<p>My daughter is a "solid -but not spectacular" student. She is an athlete that wants to keep playing in college. College coaches are interested in her but I wonder how influential they are in the admissions process. Can it make or break an appication?</p>
<p>You have to have the grades, and maybe more importantly, the board scores, unless you are a star athlete. Coaches can tip the balance, but most D3 schools require that you are in the mix academically. That said, a friend of mine was just admitted to Wesleyan and another good LAC with a 2.9! because of sports. Kids with far higher GPA's got waitlisted and rejected.</p>
<p>It depends on the college. If the school has super high academic standards, then they might be able to get an admissions boost from the coach, but D3 schools have different policies on this.</p>
<p>For those that do factor athletic abilities into admissions decisions, there's a calculus to it. The stronger the athlete the more likely admissions is to cut them some slack and get them admitted. This is especially true if they are in a sport where it's hard to find very strong academic students who are also talented athletes; hockey and football, primarily. For some reason it's not hard to find academically qualified runners, swimmers, tennis players, rowers, and so forth. But for the "helmet sports" and basketball it can be more difficult to pull a strong team together without some slack being cut for academically marginal applicants. Nonetheless, there is still a baseline of grades and/or test scores they must achieve -- they can't be completely out of the range of admitted students.</p>
<p>Best bet is to start talking to coaches at schools that might be of interest to the student. The coaches will be able to tell you a lot about how athletics might factor into admissions at their particular school. Sometimes they do it sort of indirectly, through innuendo and so forth, but you can get a read on the situation if you keep your ears open.</p>