<p>I agree with everything ChicagoMama shared about the two sport athlete. What I’ve observed is that not all athletes are valued the same by coaches and not all sports are valued the same by the Administration or school. At my son’s Ivy school, lacrosse and hockey were far and away more popular than football, basketball or any other sport. You may want to ask how many football and lacrosse slots are available at each interested school, and if your son meets those criteria. Based upon what you;ve shared, I’m willing to bet that he would get a lot more Admissions mileage with football. </p>
<p>In addition, I can offer my own parental thoughts on the two sport athlete through the eyes of an Ivy athlete & engineering major. It would take a very very special person to pull it off both from a physical and mental perspective. Football is a very demanding contact sport as is lacrosse. Since both sports involve a team, there are typically documented practices and undocumented practices (“captatin’s practice”) that he would need to go to. If your son is like mine, he wants to play his sport competitively. There were always factors that he had to overcome to play. Competition among teammates for playing time, health, coaches evaluations and actual performance on the field. Some of those factors are subjective, and coaches want players that buy into their program to play and succeed…that means doing everything their way. Being tied to two masters (coaches) would be difficult and possibly counter-productive in some cases. The second biggest thing is staying healthy. Staying healthy is incredibly difficult to do with one sport never mind two contact sports. Just about every athlete in my son’s sport got hurt at one time or another over 4 years. It is part of the game and there are no guarantees you go back into the starting lineup (if you were a starter to begin with) after you’ve recovered. It is extremely difficult to find the playing field at any level in college sports.</p>
<p>Then there is the whole idea of academics, and staying ahead of your studies in an ultra competitive academic school such as the NESCSAC. I think that is self explanatory. There are no athletic tutors to help you along as you would with most D1 football programs. There may be posters on here who’s sons or daughters were two sport athletes. If so, I think that is great for you, but there is no way my son could have found the time to do it based on his major, interests, and time commitments.</p>
<p>If it is possible to be a two sport athlete…it is probably most possible in the NESCAC with their shorter seasons, reduced travel and practice times (relative to D1). I would think long and hard about it before trying it out especially as a freshmen playing Fall football. It is going to be very hard on these guys at the get-go…they will have to adjust to college life overnight. Good luck.</p>
<p>fenwaysouth:
Thanks again for the insightful advice. We went through the normal admission process with my eldest son who ended up in a fine college, but athletic recruiting is a completely new experience. We are really trying to decipher what we are hearing to enable our youngest son to make an informed decision. Even HS football seems to have evolved into a year-around sport-- fall football, winter weight and speed training, spring football, summer college camps etc. </p>
<p>I’m surprised a school would say “ED or RD, we don’t care” but also say they want your son. Even the D3 coach my son has dealt with lately has said “we really want people ED so we can lock our team in by December”.</p>
<p>I have heard Ivy football rosters have over 100 players. </p>
<p>It is VERY long and rather cynical, but worth reading IMHO especially if your son is an Ivy football recruit, but even if your child is in another sport. Especially note the Yale experience on that site.</p>
<p>Rhandco, thanks for the link. I have read it before. I agree it is cynical, but recruiting is not pretty. Especially when faced with a subsequent career that apparently did not go as hoped. As far as my son’s interaction with the NESCAC coach, I believe the coach was trying to convey that they would hold one of their slots for him into the RD round. There are two NESCAC schools he really likes. Both coaches have been very frank with him and indicate that if things don’t work out in the Ivy League, they would like to be his landing spot. I assume that is not uncommon at this stage in NESCAC recruiting. Like the Ivys are hoping to pick up a couple guys looking at Stanford/Duke/Northwestern, the NESCACS are hoping for a couple guys looking Ivy.</p>
<p>To be frank, I’ve never heard of an Ivy or NESCAC coach holding a slot for an RD applicant. Slots hold a lot of value in the coaches world, and failure to get an impactful player every year can set a program back. They get to realize their slot picks in ED1 or ED2 from previously verbally committed recruits. Coaches have no influence at RD and there are no guarantees the recruit would enroll. Possibly he meant he would keep a roster spot open or he would provide a tip to the Admissions Committee? Or he knows your son is leaning heavy to Ivy (knows he is iffy to be recruited Iyv) and he wants to come back to him when he is better posititioned to make an offer and your son is more willing to commit to NESCAC. If so, the offer will be ED (you can count on it). </p>
<p>In my opinion, a NESCAC coach (or any coach) that relies on RD candidates for slots is not going to be a coach for very long. I would look over my notes or seek clarification at the right time. Good luck!</p>
