If your son is sure this is his #1, then he is all set. Applying before visits is only an issue if he wants to keep his options open. It will work for some kids, but not others. Coaches develop recruiting strategies that work to get good recruits for their teams.
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My Ivy recruitment data is a little dated, and obviously is highly sport dependent.
According to the Ivy League Agreement, the earliest an LL can be sent is October 1st, so for the sports that do their recruiting early, if you can get your full application in by September 15th, you can/may know by Oct 1st. After that, I think the LL letters go out every week or two.
The reason this is important, if anything goes wrong, as long as it goes wrong before Nov 1st, your athlete may have time to apply EA/ED somewhere else.
Our family had two Ivy recruits (different sports) and quite frankly, it was hard to relax until the LL was firmly in our hands. Our oldest did not take any OVs as most candidates in his sport make their commitments July 1st before senior year and this was back when the OV only happened early senior year. Our youngest took only 3 of 5 official visits in his junior year and had firm offers from 2 of them when he made his commitment. For him, the OVs were important as the first visit (which was the first offer), he learned things that weren’t generally known about practice times and acadmic course selection that influenced his ultimate decision.
Both kids had their LL in October.
As I said earlier, different sports have different timelines. In Ivy recruiting, the LL is the holy grail and the earlier the better. In our cases, everyone had worked too hard to leave anything thing to chance and we did not leave it to our athlete to interpret all the nuances and nomenclature. Ivy coaches do this every year and are fine meeting with the parents in the final stages to make sure everyone is on the same page.
Years ago, I wrote a story elsewhere on CC about a classmate of one of my son’s who thought he had committed to an HYP. I congratulated his mother and said, “it feels real when you get that LL.” She had never heard that term before, and when she asked her son, he said the coach told him he was “on the list of people he wanted”. No LL mentioned.
When she inquired with the coach, he said her son was 5th on his list, but he only had three LLs to give. The kid only heard what he wanted to hear and had no LL commitment. Fortunately it was early enough in the process that the kid, with his mother in tow, got a LL offer from a different HYP and that is where he ultimately went. Imagine finding out you didn’t have a LL after the ED/EA deadline had passed?
Athletic recruitment is an arcane process/ritual. You can never be to careful.
Anyway YMMV. Good luck to all.
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If you’re submitting your app by Sept 15, does the student ask teachers to do recommendations before then or do they not have to do them?
Your student will need how ever many LoRs the school requires. Hopefully your student has already asked junior year teachers for LoRs.
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In my son’s case, admissions did not start to process his application until all of the LORs had arrived. I think he got the application in mid-October, but one of his letters didn’t arrive until the very last minute. It was fine, but he might have gotten his likely letter earlier if his references had submitted earlier. He didn’t make this clear to his teachers, so they didn’t know. Of course, his teachers have their strategies for getting all of their letters out the door, and they are on the hook for November 1st (or whatever) so that might just be when their letter was going to arrive regardless. In the end it was fine, but every day between committing and the likely letter is a little stressful. It wouldn’t hurt to let the letter-writers know the application will be acted on as soon as their letter arrives.
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I agree it’s a good idea to let teachers and GCs know that this isn’t a typical ED/EA timeline so they know there’s value in getting materials in sooner than the hard deadline. Sometimes they can manage it and sometimes they can’t. I’ve always found teachers to be really enthusiastic about helping these kids out as much as they can, but at the same time a lot of them are very overloaded so it’s not always an easy ask.
Definitely agree that having the LL in hand is a great feeling. Just to emphasize what’s already been mentioned: the Ivy likely letter has the same force as a letter of admission; it is not a notice that you’ll probably be admitted but that you will be. It makes Dec 15 sort of anticlimactic, in a good way.
When is the latest schools will typically send an invite for a OV for XCTF?
I’m not sure if you’re asking about all schools or just Ivy League schools. For the former, OVs will be going on all year through June, with the priority recruits mostly taking visits in the fall.
For Ivies, the bulk of the visits usually happen prior to Nov and the majority of invitations probably are already out or will be in the next few weeks. There are usually a few late invites in the fall and sometimes even a few later in the year. (These later invites can’t really be counted on to happen though; it just depends if the coaches do or don’t get what they want earlier).
If you’ve been targeting a particular conference and not getting much interest, it’s not a bad idea to make sure you’re targeting appropriate schools and casting a wide net.
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Thanks, S has 3 visits scheduled so far but waiting on his #1 which is ironically the least competitive. Coach says still no feedback from admissions for the pre-read but I was wondering if it’s getting late since it’s difficult to plan visits around XC meets.
Was also wondering about what happens if the coach offers a spot soon after the OV but the athlete still has more OVs to go on. One coach said he will give a 2 week period for the athlete to commit or not… Do athletes usually cancel other visits if they get an offer from their #1?
