I can speak to my son’s academic PR that went before AO. They required school profile, GPA, Subject tests, ACT or SAT (my son did both and submitted both. Only took each test once and scored extreme well) EC, HS transcript (which contained AP scores) and sample essay. Mind you all of this is just a pre-read and if candidate is given green light, they then need to fill out a standard application. Rigor of classes is very much reviewed. My son’s school does not do class rank (mid-sized Parochial ) but it’s fairly easy to figure out from stats and the Naviance where students place.
@sunnyschool, I think it is absolutely crucial to remember that Ivy recruiting is a multi step process. First, your AI has to put you in the pool of students a coach can potentially support for a likely letter. The Ivys do this, bluntly, to keep each other honest and to make sure no school is straying to far, or with too many kids, from the objective stats of their overall admitted pool. For that step, you are correct and it is primarily a numbers game. BUT hitting a target AI does not mean a particular kid will be admitted, it only gets you in the room as it were. When it comes time to get an admissions decision, course rigor, transcript, recommendations, etc are very much in play. Every year, a not insignificant percentage of kids clear the first hurdle but not the second. You have to always remember that.
FWIW, my son’s path through the process was pretty similar to @tonymom’s son. One difference is that Yale did not ask for an essay to do the pre read, only Cornell did that. That could be a variance in their respective sports, or it could be the fact that I believe they were recruited in different cycles.
FWIW, the Tier 1 AI Calculator (NEW SAT VERSION) seems to be up and functional this AM using Safari on Apple OS.
My daughter was recruited for D1 crew. Her stats: SAT 1480, ACT 34, 4.0 UW, approx. 5.6 WGPA, rigorous courseload (13 AP’s). She is #1 in her class (out of only 100+), NMF, AP scholar with distinction, USRowing National Honor Roll. BUT, subject tests: 740 and 650. Maybe the 650 did her in? She was not accepted.
I’m sorry to hear that FLMomof3. I must say I’m surprised if the coach put her down for a spot/LL and those academics weren’t enough at any of the Ivies, as I believe that’s an AI of over 220.
@FLMomof3 I also am surprised your daughter was not admitted if the coach had given full support. Did she receive a LL? Some Ivies have higher AI threshold but I doubt a 650 on a subject test led to the result. Perhaps the coach found other recruits he wanted more. Sorry for result. Hope your daughter will have other good options. I’m sure she will.
@Ohiodad51 - Given your explanation above, how can 8th graders be getting “verbal commitments” from Ivy League schools?
8th graders cannot give “official commitment” and these unofficial commitments is nothing more than a promise ring.
Ivy’s follow the standard NCAA D1 communication to recruits, but even so they are not binding in any grade. As there are no scholarships given by the Ivy League they do not even sign an official NLI.
Please note that NCAA rules do not allow coaches to send recruiting materials to prospects until Sept. 1 at the beginning of a prospect’s junior year in high school. They may send only a questionnaire before that time.
Unlike other Division I NCAA schools, the eight institutions that comprise the Ivy League do not offer athletic scholarships and therefore cannot have committed recruits sign National Letters of Intent—agreements recruited athletes make with Division I and II universities to attend a full year of college in exchange for one year of athletics-based financial aid. As long as the recruit completes the school’s application process, an NLI essentially guarantees admission to a college.
Well, if they mean nothing, doesn’t this process of “verbal commitments” in 8th/9th/10th grade need to stop? Kids are going around bragging in 9th grade about their “commitments” to Harvard, Yale, Cornell, and more. I find it ridiculous, given these commitments sometimes are agreed to before the kids even set foot into a High School. They have no grades, no test scores, no recommendation letters from HS teachers, etc.
Isn’t this unfair to stellar academic kids who are also great athletes, but may be later bloomers, that these “commitments” are already given so early to other athletes?
If the official recruiting process doesn’t start until Sept 1 of Junior Year, I think this whole committing thing needs to be regulated and stopped.
Any thoughts?
I think they are just bragging. All the kids I know who ended up at Ivys were not recruited til the summer between Junior and Senior year. Some had made visits and coaches expressed “interest” but there was no commitment.
