But that is true for any recruit, at any school, in any sport. Granted, the recruit to a school with a 98% acceptance rate is more likely to get in than an Ivy recruit, but it is still just a verbal offer by a coach until the admissions office says Yes, and there is nothing stopping either side from changing until that NIL is signed. Even then, either side can decide against the ‘deal’ but may be limited in where the athlete can play the next year.
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I think in some sports they do have a list of class of 2024 that is pretty close to what it will be next July. The lacrosse coaches aren’t waiting for the leftovers from Maryland, Virginia, or Notre Dame before making their offers.
Have they taken OVs? Maybe, maybe unofficials, maybe they’ve just had a lot of contact at tournaments or camps, or they are the younger brothers/sisters of current players, or cousins, or high school teammates, but the coaches have a pretty good list of '24s by now in many of the sports.
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My son is a wrestler and definitely that’s what I know the most about. I have kind of seen the whole range, because initially he was trying to get recruited to a high academic school as a nobody, but started having a lot of national tournament success after his sophomore season. By the end was a pretty highly sought national recruit in D1, he had multiple top 10 program offers.
He ended up going to an Ivy, at least in part because there is no NFL or NBA at the end of the rainbow. He may try for an Olympic team in 2024 as a longshot. But at that point his career is probably over, and he has another 40 years to figure out how to pay the bills. So that Ivy diploma looked pretty attractive.
I’ve been a bit of a college admissions nerd for a while, especially when it comes to athletic recruits and high academic ones. So I am at least a little familiar with other sports too.
But Wrestling is definitely what I have the most experience with. Both with my son and with close friends of both his and mine, I’ve been around a decent amount of wrestling recruiting, ranging from the tip top D1’s all the way down to no name jucos.
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I was speaking specifically for crew and tried to make it clear in my post - no clue about other sports and their recruiting timelines.
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Your son sounds like quite an athlete/wrestler. Good luck to him as he finishes up his collegiate career!
For wrestling, how many Likely Letters can the Ivy wrestling coaches request or are allocated?
No. I meant 24’s. I was responding to @stressismyname who specifically mentioned soccer. For soccer, right now, Ivy recruiting has basically finished for 23’s and is looking at 24, 25, some 26. They have a list of 24’s and it would be hard to get onto that list barring something great happening your junior school season. Same for basketball. Those are the two sports I’m most familiar with.
There is a difference between commitments/offers announced and the coaches having their lists set and no longer looking for new players.
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I honestly have no idea. I know it goes against all the advice, but we didn’t bother asking the coach for one. We made a handshake deal in his office and I took him at his word.
I don’t really recommend that. My son was not in a unique position, but in a very good and not normal one.
First, once he committed everyone knew he had been given an offer, and if it had been pulled that reflects poorly on the coach. He wasn’t a top 10 recruit nationally, but most people involved in the sport knew who he was, and his commitment was reported on. Most of the people that coach was trying to recruit over the next couple of years knew him and would have known the situation if things blew up. Wrestling is a small sport especially at the top levels. Everyone kind of knows everyone and everything, at least to an extent.
Two, he had other programs, including two Ivies and at least one of the top 10 programs, that I am reasonably sure would have found a way to get him in through regular admission if he didn’t get in early decision at his first choice.
As I reread that it sounds really arrogant, and that is not my intention. It’s just the reality he was working with. We weren’t super worried because he was a buyer not a seller in the process by the time he committed after his junior season. Which is not at all what the situation was six months earlier when he was emailing coaches trying to get on their radar. But by the time he committed we felt like he was very much in the drivers seat, and it would have been annoying but not catastrophic if his offer fell through.
I doubt there are many coaches who won’t consider changes to their ‘lists’ should a better player(s) come along. After all, they are trying to replace their current student-athletes with better ones, year in and year out.
The number of fully supported coach slots varies from school to school, and from year to year. Coaches do not offer LLs, they offer their full support thru the admissions process, and a student ‘commits to the process’. Admissions send LLs directly to the recruit after they have submitted their app and admissions has thoroughly reviewed the app.
Most of the fully supported recruits receive LLs, but not all do…sometimes these admissions committees get overwhelmed with apps and just don’t have time to get all the LLs out, especially for the recruits who submit their app on the last day the app is open.
In terms is supported slots, iirc the Ivy numbers we were told ranged from 6 or 7 to 10. The Columbia coach wouldn’t tell me for some reason. The other coaches all readily offered up the info when asked.
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Does anyone know how much support Ivy coaches can give if the student isn’t given a supported slot? A coach said (for XCTF) how around 6 athletes on the team applied without a slot but made it on the team and was wondering if anyone knew how much that “support” would help
There’s no formal, high-impact support they can offer beyond the slots they have, which offer recruits nearly 100% chance of admission.
I know some coaches say they can write a letter of support or something similar. It’s possible that improves odds a very small amount but I wouldn’t count on it too much as a recruit if I had other options. If it were very reliable it’d violate various Ivy rules.
Of course, if the coach isn’t asking for anything and you can get this soft support while applying to other schools there’s nothing to lose.
There’s no question XCTF athletes are admitted every year without full coach support. Some are legacies and others are just admitted on their own and join the team. Maybe a few of them do have soft support from coaches but I don’t know how causal that is.
Another thing to consider is that a recruit that is too low on an Ivy coach’s list to get full support might have an uphill climb to travel to meets, especially Heps. Whereas that same recruit, if good enough to at least get recruiting attention at an Ivy, probably would be top 7 at a lot of good D3 schools. That might be a better experience.
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Technically zero help or it runs afoul of Ivy League rules.