<p>Just to build a little on fenway’s post - I had a conversation with a NESCAC lax coach and asked him about the potential for support after the ED1 round. Here’s his response,
" I would say that it doesn’t happen often but kids can certainly reach out to other coaches and let them know that if things don’t work out at school A, they’ll likely apply to school B in the ED 2 round or regular decision…they can ask if there would be the potential for support in one of those rounds."</p>
<p>So it sounds like, yeah, if you’re a hot recruit and your first choice falls through, let me know and we can discuss. But it’s not the way business is normally done in the NESCAC</p>
<p>Thanks gentlemen. I honestly do not know whether the coach was referring to a tip or a slot. I was a part of the conversation with one NESCAC coach, and he simply said that my kid was “in the driver’s seat” and if he wanted to come in either ED or RD it would not be a problem. I did ask that coach what his success rate of getting recruits in was, and he told me that for kids with my son’s stats it was “almost 100%”. I was not part of the conversation with the other NESCAC coach, but he told my son that the only recruit with stats above the median for his school that they did not get in since he had been there (4-5 years if I remember) was a kid who simply blew off his essay (lots of misspellings, etc.) It is a maddening process, and as ChicagoMama intimated more so in the NESCAC than the Ivy. At least with the Ivy there are pretty straight forward guideposts that are out there for all to see. So far, the Ivy process has been very regular and linear for him. Not so the NESCAC. </p>
<p>One question on slots v tips. I know there is much written on the subject here, and I have read quite a lot of it. There is also a series of articles put out by Bowdoin, one of which sets out the band system in the NESCAC. I have also had a pretty detailed conversation about the system with the Amherst, Bowdoin and Tufts coach. My understanding is that the coach can protect a certain number of kids below the median admitted stats for a class (14 for football I believe) and a like number of kids whose stats are at or above that median. All three of the coaches I have spoken with have talked about admissions in those terms, rather than tips and slots. I assume, based on what I read here, that the 14 kids below the median are what are referred to as slots, and that those at or above are referred to as tips. It seems from the comments here that tips are believed to be less reliable than slots. If that is accurate, then according to the Bowdoin articles since a kid with stats at or above the median (A band in NESCAC speak) does not factor into the 14 slots, he is actually at a disadvantage in admissions at those schools. That can’t be right, can it?</p>
<p>Ohiodad, it seems nothing is really cut and dried in the NESCAC. Going back to the conversation I had with the lax coach - he said every school has its own language as far as recruiting. “slots and tips” weren’t in his vocabulary and it seems that the 3 coaches with whom you spoke don’t use the terms either. The bottom line seems to be that, yes, he can identify athletes he want to support, but no coach in the NESCAC can promise anything. If he can prioritize the athletes he wants to protect, it would certainly be based on their desirability as athletes and not inversely proportional to their academics.</p>
<p>Just an update on this thread. It seems that a number of Ivys finished their first batch of academic pre reads last week, and several (Cornell, Brown, Princeton, Penn) have kicked out a batch of offers. My son has kept in contact with a half dozen or so guys he met at junior days this spring and camps this summer. Four, including my son, recieved a formal offer in the last few days. Two points of interest. First, the process so far at each of the schools with which I am familiar worked exactly as each head coach said it would. Second, none of my son’s buddies have heard a peep from the school who told him that nothing much would happen in July.</p>
<p>Thanks for the update, Ohiodad. How hard are they pushing for commitments? My guess is they want to get guys locked in before the ‘not much happening in July’ school(s) get their act together</p>
<p>Exactly what do you mean when you write “formal offer?” Is it oral or written? With regards to timing, what is the length that the offer is good? Do the coaches require an ED app? When do the coaches say the Likely Letter can be issued?</p>
<p>I ask because I know a prospective football recruit but I am not familiar with the granular details of football recruiting. The recruit received a letter from one of those schools - but a careful parsing of the words revealed only an offer (special invitation) to apply ED, with a tenuous connection to football (though it came from a coach). There was no promise; only an invitation to apply ED. In my skepticism about recruiting and how coaches know how to use certain words which convey no real commitment, I took the letter to be a really really slick marketing tool which could have been sent to any number of prospective applicants - athletic and non-athletic. Again, with my cynicism, I saw the communication as an attempt to lock him into the application process with no reciprocal lock from the program.</p>
