<p>My S swims D3 at Midd.
Friends swim D1 at H and other schools, D3 swimming, baseball, and Lax D1-D3.
You might want to look at the “Fess up, who is still competing” thread from last spring where many of us poured our hearts and experiences out.
At any rate, my son found he couldn’t do a science major PERSONALLY, get the grades he wanted/needed for his future goals, and swim, even with the limited NESCAC D3 schedule.
He had a 4.0 plus in IB in HS.
THey pretty much practice from 3:00 to 7:30 every day but Sunday in season, from 1 November til the end of March, when the conference meet is. There is the training trip which takes a week out of the 2 week Christmas break, and during the J term, he felt unable to do a lab course.There are “optional practices” at 6 am, and before the season starts(no coach).
D1 in every sport is all year twice a day, in some schools the coach “approves” your schedule, and there are mandatory"study halls". Most of the D1 athletes I know who are premed or science majors take summer courses(on their parent’s dime) and are planning 5 years.
The scholarship can evaporate if the athletic output doesn’t continue, so look carefully at a “full ride” from an non-aid based school.</p>
<p>To speak to the financial aid and pre-reads etc…If you haven’t already I would recommend going online and doing a FAFSA calculator or a CSS calculation to get a true idea of what your EFC will be. Top tier liberal arts colleges will meet the EFC. Then you can compare what you are quite certain to get at NESCACs and other well endowed DIII schools to what the DI and DII programs talk about offering with their combination of athletic and merit aid. No school can force you to take a financial aid package that will not work for your family, that is the one way out of an ED acceptance, so I would be wary of a FA officer who told you that you would have to accept. However, you don’t want to waste your one ED chance on a school that will ultimately not be affordable so the pre-reads are important for that reason.</p>
<p>A UNH swimmer I know was a top athlete and student, she had great success there during her four seasons and spent 5 years getting her degree because of the swimming demands. Another highly recruited young woman (the DIs you mentioned for your daughter) swam DI for two years and then stopped. She liked the program but found it so consuming that she was ready to move on and wanted to go abroad. She later told me she wished she had looked at NESCACs because she thinks she would have swum all four years and still been able to do the other things she wanted to do. You could look at the number of seniors still on the roster and what their majors are at the programs of interest.</p>
<p>If your daughter is feeling the pull to DIIIs, the NESCAC is the strongest overall DIII swim conference in the country and all of them are in your daughter’s geographic range of interest. Many of them are stronger than the New England DI or DII swim schools (not all, and not the Ivies, but many). If your EFC is a manageable amount for your family, and your daughter can get admitted to a NESCAC, then they will meet that EFC. If she is being recruited by very competitive DI programs then I am sure the NESCAC coaches would be interested and I would have her contact them as soon as possible if she has not already (she is a senior?). NESCAC coaches are generally honest about admission chances because they know their own admissions offices and don’t want to waste their time or yours. The great thing about being an athlete is that she will get pre-read feedback. If your daughter is being recruited by strong DI programs then a NESCAC coach will likely work harder and use his/her highest level of support to help her be admitted. All of the NESCAC coaches should be able to give some sort of admission feedback - even if they just say “I have no idea what my admissions office will ultimately do”. There are so many great programs in the NESCAC, I highly respect Kuster/Williams, Nichols/Amherst, Benvenuti/Conn, Solomon/Wesleyan, and Burnham/Bowdoin. OldBatesieDoc can probably speak more specifically to Rueppel/Middlebury, he is new in NE and his women did very well last year. </p>
<p>We encouraged our swimmer to do a couple of non-binding EA schools with swim programs/academics that were good fits and then to have a plan for EDI, EDII and RD. ED worked out but he was glad to have those back ups in place.</p>
<p>In a year you will be dropping her off and this will all be behind you!</p>
<p>Glad to see new comments rolling in! As summer has gone by, a few things have sorted themselves out. d is now quite sure she does not want D1. If anything, those are the schools where she knows she can get in, and several are recruiting her very diligently, so I think right now in extremis she would be okay with going to one of those. MGSM04, you put it quite well in terms of strategy–I think those are her RD options if for some reason she cannot get into her D3 choices.</p>
<p>She is going to focus on NESCAC schools because they fit into her requirements for good academics, good swimming, and close to home. She has done a successful preread at one, is waiting for preread results at a second, and is going on an unofficial visit to a third next week. I also just got a voicemail message for her from a fourth. I would hope that one of these works out. They are all fine schools, and the only hitch is whether she can get in (I.e. do the preread green lights mean much?).</p>
<p>Then we have scattered d3 programs that look good but don’t quite fall within the parameters, including that one oddball program where they asked for scores/grades but then said they had no prereads and that ED means you have to take the financial aid package you get. D reluctantly put that one in the RD pile. If the ED options don’t work out, she will apply RD and see what kind of aid she gets. Oh, and the Ivies…she is in the middle of a preread with one and talking to another, and strangely, I think these are also going into the RD pile. They are D1 but would have decent aid, so she will consider them but they are not her top choices.</p>
<p>Whew! All very complicated! OldBatesiedoc, thanks for the scoop on swimming @ Midd…D is not considering Midd although we know 2 swimmers headed there this fall…basically we are in central NH and D decided not to head further inland LOL…but your comments on the swim life were very useful. Mainly, with a schedule like that, D was heartened that D3 swimming is still a lot of swimming…she still hopes to get faster and get to NCAA’s, so it’s good to know that NESCAC swimming is serious stuff.</p>
<p>So Hobbiton,we live near each other in CCland, anyway…</p>
<p>A favorable pre-read is good, but in the NESCAC, you need to ask if your D is getting a “slot” or a “tip”. There is no LL.
The NESCAC schools have agreed among themselves to limit the number of athletes that get full admissions support from coaches(all fin aid is need-based, so not financial support). Each sport has a certain number. these are the “slots”.
When my S was applying the Amherst Swim Coach told me he had 4 slots for swimmers total…So I assume the number is similar for other NESCAC schools. he also very helpfully told me he wouldn’t give my son a “slot”’ and he didn’t think his test scores(ACT 31)were good enough for a “tip” to get him in.
80% of recruited athletes who apply ED to NESCAC schools get in. That means 20% do not. Don’t be one of them.
Pin the coach down before pushing “send” on that ED application.</p>
<p>Haha yes, we are right next door to Vt! Thanks so very much for your comments, we are indeed cautious and a little worried about the 80%/20% figure. D spoke to Amherst and will visit prob this week…Bowdoin said they have points and not slots that the coach can spread out among many athletes, and Tufts sounded like they had slots. Lots of questions to ask…</p>