Having said that, I know of a couple people who were told they were probably 50-50 with the support, and that’s at schools that are 10% otherwise. Did that really pan out? I have no idea. You would have to have access to a lot more data than I do to know if it really actually helps or not.
My best guess is that the 50-50 number is probably accurate-ish IF you are also a kid on paper who looks like they would fit in very well with the class. Not just the grades you need for athletic admission, but the grades a typical student would need, along with at least some activities and leadership outside of your sport. The coaches probably know that and can give an accurate assessment. But it’s also one that is a lot fuzzier, and kind of a wink wink nudge nudge thing so whether they are giving completely accurate information I’m not sure. Probably they are shading it a bit more favorable than it really is.
This certainly isn’t a basket I would put all of my eggs in. But if you have a kid who really wants to go to a certain school, and that coach is saying they can give some informal pull, and you are OK with the risk you are taking that you might not get to play anywhere it’s probably worth giving it a shot.
But I would certainly have a good back up plan in mind, because if a coach is saying in this circumstance you are 50-50 I am guessing there is more than a 50% chance you’ll have to fall on the back up plan.
In our experience, the only Ivy coach that had proactively said that she would send a support letter was the Harvard coach. Makes sense as one of the Harvard admissions criteria is an athletic rating which applies to all applicants, not just recruited athletes. 50/50 for Ivies is a stretch IMO as the regular admissions rates are single digit, and even the strongest unhooked applicant’s chances (absent some major national/international accomplishment) are probably less than 20%. Looking at the Harvard litigation data, the acceptance rate for the top decile in Academic Index was 11.7% overall (13.59% for White and and 9.36% for Asian American applicants). See the chart on P43. chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://samv91khoyt2i553a2t1s05i-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Doc-415-1-Arcidiacono-Expert-Report.pdf
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I see… My D got left off the list for OVs at her dream school and is considering still applying ED but is unsure how much help she would get because the coach wasn’t too clear. She already has a visit to another Ivy but is set on this one unfortunately.
Has anyone heard of coaches reaching out to other recruits that didn’t go on an OV or were all of the recruiting class usually invited? Only asking because have heard this Ivy (not HYP) usually has a harder time getting people to go to their school due to various reasons and usually invites runners that are a little too above their standards that often end up committing elsewhere.
I have heard of an Ivy track program miscalculating and needing to offer more OVs than they did initially–once. I have heard of many times student athletes (TR/XC) were offered official visits but no slot. @BKSquared named the only Ivy that I have ever heard where a coach’s letter could help without a real slot. My data suggest it really helps if the student athlete is legacy there. For all the other schools I am pretty sure “you are either on the list or you are not” (quote from former coach).
If your daughter is offered a slot at a different Ivy program, and choses to walk away from that to apply without a coach’s support, she needs to be aware that she will likely get into neither school. Early on in the process, I confirmed with my son that he wasnt going to walk away from an effectively sure thing at an Ivy for a chance at a dream school. That was an easy choice for him, but your daughter has to make a decision she can live with.
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So when the coach says she has “very good odds” based off the pre-read, it’s likely BS just to get her to apply ED?
I would call it glass half full thinking more than BS. I don’t think many of those coaches are intentionally trying to deceive recruits. But there’s a big difference between the nearly sure admission that comes from full support vs. whatever odds this coach thinks she has to basically get in on her own.
I’d really encourage her to keep an open mind, take the Ivy visit she has, and keep communicating with the coaches. She might really love the team she’s going to visit and that might change her view. And who knows, maybe something else pops up in a month.
I’ve known a few examples of Ivy programs on the women’s side that have needed to fill in after the rounds of OVs didn’t yield the commitments they expected. One friend of ours a few years ago had a daughter who was choosing between an Ivy and a state flagship until the last week of Oct when her former first choice Ivy reached out for a quick OV. Which she took two days later, was offered a slot, and…decided she liked the other Ivy better.
I’m not saying that’s common but things do happen sometimes in Oct and even later.
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IF the other OV pans out and she gets an offer, then you are trading a bird in the hand for a regular student+ application. There is no comparison between an athletic slot offer and pretty much anything else, short of having your dad’s name on the new science building. It’s all but a guarantee.
She needs to be comfortable that if she ends up with neither school she would be ok with it. I’m guessing even if she is a borderline athletic recruit for an Ivy she would be a good recruit for a D3, so she may be able to do a scramble for RD and go that route. But it’s a pretty risky move.
In the end I probably would let my kid make the choice, but I would be leaning pretty heavy on her to take this remaining OV. Even if she gets an offer she declines, she may be able to come back to them hat in hand in December and get support through RD, although that’s far from a sure thing.
As far as schools, I have heard a couple times about Penn at least offering this up, if that is the school in question. I would be really surprised if it helped at Princeton, I thought they were the biggest sticklers to the rules of any of the coaches we talked to, and when I made that comment to a dad in a different sport they had the same experience. I haven’t heard about programs other than Penn and Harvard giving the “wink wink nudge nudge” bump offer, although that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
At a minimum I think for this to work your D needs an application that would give her a fighting chance without the sport.
Add a minimum I would nail down what kind of support the other coach is giving. She may not be getting anything from them and it’s only applying as a regular student without the plus. Which is OK, but then she needs to be prepared for the fact that there’s probably an 80+ percent chance that she is going to end up with no Ivy admission and possibly no sport in college.
This may be one of those unfortunate situations in life where you realize you just didn’t get what you want. It’s time to accept your loss and move on, rather than prolonging the inevitable and making the ultimate outcome worse because you didn’t accept the reality of the situation.