<p>I didn’t even think about Barnard. That’s a great idea. I also like your roster research plan. We charted out collegiate rosters by year to see which schools would need to focus on which weapons any given year. Also, she’s smart to use FRED. It makes it easy to get an understanding of the talent level at the schools with roster names that you don’t recognize from the national circuit.</p>
<p>Back when we were doing this for my daughter we used FRED and found that some schools had maybe one “C” or “D”, a couple of "E"s, and a bunch of "U"s. </p>
<p>One more thing. 700s across the board will do wonders for her recruitablity.</p>
<p>NYCbee - I would also start looking at SAT II since they can make up 1/3 of the academic index for Ivies.
Your D should Email a list of the events she will be competing in at nationals to all of the coaches once her schedule is set. Some of the coaches may want to talk to her after she has finished competing.</p>
<p>I want to thank all of you who replied to me privately – I don’t have enough posts yet to be able to respond privately in turn.</p>
<p>The fencing world is a very small place – so much so that my daughter doesn’t like me at her competitions not because it affects her fencing, but because it embarrasses her to see me talking to other parents.</p>
<p>So this site is my secret resource for the information I can’t ask for from other parents!</p>
<p>This is a very informative forum. My daughter, 10th grade saber, is putting her fencing game together. She earned her D and qualified to DV 2 and DV 3 SN. She realizes that she will not be A fencer. However, B or C is very much doable. She wants to go to John’ Hopkins. Her high school coach told her that she needs to get 2200 SAT, 3.5+ GPA and C rating in her fencing. She is a good student with A’s and B’s in her honors and AP classes. So, I think she has a good chance.</p>
<p>My worry is the cost of the education. I calculated our family’s net-cost using the calculator provided by the Hopkin’s website. I am getting $0 help. Paying 60K+ a year is way too much for our family. </p>
<p>I read somewhere that Division III schools do not offer scholarship, but will be generous with the financial aid. How much generous? BTW, just for fun, I entered just $10,000 as my salary. The net-cost calculator still showed that I had to put up $38,000. How reliable is this calculator?</p>
<p>I am thinking of encouraging my daughter to think about other lesser Division I and II schools. Does any school give full/partial scholarships to B/C-rated fencers?</p>
<p>Very few fencers receive athletic scholarships. PSU, OSU, ND, plus a few more. Generally, these only go to “A” rated, internationally competitive fencers.</p>
<p>The amount of need based aid going to fencers dwarfs the amount of scholarships. The best schools for need based aid are the rich schools, such as the Ivies and Stanford. Getting coach’s support at one of these will be difficult for an B/C fencer.</p>
<p>I’d recommend pursuing Div III schools. Some will be likely to offer your daughter admissions support, and hopefully some good financial aid.</p>
<p>Sherpa, you are dead on with your comment regarding athletic scholarships and international fencers. Let’s just say this is a coaches personal immigration/slave labor program, but the US fencing establishment also contribute to this also, because they sell fencing as a sport “where you can get a scholarship.”</p>
<p>In my experience it seems that if you are a good student/great scores and a great fencer you have access to academic money at all schools, but because fencers tend to set their sites on very select schools where everyone is a scholar, some very good student athletes miss out. So, don’t limit your options there are 44 possible choices, 44 school controlled funding sources, so limit that to the four/five dream schools and leave the other 39 to flounder in the wind looking for fencers that they can afford to spend a little money on?</p>
<p>A Div I coach has 4.5 scholarships to give out for the whole team by gender – all weapons, all years. That means even most people who get athletic scholarships will get less than half off. New York Times reported in 2008 that the average non-football/non basketball athletic scholarship was 8K – I haven’t been able to find any better numbers. </p>
<p>A top school may charge somewhat more than other private schools or out-of state public schools, but is likely to have more generous financial aid policies. Crewmom96 estimated that a family with $140K in income would be asked to pay between $30-40K at an Ivy, and that sounds about right to me. That means they’ll be getting $15-25K off full cost.</p>
<p>I think you can see where this is going. If fencing will get you into a school that meets 100% of need, you will need to be a star to be much better off going to a school that gives merit aid or an athletic scholarship for fencing. The lower your income, or the more special circumstances you have that would lower your expected contribution, the better off you would be financially going to a top school – ASSUMING that’s where you want to be.</p>