<p>Thanks gentlemen. His mother and I are very proud of him. As I am sure you both can appreciate from your own experiences, he has put an immense amount of work both into his studies and his craft and he is now seeing that effort pay tangible dividends.</p>
<p>Varska, in my son’s case there is no immediate pressure to commit. When he spoke on the phone with the coach on Saturday, he reported the coach told him that he was not pressuring him in anyway, but “at some point later in the year” there would come a time when he would have to know. On the other end, the coach told him if he had his application in by September 15th, he would probably get his likely letter on October 1st. One of the guys he is keeping in touch with, who happens to like another school better than the one who offered, told my son that he was given a soft deadline of the beginning of the school year to make a decision. Interestingly, that guy is one of the players I referred to earlier in the thread about language used by assistant coaches at camp, and the school who told him they really liked him and wanted him to come in early is the school he is waiting on now.</p>
<p>My son may have a bit more leeway on timing if he wants to wait because he is an O-lineman and each of the Ivys are going to try for five or six a year. Also, since his academic index is where it is he is not competing for a specific band slot. I doubt seriously he will wait very long though. The school who offered him was one of his top two schools. He has gone back and forth all month over this school and the one who told him nothing much will happen this month, with no clear favorite. I have suggested that he write a frank e mail to his recruiting coach at school #2 and say that he really likes school #2, but he wants to wrap his recruiting up by the beginning of the school year and that he has a standing offer from school #1, which he also likes a lot. The response from the recruiting coach could be very clarifying for him. Either way, my suspicion is he will end up at the school which offered him. I think he is just having trouble pulling the trigger because he liked the other school so much as well.</p>
<p>Stemit, sorry your post hit while I was crafting the above. The process with my son was actually pretty straight forward. At the school which offered him, he had discussions with his position coach after the camp which indicated they would give him an offer. At that camp, and every other one we attended (excepting Yale), the head coach stated flat out that no formal offers would be made until after academic pre reads were done, and then the offer would come only from the head coach. One school (Penn) said that every offer would come with a “generous” time limit. </p>
<p>We made a subsequent unofficial visit with my son so his mother could see the campus. At that time (last weekend) the head coach intimated to my son that he would get a likely letter, saying that if my son wanted to come to x, he could have a decision from Admissions on October 1st, and that he was at the top of the list for his position.</p>
<p>On Thursday, my son received an e mail from the head coach saying that pre reads had been returned from admissions, and he wanted to talk with my son. Because of the weirdness of the recruiting rules, they e mailed a few times to set a time when my son could call the coach. During that time, a number of my son’s new buddies began texting back and forth that they either got a formal offer or a message similar to my son’s. The conversation with the head coach occurred Saturday morning. During that conversation, the coach formally told him that admissions had given him the OK to offer my son one of his slots for a likely letter this admissions cycle. The coach said that the quickest way to get the letter would be to apply regular decision by September 15th. At that point he is supposed to contact the coach who will submit his name to admissions. When the letter is issued, the coach will then convert his application to SCEA and the process will end. As I said above, there was no specific time frame on the offer, other than a vague “we need to know eventually”. But it was certainly a very formal conversation, including what to say to the media, how soon my son could be given materials from the program, etc., etc.</p>
<p>Also, and this is for Varska, my son relayed that the coach told him that his pre read came back from admissions with a note saying he was a strong candidate for admissions without a likely letter. The coach told my son “he would have to be crazy” to send him through admissions “unprotected”. </p>
<p>"…and this is for Varska, my son relayed that the coach told him that his pre read came back from admissions with a note saying he was a strong candidate for admissions without a likely letter. The coach told my son “he would have to be crazy” to send him through admissions “unprotected”</p>
<p>Yep, if the coach really wants you he’s not going to roll the dice with admissions, even if you’re a 240 AI, double legacy, URM.</p>
<p>In my opinion, the likely letter is a two-way street. Ivies tend to stick with their likely letters barring a huge drop in grades. It’s one thing for the coach to say admissions said “no problem even without a likely letter” and another thing for a recruit who is set on a particular school to have a likely letter in hand.</p>
<p>If his grades drop such that a school would rescind a likely letter or an offer of admission, his mother will kill him well before he has an opportunity to play football </p>
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