<p>My question is this, does being a top athlete help in the addmission process? My D is a Jr and plays for a very competitive nationally ranked club soccer team, also has been named all state and all area. Academically she is good, top 10% class rank, 3.96 GPA, National Honor Society plus clubs,she just took her SAT for the first time scored 1660 this has her upset(she is taking them again in the spring) she is being recruited by D1 schools but also by a highly selective LAC in Ohio.She loves the school(top of her list) we visited in the fall , she does not want to send scores to school feels they will embarrass her. We are looking for some advice on how to proceed. Thanks joekel</p>
<p>joekel-- Yes, being an athlete at her level will help. Don’t have her post those SAT scores on her profiles or report them in on-line questionnaires. She should prep before taking them again and definitely take the ACT. Many students do better on the ACT and virtually every college will take either test’s scores. None require both (some, such as the Ivies, require 2 or 3 SAT Subject tests, though). And, if all her scores remain lower than she wants or needs, there are many excellent test-optional schools. Lists of them have been posted on CC before.</p>
<p>The more selective the schools she is interested in, the more important it is that her grades remain high and that she is taking a challenging course load, continuing into senior year. These colleges look at the number of honors and AP courses the HS offers and whether the student is taking those courses. “Rigor of curriculum” is the buzz phrase.</p>
<p>Thank you for the advice. We are looking into SAT prep courses and will talk to her about the ACT. She does take honors and AP classes. We told her not to slack off SR yr and she is going to take AP and Honors next yr also. Thanks again hopfully it will pick her up</p>
<p>joekel – Fitting in prep courses with high-level club soccer schedules is very difficult. S took SATs in 1/09 with just a little College Board on-line review (for $20 it’s worth signing up for!) and got scores good enough to post in profiles (low 1900s), but in August, between the end of club season and school preseason, he took a three-week classroom prep course from Ivy Insiders, a relatively new company that is a good deal less expensive than the better-known ones. His scores went up 250 points when he retook the SATs in 10/09. We’re in central jersey and they might not have classroom courses in south jersey where you are, but they have on-line tutoring, too. Good luck! S just was admitted ED II to a top LAC and will be playing NESCAC soccer in the fall; without the score improvement, it wouldn’t have happened. That said, the stronger an athlete your D is, the more wiggle room there is with the academics. Like your D, S was all-state and all-area, but not until his senior year.</p>
<p>Good point to not post scores that could detract…well worth the wait until better scores come in</p>
<p>Thanks royal73 We will look into Ivy Insiders. I also reminded her that she is only halfway through Honors PreCalc/Trig so by the end of the year she should do better on the math section Thanks joekel</p>
<p>Your daughter has a great GPA and good rank, so all the concentration should be on the SAT improvement. As advised above, urge her to try the ACT, it is a more straightforward test, without the ‘trickiness’ in math, of the SAT.</p>
<p>If your daughter is All-State, she will get in anywhere she wants…congratulations.</p>
<p>Around here, “All-State” (and “All Conference”) is no guarantee of anything. We had one girl named “All-State” by one newspaper who didn’t even earn first-team all conference honors in the eyes of another. Sports reporters aren’t always the best judges of talent and rely on other sources for their information–sources which are sometimes not reliable or objective. Consequently, the designation can have more to do with the media connections of the high school coach or AD, or the town bias of the newspaper than the ability of the athlete.</p>
<p>The OP’s D is likely an excellent player if she plays on a very competitive club team, but I wouldn’t make that judgment based on what a newspaper says. She should go to college showcase tournaments and send tapes to college coaches and see what interest there is. That’s how the OP will know how good her D is.</p>
<p>Yes, “All-State” honors seem very capricious in our state, at least for runners. I think newspaper writers are stretched so thin that they don’t always conduct the best research to pick the teams.</p>
<p>A few years ago, we had an athlete here named to the all county team. Great swimmer, only problem was she swam for Harvard that year!</p>
<p>I want to thank everyone for the advice. My D is going to take the ACT. We told her to be proud of her grades and class rank and to keep working hard. I agree with some of the other post. My daughter made the all state and the all area team they seem to carry more weight in our area because they are voted on by the coaches she also made the local papers’ all star teams but they are picked by the writer for that paper.Her club is very competitive and that’s really where the recruiting started.After talking to some of the older girls who are in college now we are beginning to realize that the money for women’s soccer is very limited and that most of the girls get more academic money then athletic. Which is fine by me Thanks again joekel</p>
<p>Maybe off point, but don’t the coaches vote for your all-state, all conference, etc awards. I know for us there are coaches meetings at the end of the season. The conference coaches get together and determine all conference (1st, 2nd and HM). With only 8 or 9 spots in the state for all american, again the delegation from the national organization does the voting. Nothing is left up to reporters except for maybe the newspaper’s all metro team. very different fro All state or all conference. And believe me… even when voted by all the area HS coaches nothing is guaranteed or locked up when it comes to college recruiting.</p>
<p>In NJ soccer, local newspapers designate conference and area teams and there are votes by coaches at the league and state level. There is one newspaper (Star-Ledger) whose state-wide awards carry a lot of weight. There are 1st, 2nd and 3rd team designations by most of these. The success of your HS team can determine how much attention you get even if you’re a strong player. For joekel’s D, being named all state and all area as a junior is very good, and a strong club team that does well in State Cup and premier tournament competition will put her in position to be seen by the college coaches she wants to notice her.</p>
<p>Yes, there are some honors that are voted on by coaches, but I think the decisions are made committee-style, that is by compromise. “We’ll vote your goalie first team if you give us a spot for our forward.” They also try to spread out the honors among as many teams as possible, so if a team is very strong, a few of their players might get slighted so the nominations aren’t too lopsided. </p>
<p>It’s easier to make these decisions objectively with the timed sports, but even so there is a lot of wiggle room. For example, the reporters won’t want to exclude athletes from the smaller schools in the conference since they’ve got readership in those communities too. So those kids can make the cut despite worse marks than their peers from larger schools. A kid can be a superstar in a conference composed of small schools, yet be a complete non-factor on a state level.</p>
<p>I think at least D1 college coaches are pretty savvy and like to verify everything themselves.</p>