I don’t think it’s real late yet as long as the coach is still communicating with him. Some of them are just getting back into things this week and tying up loose ends. The Dartmouth men’s XC coach just left apparently, so it might be a bit chaotic at that program this recruiting cycle.
It’s definitely difficult to work around XC season with multiple OVs. Sometimes fitting in the top 3 is all you can do. But those coaches will work with you if you tell them what’s going on. I’ve seen Columbia and Princeton visited in the same 3-4 day weekend for example.
Generally I think most coaches are okay with letting the visits play out as long as that happens early enough. Two weeks to decide is fairly reasonable especially if that visit is taken later. You can definitely cancel upcoming trips if a decision has been made though.
It depends. If you know for sure it is your #1, congrats. You have won the grand prize in the “where will I go to school next year” game. Take your prize and enjoy your senior year without that stress.
If you aren’t certain, you certainly can go on other visits if you haven’t accepted the offer yet. Do NOT accept an offer then go on a visit elsewhere. That will not sit well with either coach and could cost you offers at both places.
As far as how long offers remain open, that depends. I know one athlete at a service Academy that was only given 48 hours to make a decision, and I know it happens at less selective schools all the time. Not sure if many Ivy coaches do that or not. No one did to my son. They probably do when they’re getting close to the end though and running out of time.
To address a few things that came up on recent posts:
My son’s Ivy team is hosting a few recruits this weekend. His sport is wrestling, what I have seen both with Ivies and other D1 and D2 schools is that they tend to host recruits in batches. Generally parents aren’t involved, although I have seen them invited. Usually when they are they have a fair amount of free time and don’t really see their kid much during the 48 hours. It’s more for giving the parents a bit of a dog and pony show and then having them there for a one on one meeting at the end with the coach and the recruit. I don’t think that happens the majority of the time, but it does happen.
S19 had different rules than they have now and couldn’t go to OVs until senior year. He was already committed by that point, so I didn’t go. But I know his school sometimes invites parents, I know one dad who is going this weekend with his son. No idea what the schedule is for him, but he called me a couple days ago to get the parent perspective on S19’s school and program. He said he was going, and I know the coach is planning on meeting with him at some point.
S19’s junior year he did an UV at a P5 school that was basically tagging along with an OV group during the day. The parents who were there watched a practice along with the recruits. I think we had to buy our own lunch, because we were there as an UV so they couldn’t pay for ours.
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It just occurred to me you might have been asking if it’s difficult for the programs to schedule OVs around their own meets. I had assumed you meant your son’s meets.
Anyway, it’s not really an issue for them. There aren’t many meets and the whole team doesn’t usually participate in all of them. They usually carve out 2-3 weekends where they try to host the bulk of recruits. But usually they can fit some recruits in at other times.
Hi. A naive question as I’m new to all this. Are you talking about OV for 2024 or 2023 graduates? Thanks
Ivy league track/XC are planning/scheduling OVs for student athletes graduating from HS in 2023 right now. These are scheduled so that recruits can see the schools, commit to one and apply early (Nov 1?). The timeline starts to get fairly tight at this point.
Phew! Thanks.
Coaches handled the timeline differently. My son decided early he would limit his OVs to 3, and make a decision by Oct. 15th. One coach told him he would let him know when the slots started to fill up. One coach told him he would hold a slot until the 15th for him. The coach of the last OV said they would bring him in for an earlier OV mid-week if he was under pressure to make a decision before his OV was scheduled. And then one school wanted to wait for 1st semester grades before finalizing the pre-read, which was after November 1. It was a straightforward decision to eliminate them.
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Thanks for all the replies. Super helpful to get feedback from people who have done this before.
My D is in the middle of this right now for XC/track. 3 Ivy OV’s scheduled + committed interest from high academic D3s, expect decision shortly after the 3rd visit. Our biggest lesson in the whole process was coaches expect asymmetric expression of interest - they basically want high interest, high fit and high commitment. You should be pinging them relatively aggressively starting in April or so until they either get you slotted into the process, or they say no. Unless you get an email saying ‘here are our recruiting standards, let us know if you make these (e.g. not interested at this point)’ you should assume you are in the mix. Often no response is more of an issue of the coach being busy, or choosing not to respond to recruits during a given window (e…g league, NCAA finals, summer vacation). Ivy coaches are oriented around Oct 1st decisions, so they were much more passive in the Spring, until pre-read window opened. Unofficial visits over the summer really helped as well as far as gauging interest. D3 coaches are way different - very engaged, actively recruiting, reaching out…much hungrier.
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Have all the coaches updated you abt the pre-reads? Seems like the admission offices are slow this year
Yes, but it was slow for some schools. Submitted mid-July, feedback early/mid August.