@BKSquared thank you for the video advice, will be able to get some time to video during the next few weeks and coach says he’ll have his radar gun with him too. S22 is working hard to get his scores up, at the Diversity SAT Clinic we attend, offered to NA’s, he is practice testing at 1400’s. @tkoparent, will add those to the list to look at! Thought JHU and Tufts may be reaches and same with Trinity so we didn’t look. Thanks for the feedback all. Lots to do this week! You all rock!
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It’s good to have some reaches on the list. Your son’s profile is strong, it’s just a question of which schools are looking for someone with that profile and are also a good fit for your son. I assume most of these schools would provide a fee waiver and accept self-reported scores. It’s more work for your son in terms of reaching out to the coaches and then writing all the essays, but you might get some surprising results. Important to have the matches and safeties as well, of course!
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You’re getting great advice so far, and I can’t add anything on the baseball side.
One thing I’d emphasize when building a list, though, is that you need to look through two separate lenses: the athletic and the academic. What is a reach without the athletic lens might be a safety with it. So I’d really be thinking about two partially overlapping lists, and what’s relevant for one might not be for the other.
For example, once a recruit receiving coach support is above a certain academic threshold in terms of grades, scores, etc., some of your son’s characteristics that would strengthen a typical application—band, NA, specifics of IB curriculum—don’t matter much because he’ll be admitted without them. But without the baseball hook those things become much more important, as he’s being compared to a pool of competitive applicants.
Sorry if that’s obvious but your mention of reaches made me think it’s worth clarifying.
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@politeperson Thank you for the feeback, once we have our lists I will post them for feedback to see if we have gauged the reach/ academic fit/recruit fit properly. Then refine the financial aid, and so on. Also do athletes work with Questbridge? Just found out they do accept US citizens abroad.
I don’t think Questbridge and athletic recruiting will work. Most questbridge finalists also have low EFCs, near zero. You can get an estimate of your FAFSA EFC here:
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Although this is an Athletic Recruits thread, I wanted to jump in to suggest that your son may be in the somewhat unique position of having baseball limit his college prospects.
A huge advantage of athletic recruitment is having a coach walk the student athlete through the process, so that he/she knows (or has very high confidence) of admission at his/her first choice college. In exchange for the coach’s support, the student generally must commit to applying Early Admission to one college where he/she has a place on the athletic team and is an academic fit.
It sounds like your son is a pretty good baseball player, but also an excellent student. You said his SAT practice tests have been in the 1400’s. According to the 2020 SAT Suite Annual Report only 1% of the 14,050 “American Indian” test takers who graduated from high school in 2020 scored in the 1400-1600 range. If the numbers are the same and your son’s actual SAT score is 1400+, he could be among the top 140 Native American applicants in the class of 2022. Recently, a little less than 2% of Harvard and Cornell, 3% of Columbia, and 4% of Dartmouth freshmen were NA, so that requires approximately 35, 60, 40 and 40 (175) top NA students in a single year.
Those of us who have helped children with athletic recruiting may be very helpful on that front, but your son might find he is an academic fit at a more prestigious college without also working so hard to find a baseball fit. During Spring of his senior year, after being admitted to 10+ prestigious colleges that meet 100% of financial need without loans at your income level, he could follow up with the baseball coaches to see if there are roster spots available if he chooses that college.
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I dunno, Wiliams and Amherst aren’t too shabby 
(Or Swarthmore, Johns Hopkins, U Chicago etc etc to keep naming high academic d3s).
However, your point is well taken.
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@KaiserS Thank you so much for another unique perspective and admissions strategy. Last night was very interesting as we were going through the Top 3 Ivies, NCACs schools, plenty to like throughout! Tonight and tomorrow we are doing NESCACs. We are finding out that he actually would like to have a NA space/thriving community where he can land when he needs ‘soul medicine’, being so far away from his family and NA traditions. The ball team does carry a lot of weight for ‘finding his tribe’ at college. Social capital and team culture are harder things to find out, 4 years is a long time. Do college baseball blogs exist out there which cover what the team atmosphere is like at these colleges? We expect a bit of home-sickness in the first bit, but with a thriving team atmosphere and a cultural outlet, he should be fine. Between studying, practices, games and working out, he should be fairly busy but the need to find a place to ‘land’, is important too.
