjoy if she was injured and could not play. Fit should be academic quality, personality, region, size of school, etc. Try to make this a large list (for example, include other regions than mid atlantic & include lower-tier schools) as it will be narrowed down re the sports and re academics later. </p></li>
<li><p>SORT THE LISTS: Make a list of schools that are athletically appropriate, ranging from schools where she'd be a bonafide star to schools where she'd be a qualified starter. Do the same sorting academically-- list schools she's more than qualified to attend disregarding the sport, to schools that would be 'reaches' but where she is basically somewhere in median range for grades and SATs.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Compare the two lists. Ideally there will be a couple of schools where she is a very strong applicant (both academically and athletically)-- these will be safer bet schools for you. At the other end of the spectrum, there may be schools where she is "qualified" but not a star in either department. Since playing is important I would suggest you toss out schools where she is unlikely to start.</p>
<ol>
<li> CONSIDER ED If you do not qualify for financial aid and your D is able to have a clear favorite by the end of the sorting process with a coach that is backing her application in STRONG terms, you will probably be asked to apply ED. Also, try to find an EA school for an early admission in hand to take pressure off.</li>
</ol>
<p>My daughter's desire was first to attend a great academic school that was a good all-around fit, using the sport to boost her chances, and second, to play her sport and start, rather than ride the bench. Thus our approach was to shoot a little lower athletically and hope it would assist her admission to an academic reach. </p>
<p>For example, Amherst is a school that my D would have liked very much but it is a national powerhouse in her sport; we did not feel that she'd start or be an asset to that team and it would also have been an academic reach. So Amherst was not on her final list. Instead we looked for schools from her fit list that were academically very strong and athletically relatively weaker.</p>
<p>One caveat is that if you shoot TOO low athletically, there can be the problem of a team/coach/school that just does not value recruiting very much-- which explains why the team is not very good.</p>
<p>i would say the ideal level for a kid like yours is a strong academic D-3 (and you can get a bunch of these schools by going to the CC "top LAC" list). Go to the ncaa website and search for you D's sports and the team rankings, both national and regional.</p>
<p>IF your D is a senior this advice is mostly too late but I know certain schools will extend deadlines for admission, and others have not yet hit deadlines. </p>
<p>Good luck in the process!</p>
<p>Unfortunately, my D is a senior. We did many of this things you suggested when she was a junior. The advice you gave is excellent and included a couple things I wish we had done. [Note: There is still time for my daughter to get a few more Apps out.]</p>
<p>Currently, my D is being actively recruited by 4 DIII schools. She had walk-on invitations from three DI schools (Vanderbilt, George Washington, and Elon) but felt that, if she accepted them, she might find herself on the practice squad for four years.</p>
<p>Our problem is that the coaches come to watch her play, often more than once, and say nice general things. However, when we ask specific questions, the answers are of the form "no coach can answer that in advance" followed by a pleasing generality (it could be they're getting ready for their Supreme Court confirmation hearings). We can take bad news, if a coach doesn't want my D then she's happy to look elsewhere. She isn't trying to get into HYP and there seem to be hundreds of very nice LACs one level down.</p>
<p>What we really want to avoid is finding ourselves in a situation where my D selects a school and then finds herself cut at tryouts. There must questions to ask, things to learn about the school/team, etc. to avoid getting into such a predicament.</p>
<p>SBmom: Thank you for all your great posts! I even printed one out last Spring concerning contacting coaches. I have a couple of other questions about that:
Is there any benefit to contacting coaches sooner rather than later?
Should we fill out the recruiting forms now or just a couple of weeks before we visit?
Should we ask to meet the coach when we make college visits this Spring?</p>
<p>My D is a junior field hockey player. She is looking primarily at DIII schools for the academics.</p>
<p>nvdad: check out NCAA.org for lists of schools in the various divisions.There are a lot of DIII choices in the Mid-Atlantic. You can search by sport.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Our problem is that the coaches come to watch her play, often more than once, and say nice general things.
