<p>So you think the whole ‘need blind’ thing espoused by the Ivy’s is a ruse?</p>
<p>The AI is a matter of GPA, test scores, class rank, not legacy status or ability to pay. All of those things can affect whether you get in, though, but the last two items aren’t part of the AI equation.</p>
<p>Being full-pay gives you the ability to commit to your top school early or ED if you want, which can make the whole process easier/quicker for you, but if you reveal to a coach that FA isn’t an issue for you, you eliminate the ability to hedge a bit with coaches you don’t want to commit to at that point because you’re weighing all your options.</p>
<p>I guess I look at this a little differently. You have three areas that are inter-related and inter-twined, but have little to do with each other on their own. They intersect each other in the area of athletic recrutiing</p>
<p>The coach is looking at a recruited athlete to determine if he will “fit” or contribute to his team, admissions is looking to uphold the academic standards, and financial aid is looking to provide a money (in many forms) for people who want it or request it. I don’t think the coach gets to involved in FA, and I don’t think Admissions is asking the coach about the athletic capability. I do think the coach is doing a cursory review with Admissions (AI & pre-reads for Ivys) and a cursory FA discussion to make sure the recruit knows it is available if needed. I really don’t think there is much more to it, and I think there are institutional “silos” that keep these depts in check with each other.</p>
<p>Fenway, your triad sounds very reasonable to me. We just got back from our trip and none of the 12 coaches my daughter spoke with asked about anything financially related, but every single one asked about academics. Since she is a junior, I am imagine that financial discussion will come later in the game, but my impression is that Ivy coaches don’t have much, if anything, to do with the FA end of things</p>
<p>fenway and fishy, I hope you’re right about this. I don’t mean to sound cynical or that I doubt the honesty of the Ivy commitment to need blind admissions. I just can’t help but think that if a coach presents an athlete to admissions, and also says “this one costs you nothing” that it has no impact. I hope I’m wrong. I have no data on this at all. I’m just guessing about human nature, and also about the budget tightening the finaid departments must be feeling.</p>
<p>^^I, too, question the need-blind thing. If it is true, how come the percentage of students on fa is always about the same?</p>
<p>Maybe varska and I see this the same way because our kids looked at some of the same schools, but I think he has it right. When a coach is recruiting, to be effective he must ascertain what the recruit needs and wants so that he can show the athlete how his university jives with the athlete’s priorities. Does the student need FA? If so, then they’ll arrange for a FA pre-read to let the student know what the school can offer. Also, in the case of the non-Ivies, the coach has to manage his recruiting budget. He has to be able to judge on whom he needs to spend his money to woo, then find out where else the recruit is looking so he can guess how much he’d need to spend to be successful in recruiting, and in the in-between cases of a student being eligible for a little bit of FA, figure out if he wants to offer a little more than that amount in athletic money to seal the deal. I think the question is there so the coach can manage his recruiting process. </p>
<p>Our sense of how things work fits pretty well with fenwaysouth’s description too, if I’m understanding him correctly. Each dept. does their own thing in some degree of isolation and they intersect only when necessary. The amount of information sharing among them varied slightly by school, however. In some cases, the FA dept. sent the coach the pre-read for him to forward to us (Columbia, Duke). In others (Harvard, Yale, Penn, Princeton), the information came directly from FA and the coach seemed unaware of the details. With Stanford, the pre-read came from FA but we’re pretty sure it was shared with the coach.</p>
<p>keylyme: For Div. 1 schools maybe financial need does matter, but not for athletes or else much less so. Could it be that once the school fills their sports rosters with who they want and can get, as well as meets their institutional goals for ethnic and socio-economic diversity and whatever else, THEN the school fits everyone else (unhooked) into their budget?</p>
<p>I’m thinking about an equivalency sport. But it does seem that a coach may want to maximize the financial aid that is available before spending the balance (athletic money) on the remaining players, who may be able to go elsewhere to get other/more athletic money. I also spoke with someone about a Patriot League Football team (with no athletic $). The FA kids could walk away from the team at any time, and still keep all of their FA money and stay in school. So that’s something else a coach would have to balance. Is one type of funded player or another more likely to stay committed to the team? Just thoughts – I may not be contributing anything useful here!</p>
<p>GFG, great post in #27. Thanks for taking the time to be so clear! </p>
<p>Mom22039, very interesting idea. Of course Ivy and DIII athletes have no economic incentive to play. This is what fascinates me about those leagues. Every kid is there voluntarily. I think your point is well taken that money as an incentive to play is probably huge in many recruiting programs. And the opposite is true for the Ivies and DIIIs: the coach needs to be dead certain that the athlete is commited to playing as many of the four years as possible. The recruiting coaches were very thorough in asking her current HS coach about D’s dedication to the pursuit of competing in college.</p>
<p>Riverrunner, this isn’t the first time you’ve commented that college coaches contacted your D’s high school coach and questioned him/her about your D, her coachability, commitment, etc… To our knowledge, that never happened in my D’s case with any of the schools she was interested in. (Only one coach of a far away non-Ivy, non elite school called her coach to ask if D might be interested in meeting with him when he came to the area.) I find it remarkable how much recruiting experiences can vary from student to student, even within the same sport and gender, when dealing with the same schools or schools in the same league, and in our case even within the same subset of the same sport.</p>
<p>Just goes to show you, what all of us are saying needs to be taken with a grain of salt–your own mileage may vary!</p>
<p>GFG, I don’t want to assume anything about your coach, but I do know my D’s HS coach has long-standing relationships with possibly hundreds of college coaches. He’s been coaching for over 30 years, and officiates at NCAA meets year round. He also attends national coaching conferences frequently, and is the ultimate networker. This may be the reason coaches called him: they know him, and believe what he has to say about athletes. He has a long history of placing athletes in schools where they are able to contribute. HS coaches who have no connections to college coaches may not get called, because the college coach may feel it would be a wasted conversation. Just a thought.</p>
<p>So the “take away” may be, keep your HS coach in the loop about where you’re applying. If your HS coach says he “knows” the college coach you’ve been talking to, you might also assume that they might talk to each other about you.</p>
<p>I worry that our student’s coach doesn’t know a lot of college coaches…(have no clue really) or unresponsiveness/timelyness on the part of the hs coach could hurt rather than help…have heard that has happened in the past -however that could be rumor/sour grapes on the part of the kid/parent and not accurate…</p>
<p>I do know that not lots of athletes have been placed…</p>
<p>When and how should the hs coach be brought into the mix?</p>
<p>While it is wonderful to have the support and expertise of a HS coach, many HS coaches have no real contact or relationships with out of state colleges. It is not necessary for the coach to be heavily involved. Our D had letters from her HS coach, but nothing else. She did fine with her highly measurable sport–regional times and PRs on record were enough for plenty of coaches to take notice, one such data was sent.</p>
<p>With other sports, videos, rankings, showcases/camps can substitute for a coach’s connections.</p>
<p>I think well connected coaches who have the time and inclination to promote the athlete are fairly rare, actually. Fortunately, it’s fairly easy for the athlete to initiate contact and help the college coach see what he or she can bring to the team. In retrospect, I think learning this skill and becoming comfortable communicating with ‘people in authority’ was a tremendous growth experience for D.</p>