Thank you @Sherpa and @Epeemom . So much food for thought. Our foil fencer, although improving at a remarkable rate due to a combination of puberty, new coaches and a new love of fencing, is not likely ever to be an A rated fencer. I worry/regret that with our minimal resources, we should be applying the funds required to fly him across the country to the Brown camp to more private lessons here at home. On the other hand, despite our fencer not being as strong an athlete as those Atilio recruits, Atilio has been good with communication and follow up so far. Our son will choose a school based on academic fit and opportunity first. Brown would be absolutely ideal in that regard with the added bonus of his sister being an athlete there and family located in the area (we are on the west coast.) His chances for admission without support, despite his high test scores and grades, are minimal, I know. But so far, he has not found any other schools with fencing teams matching his abilities that he would be eager to attend without fencing though weāll explore further if and when he improves his fencing enough to be noticed by coaches. So-- he may likely not end up not fencing in college. The great thing about fencing as a sport is that he can fence for the rest of his life if he still is passionate after he graduates. Meanwhile, the Brown camp combines the opportunity to see Brown in depth, meet Atilio and various Brown undergraduate fencers (and maybe, by some miracle, catch Atiloās eye), experience dorm life, enjoy a small fencing camp experience, and improve his fencing. Maybe it will help him stay motivated for the rigorous junior year he has to come.
Go for it! It is pricey, but I think you understand well all the things you are paying for, and the chances for the ultimate payoff.
This quote from Sherpa caught my attention:
No doubt this is true, but it begs the question whether the coachās eye would be caught if a valid prospect did show up.
I will defer to the fencing afficianados on this. In another sport where coaches recruit to a large extent based on national rankingsātennisācollege camps and showcases are extremely valuable, especially for younger athletes, in getting on the coachās radar early.
And if it ever did come down to a tie between two candidates of roughly equal ability and potential, one of whom came to a camp/showed early interest and the other who didnāt, Iām wondering how that tie might be broken
Someone may have already said this - but the fencing coach at Princeton (and coaches at other top fencing schools ) will be scouting recruits from the USA Fencing / NAC circuit. If youāre not fencing NACs and at the top of the points list (as a US fencer) you wonāt be recruited to Princeton.
We have a fencing friend who is attending Yale in the fall. Her academics were stellar. She isnāt a top fencer but I believe the coach wants student athletes; kids who arenāt using fencing just to gain admission. She presented herself to him, applied ED, and received a Likely Letter in October.
@osasmom If nothing else, attending the camp should help your son write stronger supplemental essays , which I think are important to Brown admissions. Best of luck to your son!
Just another data point regarding walk-ons: my son, class of 2015, made the team as an ƩpƩe in fall of 2011. He did think his high SAT scores (2290) helped a bit bc it might have allow a lower scoring applicant to be recruited the following year. At the same time as trying out for the team (a multiple-week process), he also tried out for a play, and made that as well. It was necessary for him to choose between the fencing team and Shakespeare on the Green, and he opted for latter. It was a tough decision. He still wishes he could have experienced both. He really liked both Atilio and the team.
I would like to share with you something I learned in the CC Athletic Recruits forum a little while ago. For purposes of computing the Ivy Academic Indexāper team and overallāonly recruited athletes are included. This was a surprise to me, but I did some research on my own and the information is valid. All the relevant references to AI in official documents refer to recruited athletes.
So a high-AI walk-on does not offset a low-AI All-American candidate who was recruited. The fact that your son made the team had 100% to do with his athletic prowess (and character and work-ethic and those things) and 0% to do with his AI.
One citation for what was said above:
http://features.thecrimson.com/2014/recruiting/
"While the index of every applicant and admitted student is calculated, the tool was created to regulate athletic recruiting. At every Ivy League school, the average Academic Index of every student who receives athletic support in the admissions process must be no more than one standard deviation below the index of the previous four freshman classes. Students who walk-on to teams or are not given athletic support during the admissions process do not count for the athletic department index that the league monitors. "
@fenwaypark wrote
Good point, and I believe that it is possible attending a camp might make the difference in the case of an athlete who was āon the bubbleā in terms of recruitabilty. Itās a little hard for me to picture the scenario; after all, this camp is open to ages 10-18, so there wonāt be much strong competition like there would be at a pre-SN camp at one of the elite clubs. Still, if a strong, viable prospect attended, I imagine they would quickly outshine the rest of the field and might end up spending a lot of time one on one with a current team member, and I can definitely see this working out very well.
@fenwaypark, thanks for that info. Iāll let my son know. To this day he thinks his scores were the tipping factor. Heāll be glad to know that it was his ability and hard work that made the difference. Heās back in NYC for work this year at a Columbia lab and will begin fencing again as soon as heās done with GRE studying and his grad school apps. His high school has an evening once a week that alumni can return to fence and heāll also do club. Heās looking forward to that.