I think it’s “real” to the extent that the commitments are a result of summer showcase tournaments and discussions with coaches. The names show up on real lists of “verbal commits” to xyz colleges. Then they get congrats from hundreds of people on social media and at school.
For the Ivies, the schools and students commit ‘to the process.’ The student still needs to get accepted to the school. and the kids (and their parents) still tell everyone they are ‘Going to Yale!’
This isn’t true. The student still has to be admitted and many schools do not admit students who cannot handle the academics. Wisconsin football lost a head coach because the school would not auto admit the junior college players the coach wanted. On my daughter’s team, they lost two recruits (a girl and her younger sister) because she couldn’t be admitted to the program she wanted because of grades. Stanford, ND and other big D1 programs do not admit athletes who can’t make the grades. Are some athletes admitted who wouldn’t be without their sports? Of course, but an NLI is not an auto admit.
I’m not even talking about NLI - I meant “verbal commitment”.
Sounds like “VC” means nothing and shouldn’t be given, especially in 8th/9th grade.
And you are welcome to argue your position of no early commits, and keep your kids from early recruiting but until either the NCAA or the sports regulate it, it is going to continue to occur. “Everyone does it” makes all the coaches do it. Virginia’s men’s coach isn’t going to recruit, so we’ll see how that goes.
I think the short answer is the practice of non-binding early commitments is a sure fire way of “putting asses in the seats” at $1000+/week summer camps and showcases which are very lucrative for college coaches. What parents of means would not send their kid’s to summer camps/showcases if there was a chance of securing some kind of early “commitment”?
The promise of early commitments is intoxicating to both parents and their kids and no one knows enough at that time to realize how toothless these early commitments are. The idea that non-binding bragging rights means anything to anyone is a sad and sorry reflection on our society.
It seems like the stories of early commitments/recruitment is most prevalent in soccer and lacrosse.
Without any meaningful academic milestones, these early commitments are in reality a “commitment to the process” which does not mean guaranteed admission. At best, it means that the coach can give Academic Index (AI) ranges that the “recruit” can aspire to. If that student meets that AI by the end of junior year (which is a random walk for most 8th graders), actual recruitment may happen.
Quite honestly, committing to any school so early is crazy as so much is unknown, both about the student’s goals and interests and the school’s potential “fit” four years forward.
The biggest risk in early recruitment is that a young person and their family stops looking and closes doors too early. There are a wealth of things to consider when choosing a college and many things can change between 8th/9th grade and senior year. A student’s health and program leadership at the college are obvious considerations. What happens to the early recruit with no academic milestones who gets injured in 10th grade, or if the college program with many early recruitment commitments has a coaching change ?
While there is a lot of anecdotal noise, I am not sure there is enough historical data indicate how many of these early commitments turn into actual admissions. This new form of early commitment is too new and the cases where it doesn’t work out are not likely to be discussed on msg boards like this one.
At the end of the day, I think the idea of early recruitment/committment is a brilliant marketing concept for expensive summer camps and showcases.
@sunnyschool, there have been epics written on this board about the issue of early committments in the Ivy league. To your specific question, and as @superdomestique intimates above, the idea that kids who have no or few high school grades and have done no standardized testing can be accurately vetted as meeting the AI requirements of a particular sport at a particular school three or four years in the future has always been difficult for me to grasp. The fact is that excluding football (which uses the band system) and men’s basketball and hockey (which use a kind of midfied band system) all recruits at a specific school in a specific cycle need to average a certain AI score that is just not known until some time in the late fall of the previous year. Given this general requirement, we all assume that each Ivy coach is given an AI “target” number to hit for his or her recruiting class, along with a specified number of recruits he can support for a likely letter. How someone can manage their AI requirements two, three or even four years in advance with 1)kids who do not have the data from which to derive an AI score and 2)no knowledge of what their AI target will be seems to me to be impossible. I mean, think about a kid who is a feshman lacrosse stud. The Cornell coach tells her that she will support her for a likely letter in three years as long as she cobbles together an AI of 200. The coach does this because she guesses that her team target AI will be right around there. Now, three years later, the kid hits a 200 and thinks she is solid. But the coach finds out in May when the AI numbers are released that her AI team target for the next class is 202. What happens? Is the freshman commit just out of luck? Does she get a phone call in July saying hey, we were finally able to do the pre read, and even though I told you I would support you with a 200 AI, now you need to take the SAT again and increase your score x points or we don’t have a spot for you? In a system that is so reliant on early committments, such things have to occur with some level of frequency. And if they do in fact occur, then to my mind these “early committments” are vaporous, and should not in any way be relied on.
