Ivy Recruiting - What support can a coach provide?

Athletic Recruits
1

There has been quite a lot of back and forth lately on recruiting in the Ivy League. A lot of good information has been shared, but it has also cluttered a lot of threads and is disbursed throughout the forum. So, since I am old and spent the day yesterday (and so far today) laid up with a bad back, I thought I would set up a thread to try and address and focus the disparate opinions about the use of likely letters, early recruiting and “soft” support in the Ivy League.

As a predicate, here are a couple of points that I hope are beyond debate at this point.
1)Each Ivy League team is allowed to support a number of recruits equal to 1.4 times the travel roster of each varsity sport sponsored at the particular institution on a four year rolling basis. A school may support fewer athletes, but no more. (Harvard Crimson Article June 27, 2003).
2)In all sports other than Football, Men’s Hockey and Basketball (which are governed by slightly different rules), the average Academic Index for each year’s group of admitted student-athletes must be above the “presumptive floor” and equal or exceed a specified score based on the average Academic Index of the school’s previous four admitted classes (Summary of Ivy Rules for Coaches and Administrators)
3)A likely letter, defined as a “probalistic communication” in Part X(B), Section 3© of the Ivy Manual, is the only expressly authorized form of support in the written materials available in the public domain.
4)There is no written prohibition in the public domain which limits the issuance of probalistic communications to some number less than the total number of supported athletes.
5)Probalistic communications may only be issued by rule between October 1st and March 15th during a recruits senior year of high school. (Ivy Manual Part X(B), Section 3(a)).
6)Absent “compelling reasons”, a probalistic communication may only be issued after the receipt of all required application materials. (Ivy Manual Part X(B), Section 3(d)).
7)Probalistic communications may only be issued by admissions, and coaches are expressly prohibited from commenting on “favorable admissions decisions”. (Ivy Manual Part X(B), Section 3© and (e)).

Within this framework, I think it is important to acknowledge that there are several earnest posters here who are convinced that things work differently than as laid out above. In particular, there has been significant debate over whether likely letters are routinely issued to athletes who are otherwise supported, and whether there is some softer form of support in the Ivy League.

To try and understand this, I looked at ten sports at two different schools. The ten sports I picked were all sports discussed here in some frequency. The two schools were chosen because their web sites were easy to use, all ten sports were updated for this academic year and because I am pretty familiar with how recruiting works at both, at least for football. The list below shows the likely letter slots which would be available to each sport based on a straight forward application of the travel roster times 1.4 rule in parenthesis, and then the rostered freshmen athletes at each school. Obviously this is not exact because a particular sport could have issued a few more or a few less slots in a different class year. But I think it is as close as we can get, given that the rosters themselves will not show attrition without looking at four years of historical data, something I am unwilling to do even on pain meds.

Baseball (7) - - Penn 11 - Yale 8
Crew (32) - Penn 39 - Yale 34
Fencing (8.4) - Penn 10 - Yale 10
Men’s Lax (11.2) - Penn 9 - Yale 11
Men’s T&F (16.1) - Penn 19 - Yale 16
Men’s Swimming (9.1) - Penn 10 - Yale 9
Women’s Lax (9.1) - Penn 6 - Yale 6
Women’s Soccer (7) - Penn 9 - Yale 8
Women’s Swimming (9.1) - Penn 10 - Yale 8
Women’s T&F (16.1) - Penn 17 - Yale 14
Totals (126) - Penn 140 - Yale 124

A couple of things jumped out at me. One, Penn has significantly more rostered freshmen in these sports than Yale, which would be in accord with the general Yale policy of having fewer supported recruits. That said even Yale is very close to the maximum number of recruits who could be supported. This is even more interesting because the formula does not account for the excess of football players each school will take each year (both are allotted and routinely take 30 per year under the band system, even though the formula would indicate 21.7 likely letter slots for football) Therefore, it would appear that both schools, for these sports at least, would be above the Ivy cap for supported athletes.