[/quote]
if these are DIII coaches their attending a game is a pretty big clue ... they most likely do not have very big recruiting staffs or budgets ... and watching games in person (especially if it involves travel) is a strong sign of interest.</p>
<p>mkl,
The sooner the better-- as coaches slots can begin to "fill up" with local kids that thay can keep their eyes on easily. Get on the radar ASAP. Same with meeting coach during spring trip.</p>
<p>nv,
See if your D can do a few overnight visits at the schools that really interest her. When staying over, she can (a) watch the level of play (b) probe about the coach and his/her integrity (c) find out if recruits are put through a tryout later or if they will all play.</p>
<p>If you can add a few schools I will have a quick peek at my resources and see if I can make suggestions.</p>
<p>nvdad:</p>
<p>You are way ahead of me! Is there a way you can find schools that have not filled all their slots? Would coaches give you this info, to help you narrow your search?</p>
<p>We're looking at colleges like Gettysburg, Dickinson, Mary Washington, and Washington and Lee. If possible, we'd like to stay within a 3 hour driving distance from Washington, DC.</p>
<p>MLK: To make my D's draft list of colleges, we used search engines to find schools in the right academic range. We then looked at the school web-pages to see how many seniors will be leaving and what positions they play. We also looked a prior year rosters to see how many underclassmen tend to return. We wound up with a list that was still too long but it convinced us that there could be many happy choices for my D. However, we realize that there are poor choices on that list too -- we just can't figure out which ones!</p>
<p>nvdad,</p>
<p>Some of the schools I came up with repeat your choices. Maybe you need to expand your search into other regions?</p>
<p>Looking at the ncaa rankings by Division, I scanned for top academic schools in mid atlantic that were competitive but not dominant in their divisions. (So they value the sport and compete but do not necessarily have their pick of the regions best players.)</p>
<p>Washington & Lee #6 in their division
Carnegie Mellon #5
Gettysburg #7 in division</p>
<p>Other ideas:
Women's Colleges or former Women's colleges: Bryn Mawr or Goucher would be schools likely to admit your D even without volleyball.</p>
<p>I do not think it is too late to throw in a few more apps, because in my experience my D's coach was fighting down to the waitlist to get his picks admitted. Some coach out there has been left at the altar either by the kid renegging or the admission not coming through. </p>
<p>I agree if your D has coaches coming to watch her, then she is likely to be a very strong prospect. If, on the other hand, they were there to see numerous other players (showcase event) it is hard to know.</p>
<p>SBmom: Thanks for the good information. I've also scanned some of your old posts and found them helpful.</p>
<p>Bryn Mawr was a school she was interested in but we felt it was too expensive for us since there is no merit aid. We live in a high cost of living area and, while salaries are high, everything is expensive. We saved for years for college but never imagined some of the current tuition levels.</p>
<p>nvdad, just so I get my parameters straight before diving in. A a 1350 A- student all state recruited athlete (I'm assuming in her private school division?) from an academically strong private desires D3 merit aid granting LAC with deadlines that haven't passed for admission or merit aid, primarily one that is re-loading. Oh, yeah. And strongly prefers Mid Atlantic. Hmmmm. </p>
<p>I'm just throwing stuff out here to see if anything sticks. (* means my D has applied.)</p>
<p>First thought small uni - Case* plays competitive ball, needs post players. I know that's not Mid-Atlantic but hey, I'm trying. </p>
<p>I'd probably look at the Pa. and Ohio Lac's to see who has cash left to dole out- OWU, Wooster, Denison, Juniata, Allegheney, Washington and Jefferson, Ursinus and then look further Midwest to Hanover* and DePauw in Indiana. Maybe Randolph-Macon, the coed one, in Va.. College of New Jersey plays good ball, very reasonably priced with merit. </p>
<p>Previous posters are right- if you'll move your map south or west you'll do much better. Centre<em>, Rhodes</em>, Sewanee, Hendrix<em>, Millsaps</em>, Oglethorpe,Southwestern ,and (recent D3 champ) Trinity are all in a really fun conference (with DePauw) . LOL. Agnes Scott and Austin College would love her.</p>
<p>As to your other Q's , my D has great conversations with 7 college coaches only one of which has seen her play. OTOH, she has seen 5 of them play and all have seen her on multiple films (we are 500 miles away from the closest school on her list). She has played against some of the girls on some of the teams , and has spent a little time with a whole team on an overnight that had a pickup game of ball where D held her own with their varsity. She feels she can make the teams and compete for some PT as a freshman and that's all she's asking for (and all I think any of them get). Our girls can pretty much scope out the competition (if I'm understanding the level your girl is at ) and most likely can figure out the chances. </p>
<p>If you are looking for them to say, "She'll start as a freshman." I don't think you are going to get that. Hopefully one or two of those are not too off-base. Good-luck.</p>
<p>I did a search engine and it mentioned all our choices and added Muhlenberg, Franklin and Marshall, Bard, Skidmore, and St. Mary's of Md (to the mid atlantics). I don't know about deadlines but I assume they are all near or passed. Good luck.</p>
<p>NESCAC and University Athletic Association colleges are options (some were mentioned above). </p>
<p><a href="http://www.d3hoops%5B/url%5D">www.d3hoops</a> is a resource, but it mainly addresses the competitive colleges(hoopwise)...</p>
<p>You did not mention, but I assume your daughter is being recruited in volleyball (all-state players are hard to come by), not basketball. Did I get the impression that she prefers basketball? College DIII sports are a huge time commitment, so it is not likely she'll be able to play both. The adcoms, of course, will be impressed that your daughter has the passion and energy to excell at two hs sports, but the individual college coach is mostly just concerned with his own team (i.e rather recruit a top-flight one-sport player than a player just very-good at two sports.) It sounds like your daughter would like to be at a competitive DIII - that usually implies some off-season, time-consuming workouts.
It's probably reasonable to examine the current D-III roster and the departing seniors, but I wouldn't get too hung up on trying to overanalyze chances on playing time. Injuries, unanticipated coaching changes, disaffected older players leaving abruptly, and most importantly and unpredictably a good recruiting class right behind your D can change things dramatically.
You may take it as a sign of conservative integrity, but IMO it's not a great sign when the coach is not effusively enthusiastic and seems diffident and non-committal. However, I agree that D-III coaches coming to games just to see your D play is a big clue, make contact with them ASAP! Best of luck, your daughter seems very competitive for many good D-IIIs, both athletically & academically.</p>
<p>Thanks to everyone for all the valuable input. I'm going to check the application dates at the schools mentioned and suggest those that are still open to my D.</p>