Official prereads by admissions can be done after July 1 in the summer before senior year. However, every Ivy League coach my son spoke to asked for transcripts at the very start of contact (during his junior year). Coaches can’t give an official pre-read, but most have a pretty good idea of what it takes.
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Good replies so far. I’d just echo that this will vary a lot. I’d be ready with school profile, test scores, transcript, planned schedule for senior year and take cues from the coach on the timeline.
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Honestly I would have all of that info ready when it becomes apparent that you have a recruitable athlete. If you have some contact, either initiated by your child or a backdoor contact initiated by the coach, it is nice to have that transcript and school profile available. You won’t need anything official, but the coach will likely want to at least eyeball a transcript. I just emailed our counselor’s office once for the profile then every quarter and asked for an updated unofficial transcript, so my son had one available if any coaches asked for it. IIRC he may have sent it to coaches he was in correspondence with, not for sure. Sometimes you want to reach out, but if there isn’t competition going on it can be a good excuse to do so.
I’ll echo that OFFICIALLY no prereads happen before July 1. I would also wager the vast majority of those are positive, because the coach has already done (pre)prereads, and screened out most of the athletes they don’t think will pass through.
Same with OFFICIALLY offers from a coach don’t mean anything. First, a lack of an offer means you almost certainly aren’t getting in, so there’s that. Second, generally coaches are not offering anyone that they don’t think can pass the preread and ultimately get an official admission from the university. I know football and basketball have these dumb “offers” that aren’t commitable, which I guess just means that the coach will return your email? I don’t understand that at all. But for most sports, an offer means that you have coach support. Without that you are not getting admitted, with that at most Ivies you are pretty solid.
My info is on this topic is sport specific and a few years out of date, but for 2019 grads, at least in wrestling the Ivy coaches didn’t really want to extend offers until they knew the answer was yes. So my son had a couple “if you want to come here, I will give you an offer” offers once they knew he was close to making a decision on a different program.
Yes, offers can be pulled prior to official admission, just like they can at any other school prior to the letter of intent being signed. In practice I don’t think that is very common. A coach knows if they have a reputation for backing out on offers, pretty soon they will lose the ability to lock down players because no one will trust that they are good at their word.
All of this is dependent on academic performance staying the same, and not doing anything that would make the admissions committee think twice. But as long as that part is happening, I don’t particularly think an offer from an Ivy coach is any less real than an offer from a coach in any D1 conference. The minimum academic performance to keep that offer is just higher than most schools (although similar to Stanford, Northwestern and probably a few others).
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Anyone heard from any of the Ivies on their pre-read result/ progress? S sent pre-read docs to a few Ivies a few weeks back but has not heard back from any of them yet.
Nothing yet. Sent everything in 2-3 weeks ago with final junior year grades
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My son’s experience was that the results of pre-reads were not a big deal. As far as I could tell, there was no “reveal” of the results. He had given the coaches documents to begin with and the coaches said things along the lines of “looks like no problems” and then he submitted the documents for the pre-read and recruiting just moved forward.
This was pre-covid, but varsity blues was unfolding. I did hear that some recruits who would have been in play for previous years were not allowed on official visits that year as a result of the pre-reads. This ended their recruiting, so I am sure those student athletes remember getting back the pre-read results.
It wouldn’t hurt to send the coach an email: coach, any word on the pre-read? I’m still very excited about your school.
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Agree 100% with @LurkerJoe - Daughter recruited for class of 2025 (crew) and the pre-reads were not surprising. They had already seen all her academic info and she was not on the bubble falling within the 75% range of stats. It was still nice to get the validation, but the pre-read was not driving the decision.
It is one piece and for her the waiting and waiting came after the pre-reads. Keep in mind that crew is also a late recruiting sport. Also, I believe only a few AO’s at each school do the pre-reads and there are a lot of sports and some have faster timelines to lock up their top recruits.
Officials with the coaches and some teammates (via Zoom) didn’t happen until the Fall and she was lucky to have several unofficials in person pre-covid. She had more unofficials with teams again over Zoom during the Summer of 2021 viewed more as unofficials/getting to know you.
It was a long process and she ended up at her #1 choice - but for months and months felt she was not their #1 with the coach being much more casual in communication vs other schools asking where they ranked on her list.
I know I am stating the obvious, but all the Ivy league schools + Stanford etc are very different and she eliminated some and stood her ground about the right school and the right team and had an amazing freshman year.
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S is a mid distance runner and trying to get recruited for 2-mile/ 3200. All the Ivies tell him that his PR is within their recruiting range but none of them say what exactly is their standard. Anyone knows what’s a good 2-mile time for Ivy recruitment? Perhaps break it down by college? His test scores and academics are well within Ivy range.
I know the right answer is “it depends” but looking for some guidance to manage his and our expectations.
Look at the team results on their websites, as well as meet results at https://tfrrs.org/
Also pay attention to how many mid-distance runners are on the rosters, their years, and times.