<p>One more thing I would add: if you think the John Hopkins numbers are out of line, call them and go over your entries. First do net price calculators at some comparable schools, and also look at their College Board profiles, which include information on what percentage of their students get aid, and how much on average by income. Also be prepared to mention anything they don’t look at that you can argue affects your ability to pay: medical bills/poor health; dependent parents, unemployed older kids, special needs younger kids; underwater mortgages, etc. </p>
<p>Making a case like this, I got $13K more in aid than the net price calculator suggested at my son’s school. It was time-consuming work, but I wouldn’t have gotten paid $13K for doing that same amount of work at my job!</p>
<p>Thanks again for your information. I read somewhere that a coach can elect to not offer any scholarship to an incoming freshman class. I didn’t quite understand that. If you are NCAA Div I coach, wouldn’t you try to max out the scholarship offering each year. Why would you save it? For the better fencers in the following year?</p>
<p>In addition, I glanced through BC’s women roster (just for fun) and checked with the Askfred.net. BC has 1 A (epee), 1 B (Foil) and 3 C’s (one for each weapon). There were just couple D and E. Division I give 5 scholarships to women. So, does this mean that the C fencers received at least 1/2 scholarship?</p>
<p>Just because they are allowed 4.5 scholarships by the NCAA doesn’t mean they actually fund 4.5 scholarships. They might. They might not. I don’t know.</p>
<p>no it just means that they are on the team…one of those C-level fencers had a 34 on her ACT’s last year and could have gotten a four year academic to JHU, but chose BC. So I guess she got a better deal.</p>
<p>and some coaches don’t really have a “scholarship budget” when one program has a million dollar budget(OSU) for a schools with tuition of 25K, versus a school (BC) where 48K is split between both male & female programs doesn’t leave a lot for scholarship. Another thing to note is just because a coach has 4.5/4 scholarships to offer doesn’t mean they are going to get offered to US fencers, hence the emphasis on fencers being awarded academic dollars.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info about BC. I just sent you an email (can’t PM yet unfortunately, hopefully soon), but it seems you replied here a bit already lol. If BC doesn’t have a lot of scholarship $$, do they still recruit though? Is the need-based aid there pretty good?</p>
<p>American Fencing magazine has published it’s bi-annual “College Recruiting” article. It’s usually written by a current coach and addresses the recruiting process from the schools standpoint. The author this time out was Laurie Schiller head coach at Northwestern Univ. Also, the former coach at Columbia University- also George Kolombatovich did a great piece on the subject also.</p>
<p>the Kolombatovich piece used to be on Columbia’s Fencing Home Page </p>
<p>it was titled "Information for the College-Bound Fencer, I was armed with that information in addition to the USFA publication(s) for the College Bound Fencer and the process. Outside of that I remember coming across questions for college coaches, general fencing recruiting information as well as just talking with college fencers and club members on that path…and that was tempered by my personal experience from the basketball perspective.</p>
<p>My son is a rising junior and has very good though not stellar academics and fencing. He is an A-rated epeeist and his best NAC/SN finishes have been 8th at Y14, 17th at Cadet, 61st at Junior. Still a full season of Cadet to go before he ages out. Unweighted GPA 3.89 but with a declining trend thus far (3.94 freshman, 3.84 soph). This is with hard courses at a good private school. 790 on math level 2, but expect SATs to be lower (sophomore PSAT was around 196, a recent SAT screening by a test prep company 1980…70/700 math on each…he makes simple/stupid mistakes sometimes, which hurts less on math level 2). He is Asian, which hurts in admissions I believe.</p>
<p>A lot can still happen in junior year, but right now it looks like he isn’t going to be a shoo-in at the most elite colleges (even though he is also a Harvard legacy). He might end up applying to HYPS, JHU, Columbia, UPenn, Brown, and maybe 1-2 from Duke, Vassar, Haverford, UNC.</p>
<p>I have a couple questions for sherpa and others more knowledgeable than me.</p>
<p>First, I heard there was a limit of some kind, 5 colleges that a student could be recruited to. I don’t understand what this means…can the student not reach out to 10 coaches?</p>
<p>Second, leaving aside which colleges might most/least need ME fencers that year, at which colleges do the fencing coaches have the most/least influence in admissions? For instance, I’ve heard that the Brown coach has zero influence.</p>