I don’t know of any, and team vibe/dynamics would be transient as they are based on an every changing makeup of team personnel and coaching staff.
With that said, once your S starts talking with coaches, these are things he should ask…coaching style, the type of guys who succeed in his program, vibe, athlete/non-athlete divide, etc.
When ultimately making the decision though, it has to be based on the school…you absolutely must count on a coach leaving during the 4 years your S would be there. If your S has cast a wide net, it’s likely a coach or two will change jobs sometime during the recruiting process as well.
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S got a good feeling for team dynamics through overnights. He stayed with team members, ate, went to class and partied with them. Also was able to spend a fair amount of time with the coaches to discuss what they saw as his role. Hopefully your son will have a chance to do this. In the absence, many teams have their own FB page and Instagram and Twitter accounts.
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Coaching Changes, true that. One of the things DS liked at Dartmouth was the longevity of the head coach there( Whalen, almost 31 years) , At Denison for example, Coach Mike Deegan is relatively new there. The neat this about this process is that my son likes to plot numbers and such. So with the graphs he is creating, coaching stability is a measure. How he does this, I don’t know but that is just him and a way he processes things. Thanks for the cue questions, that will help with his matrix this spring and summer.
@BKSquared, now that is an idea, He has a IG account, no FB or Twitter yet, He’s going to let those be a part of his recruiting tools. He has been very careful with his social media, so many things can come back and bite you in the end.
Several small LAC’s got us down below 20K and I am in a higher income bracket so someone should be able to get you sub 15…my son was a football recruit not sure how much different it is than baseball.
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Not sure if I missed it, but what undergraduate majors are likely or possible?
You mentioned that he is considering law school, but that can be done from any undergraduate major. Law school admission is mostly about LSAT score and college GPA. Application Preparation | Law School Numbers has some information about undergraduate preparation for law school. Law employment is heavily dependent on law school rank (either top 14 overall or highly ranked in the state or region where one wants to practice law – see Discover law schools | Law School Transparency ), so be careful about taking out lots of debt for expensive law schools that do not lead to strong law employment prospects.
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Whalen is a legend for sure, but I’m not sure his stability makes it more likely he’ll retire in the next 5 years, or less (he’s old!).
The Denison coach gets great reviews from his players.
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@Billb7581 Thanks for the information, we are on the low side of the SES, the SAT fee waiver kind, so we are not sure what to expect as far as FA with these great D3 schools we are exploring. @BKSquared it would be great to get some diversity fly-ins to get a vibe of the school. If things open up, we have a couple of sponsors who believe in our son to pay for some campus visits/campus baseball events once we narrow down the choices. These times of uncertainty is definitely taking a toll on athletics. @ucbalumnus, He likes philosophy, Environmental sciences, or even Sports science, if the school has it. only thing is he didn’t take any biology, so far, he may just do a Biology AP test next fall if he moves in that direction. Of course, he would love to go to Harvard Law school and they do have a Native American Law Students Association, which he is very interested in, so he wants to succeed in his undergraduate program to have a shot at the Harvard program, the next Law school is Georgetown, why? I am not totally sure how he picked that one, he saw something ‘shiny’ there. Certainly will take note of your comment on the best law schools. Indigenous Rights, land and environment are important for our son, our tribe is very involved in Indigenous rights and we just won in court regarding our resources. Had a huge impact on our son.
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Check through the admissions websites for diversity fly-ins. There are also sites that provide a list of such programs. They often require an essay of some type along with transcripts and test scores historically. I know of D3 coaches who will use the diversity fly in program to bring in minority recruits as a work around for their top recruits. As suggested above, you should be running your school search in parallel (academic fit/sports recruiting). I think the former should drive the latter in terms of focus and resources.
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Thanks for the information, I was wondering if Diversity Fly in equal an official visit?
Philosophy is sometimes mentioned as good pre-law prep, probably because it is a humanities major that also requires and practices logical thinking. Philosophy and math majors tend to do well on the LSAT, which has logical thinking questions.
Sports science or physical education with a more academic or research focus is often a subarea of biology. Be aware that many biology major courses will have grade-competitive environments (due to pre-meds in those courses).
It is probably too early to be picking target law schools now, since getting an idea of a realistic range depends on LSAT score and college GPA.
So do you mean it would be hard to get the course requirements when it comes time to register for courses each time? I also heard that athletes and honor students get first crack at classes for registration, is that true?