At the end of the day, I can say that the Ivy Common Agreement specifically prohibits any type of early committment (including “committment to the process” which is the Ivy’s preferred formulation for recruits to use on social media, etc between committment to the coach and reciept of a likely letter) and that in my personal experience with my son and perhaps 12 to 15 other kids I either know well or who I was able to help in some way over the last few years that recruiting in the Ivy League really happens in the time frame of February of the recruit’s junior year up until the fall of the recruit’s senior year. During that time frame the coach will have access to most of the recruit’s academic profile and, after July 1 going into senior year, the opportunity for an admissions pre read. I do not know a single kid who received an offer at an Ivy school prior to January/February junior year and who did not at least have some baseline ACT/SAT results. I do know some who were given conditional offers (“get your ACT up a point, or 2, and we will have a spot for you”). The sports with which I am familiar and have personal experience are football, wrestling and baseball. Others here have direct experience in different sports and will relate that things work very differently in that realm.
I will say that overall, even in the sports where I have personal knowledge, the calendar is accelerating. My son committed in July before his senior year. He was the third player at his school to do so. Two years later, his team had eleven commitments by the end of July. One note of caution though. Of the three July commits from my son’s year, he was the only one to make it past admissions. If I recollect correctly, one couldn’t hit the standardized test score target he was given, and the other was a PG (post grad) student who essentially stopped going to class.
I would disagree with @twoinanddone in two small respects. First, at least in the revenue sports at virtually all schools, signing a NLI is essentially an admissions decision because the athletic department is given control over a certain number of admissions slots by the administration. This is the crucial difference between the Ivy system and the general D1 system. Second and as I noted above, the Ivy already explicitly prohibits early commitments (to the process or otherwise). As far as the NCAA, the rules committee’s latest efforts have been to loosen early contact rules in certain sports (basketball and men’s hockey in particular. So I think this trend towards early recruiting will continue.
@Ohiodad51 ^^ Thanks for the excellent explanation of this process.
@superdomestique ^^ Totally agree with your assessment. I also think then there can be a bias toward the teachers’ grading of those kids that already have Ivy commitments. No one wants to screw it up for them with some C’s.
I wish they would crack down on the “verbal commitments”. It just gives these kids big heads so young…and their parents…when it isn’t even a real commitment. The sports I see it happening in are Lax, Soccer, Hockey (but I’m not familiar with the sports you mention). It sounds like the Ivies and D3are led into this because D1s are doing it, but it does not seem compliant with the rules of Ivy and D3 to me.
My freshman DS has a classmate who verballed to an HYP for lax back in the fall. It was the talk of the school. DS has made it his mission to beat that kid in class rank 
Except you can go on Laxpower and find a list of ‘commits’ who are sophomores in high school for every Ivy. The list is self reported by the student, parent, coaches or professional recruiters. For 2019 females (current sophomores) Brown has 2 commits, Cornell has 6. Dartmouth 7. There were 254 names on the list the first day it was published, including the 2 committing to Brown, 4 at Cornell, and 4 at Dartmouth, which means these girls had come to an agreement with the coach. They aren’t admitted, but they are in a much better position than other Yale hopefuls or Dartmouth wannabees. No one is stopping these student, parents, and coaches from announcing to the world that they are going Ivy, and announcing it publicly when they are still sophomores in high school. If the Ivies weren’t making the offers, or ‘committing to the process’ no one would have the gall to post that they were recruited. They have received some kind of indication from the coach that they are recruited and committed.
What if the media outlets simply agreed to not report this sort of thing?
(The realist in me knows that people love gossip…so by reporting, they are just giving their audience what it wants.)