What accounts for this difference? I would posit that there are athletes sprinkled on these rosters who likely were recruited, in some cases pretty hard, but were not ultimately supported for a likely letter. I think in all recruiting there are a number of kids who are in the mix right up to the end, but for one reason or another the coach ultimately decides not to pull the trigger. In regular D1, this distinction is stark. There is either money or there isn’t. But in the Ivy, not making the cut for support for a letter is more amorphous, particularly for very string students. Maybe the coach decided not to send the kid’s application to the sub committee or admissions officer dealing with likely letters, but did write a note to the general admissions committee saying the kid was a close to varsity level athlete who might help his team down the road, and maybe that note makes the kid stand out in the admissions meeting in the way that any other interesting extra curricular would.

I think this would account for the persistent feeling here that there is “soft” support. A kid is told that there are no more likely letters available, but that the coach will put a note on his admissions file saying he would love to have the kid. Maybe the coach does that ten times a year, and maybe two kids get in. Both of those kids are going to be convinced that the coach nudged them over the line.

I also think this accounts for at least some of the feeling that there are athletes who are supported but not issued a likely letter. While I think there are circumstances where a supported recruit is not issued a letter, I can conceive of no reason why such would be a regular occurrence. I can see how a young teenager can be misled by a coach into thinking the degree of interest the coach has is greater than it really is, and who may not understand the distinction between appending a note to the application and sending the application to the people handling likely letters.

Thoughts?

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Thank you for the concise discussion. My son is currently knee deep in this process and waiting on likely letter. I may have to share your post here with his HS counsellor who knew nothing about LL when I mentioned it :-/
This is extremely helpful.

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Interesting observations Ohiodad51. I don’t have a comprehensive thought on this but maybe a few thoughts/data points will contribute to the discussion.

One thing that would have a slight impact on the totals is that some of the track recruits (the distance runners) are also cross-country recruits. Likewise there are a small number of athletes recruited for football who also run track, or vice versa. There may be other overlaps but probably all told there aren’t enough to have a big impact on the numbers.

This article quotes the Yale athletic director as saying there, the total number of recruits for the class of 2015 was 177, including 30 for football.

http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/03/04/with-expansion-changes-to-recruitment-policy-unclear/

Here’s an article on the Yale men’s soccer class of 2019. It’s interesting because the coach specifically says a couple of the players (two out of nine) “got in on their own”, which would seem to say they didn’t get formal support or Likely Letters, but they did get in and play soccer. I assume admissions knew they were potential varsity soccer players but I don’t know what impact (if any) that had on the decisions.

http://yalebulldogs.com/sports/m-soccer/2015-16/releases/20150522e2eti5

One more Yale article, which says that most of the coed sailing team athletes are walk-ons.

http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2009/11/04/sailing-relies-on-walk-ons/

Finally, an anecdote from an athlete I know who was talking with the coaches at one Ivy (and ultimately ended up at another Ivy). The coaches were quite interested to know if one or both parents had attended the school and implied that if so, they might not need to use one of their limited support/LL slots. Interesting because that Yale soccer article mentions that one of the non-supported athletes is a legacy. Obviously there’s no formal category of “legacy athlete” in the Ivy rules, but from these two data points, perhaps there is one informally at some of the schools.

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@Ohiodad51 – Good luck with the back injury and interesting theory. I have experience with only one kid, in the sport of track and field, so take this for what it is worth.

I agree with @bluewater2015 that kids playing multiple sports and kids “walking on the team” without having received admissions support from a coach are hard to account for in your numbers. Not suggesting you do this, but If you were to take a look at the personal best times of the freshman on the roster of any Ivy League track squad, you will see several who do not have the kinds of times in their events that would have justified a coach to burn a precious coach’s slot to get them into the school. Perhaps there are more athletes on other teams’ rosters that “got in on their own” than one would expect?

As for why a coach would offer a slot for admissions support but not make a likely letter available, I am guessing there are several potential reasons. Here is one line of thought that I believe to be true (perhaps it is already understood but I’ll state it anyway):

Coaches love getting athletes on their teams without having to burn admissions slots. I think most of us who have been through the recruiting process are aware of scenarios where a kid is strongly encouraged by a coach to apply without coach’s support because the kid’s academic profile is so strong. Some kids are willing to do this because they have solid back-up plans at other colleges and/or they really want to go to said school. Playing this forward…

Sometimes coach’s slots become available late in the admissions cycle. For example, athlete 1 receives a coach’s slot and support for a likely but then the admissions committee rejects the athlete. Now, the coach recycles the slot to support athlete 2 – a kid that put in an unsupported application but who is now going to get support. But, because the slot is being offered so close to the official admissions notification date, the admissions department is unwilling to do a likely letter. So the coach offers support but no likely letter because that is his/her only option, else the slot is wasted. The athlete has already submitted an application so not getting the early indication of admission through a likely letter is really not a big deal, although it would surely be greatly appreciated!