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If they’re talking to him he’s probably in range or close.
It does depend, as you mention. Ivy gets faster and more loaded every year it seems. I’d say if he’s in the 9:20ish range or better for 3200 he probably has a decent chance of landing someplace. Closer to 9, especially if good 1600/800 speed, would have a good shot at the top programs. Sub 9 is probably a slam dunk everywhere. Again, those are very approximate educated guesses. A lot also depends on who else (including other event groups) is in play.
But slower than that can make it too. There just might be more waiting, less choice, needing other pieces to fall right.
For Princeton and Harvard I’m guessing you’d need to be down under 9:10 or faster. Penn, Columbia, Dartmouth can probably be slower than that. Cornell had been easiest in prior years but even they’ve been bringing in really talented runners lately so I don’t know. Yale tends to use fewer slots for distance I think, and Brown is really hard to read with the institutional and coaching changes there recently.
You can check out the “Harvard/Princeton/etc. welcomes class of x” posts on the news feeds for the teams and then check out milesplit to see what those recruits ran as juniors.
I really wouldn’t stress if things aren’t totally clear right now. As lurkerjoe has mentioned, the process for Ivy runners is much more casual. I’ve been involved with multiple distance kids going through this and never had coaches make a big deal out of the pre-read. It was almost always: send me your academic info when you get a chance…nothing much specific about a pre-read…and then eventually, “here are the dates we’re doing OVs, let me know what works”.
So in general I’d say if they’re talking to your son he’s in great shape.
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@politeperson - Thank you very much for your response. Very helpful. S’s 3200 is sub 9:20 now. He thinks he can get to sub 9:10 but he doesn’t get to run an official 3200 till Jan/Feb 2023 (since Sep’22 - Nov’22 is cross country season) which I guess is too late for recruiting as majority of athletic recruits get in by ED.
He has talked to almost all Ivy coaches and they all have shown interest given he has great GPAs and Test Scores as well.
The issue he is struggling with is - when he talks to any coach, they all sound as if his position is done deal. But such enthusiasm is followed by weeks of radio silence, no response to emails, no follow ups on literally anything…
Based on other responses I assume this is normal but this seems to be a lot for a 17 yo to process and get used to.
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VERY typical even for the best recruits.
I would keep exploring the other options but he’s definitely in range for at least some of those schools. I think if he wants to end up in that conference the chances are pretty good. Again, keep all options open.
Also keep in mind some of those coaches are vacationing and have been very busy through both NCAAs and US champs. But even in the best of times they are pretty casual about the process.
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Meant to mention this in my prior reply:
Most of the hay is in the barn as far as getting recruitable marks, sure. But I wouldn’t say that XC this fall is irrelevant. With things getting back to pre-Covid normal we’ll probably see OVs in the mid Sept to mid Oct range. There might be some offers of support prior to that but I’d expect most to be made after visits (yes, coaches aren’t lying when they say they like to see how recruits fit with the team). So a solid early season could help solidify things.
This wouldn’t be the case for an 800 kid. But in college the only 3k outdoors is the steeplechase. So most HS two milers are going to be college 5k/10k/XC guys. XC matters in evaluating that type of talent.
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Sub 9:20 is a very good time, but you and your son should cast a wide net. Even if you meet the recruiting standards, it will be a matter of what the team needs in a given year. Don’t fall in love with one school.
Since Penn and Harvard were mentioned above, Penn’s recruiting standard time for 3200 is 9:14; for 1600 it’s 4:14. At Harvard, it’s 9:12 and 4:10, respectively. It’s right on their websites.
Thank you @politeperson & @DadSays. Very helpful responses.
Does it matter when an athlete hits these recruiting standard time i.e. is someone who hit the standard time in May 2022 valued more than the one who hit the standard earlier i.e. say Feb 2022?
Not really—those are just rough times to hit by end of junior year.
I would take posted standards with a grain of salt. They’re a good check to see if you’re in the ballpark. But in practice they don’t really describe the actual recruiting class (most years).
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Different coaches have different strategies on posting recruiting standards. I have seen some teams where the times are definitely aspirational. There are also some teams where the posted times are absolute lower bounds. Given the way that Harvard’s distance squad has been progressing, I think a 9:12 3200 is more of a lower bound. I suspect their true recruiting class for this year will much faster than that.
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This was our experience, also. The Ivy League standards were pretty firm, but standards at some D3s like Amherst were more of a target. Two Ivy coaches told DS to contact him when he hit the times. He was only a few seconds over at the time, but that was the end of the conversation.
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What does it really mean when a coach says that he has enough people for now but is still interested in keeping in touch?
Is that an indication of end of road for the recruit?
- If yes, why not say so?
- If not, what could possibly change?
Maybe, maybe not. I would believe that the coach does want to keep communications open, as most of them have no problem cutting potential recruits loose.
A current ‘committed’ recruit could fall out of the process…they choose another school and decommit, don’t pass pre-read, pass pre-read and don’t get accepted, etc.
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