My S recently got an oral offer from one of his dream D1 schools and immediately committed to the coach, considering he’s still sophomore, is it too rushed to commit at this time? i saw many kids here seem to make the final decision after receiving multiple offers. we are really newbie for such athlete recruiting process, not sure how powerful the oral offer could be, after all it’s not written contract. anything could happen in the next two years.
- What if the coach leaves school , will the offer still be effective?
- Should my S still follow the regular application procedure to apply this school during the senior year? or will the coach mainly communicate with admission office?
- My S did ask the academic requirements during school visit, the coach said the higher GPA the better and didn’t specifically explained the minimum requirement. should we just use the school’s general admission requirement as the reference? i couldn’t find any academic requirements for student-athlete.
the reason why i asked because there’re already several kids at my S’s club got the offer pulled back due to academic reasons.
I believe that they are usually honored by both sides, but verbal offers are only worth the paper they are printed on. I understand that you probably don’t want to be too specific, but if you gave the sport and the general level of the school (Ivy and similar vs. power conference vs. other D1) you might get a more helpful response. If it is not an academically elite school, then probably your S just needs to meet the NCAA minimums. If it is a more academically rigorous school, then the academic portion can vary quite a bit from sport to sport and school to school. In some sports early commitments are rare, in others they are very common.
You may be able to get some idea of the academic portion by looking at the demographics of your sport, and whether it is a priority sport ( depending on the school, football, basketball, lacrosse, hockey). From what I am gathering, the academic standards are a bit higher for the “country club” type sports, because it is a lot easier to fill a team with 32+ ACT scores in some sports than others.
Thanks for your quick response. This school excels at both athletic and academics. Not Ivy though. A couple of ivies did show interest for my S. but my S has passion for his sport (Neither basketball nor football), he cares more about the school’s sport program. When will the verbal offer turned into paper version? do we have to ask the coach to print now or wait until senior year? Thanks!
The offer is as good as the coach’s word, and you’re son’s acceptance is as good as his word. Often things change and everyone is okay with the athlete continuing to look and the coach recruiting another athlete, but open communication is the key.
If the coach leaves, it is up to the new coach whether to honor offers. Some do, some don’t. See article about the U of Conn this year, telling the kid ‘yes’ then ‘no’ days before signing.
Yes, for D1 the offer will become written, but only in November of senior year when he signs the NLI. Until then, everything is based on the promises made by the coach.
Yes, he applies in the regular process. Many athletes apply ED. Yes, he has to be accepted by the school and there are both school standards and NCAA standards to meet. Many coaches track the application through admissions, but I’d recommend NOT having the coach submit an application. My daughter’s did, and it caused 2 files to be open since daughter also completed an application. It took more than a year to discover this, and cause a lot of problems with outside paperwork (hs transcripts, ACT scores, scholarships) being in the wrong file.
@twoinanddone Thanks for your detailed reply!