I can’t say how often this happens but it might be more prevalent than one would guess. Using another track example, it is really interesting to see how many commitments to run track at the Ivys were submitted to milesplit (a track and field website for high school athletes) on, or within a day or so, of the regular decision notification date. I would have thought more kids would have publicly celebrated their Ivy admission earlier had they received a likely letter.

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Is there any insight into other top tiers… stanford? Told he was too late in the game to up issue likely, coach said that would have needed to be initiated in summer.

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There is a number of hooked students on Ivy athletic rosters, mostly developmental and legacy admits. It is a honor to be on the team and influential parents can request that their kid would not only be admitted but be taken on the team. Athletic slots are mostly not used on these “recruits” but they announce their athletic “commitment”. I also do believe that some softer version of support do exist for a viable academic admit with close to varsity athletic abilities. I do know a HYP walk-on with high academic stats who could be a recruited athlete at a non-HYP. I do not believe that this kid would apply to HYP EA without some sort of coach support.

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@Ohiodad51, first of all - sorry about the back and the meds, but glad you’re using your time productively. I think that’'s a very useful quantitative analysis that you’ve put together and I hate to clutter it with anecdotes and “I know a guy…”, but this is CC and that’s how we roll. :slight_smile:

I’m going to drill down into outdoor track and field. Travel squad size permitted by the Ivy League, 46 (Student Athlete Handbook 2014-2015). Multiply by 1.4 and divide by 4 =16.1 LL’s max granted to this program by the league (as you stated).

I go back to the Harvard T&F news archives and read articles in mid summer - “Harvard Welcomes 14 Women to Track and Cross Country Teams”, then read the rosters in the fall and there are generally 2 to 3 more women listed on the roster than were announced. There are a few years in which I have direct knowledge of the status of the athletes. I can say that the ones listed in the news release received LLs. The ones that were on the roster but not part of the announcement were walk-ons, never under the impression that they were being supported. Interestingly, or maybe not, at least 2 of the non-supported athletes were double-legacy applicants and didn’t have the times/marks one would normally associate with D1 track and field.

It seems every sport in the Ivies has an alumni group behind them - Friends of Yale Track or Brown Tennis, etc. These are important fundraising arms for the sport and are usually chaired by a former member of the team. Their children may find a spot on the roster. They aren’t LL kids and they don’t count toward the team AI computation.

I completely agree with you about “soft support”. There are LL recruits, or should I say “recruits that are fully supported, listed as part of the team AI and * may * receive a LL in the mail if admissions can be bothered to put a stamp on an envelope”, and there are nice EC’s. That said, all things being equal,sometimes a nice EC is all you need to put you into the “yes” pile - but it’s not even close to being a LL recruit.

Last thing - back to the “rogue coach”. Crew, in particular needs a lot of bodies. Mens and Womens, Lightweight and Heavyweight -that’s a lot of kids. You might have 60-some kids in each class. Coaches need a lot more bodies than they have LLs. Sometimes that can lead to some questionable tactics. Unfortunately, it can become a matter of ‘how can you convince a kid to apply ED without coming right out and saying he’s fully supported?’

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@varska to your last point then…are you indicating that due to its numbers many crew athletes get in on their own with their strong academics as there can’t possibly be the number of available LLs?
I may have read your point incorrectly.

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@tonymom -

Not exactly. I’m saying there is a temptation for a coach to convince as many kids as he can to go EA/ED - even if only 1 of 5 get admitted. Not saying they all do it, but just reiterating how important it is to know the exact type of support you’re getting before pulling the EA/ED trigger.

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Got it!

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Just to clarify, how many types of support are there? Is it binary–either you is or you ain’t? Or is classicalmama correct that there is “soft” or some other kind of intermediate support?

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In a way it seems roughly analogous to the situation at scholarship schools, with scholarship athletes (full or partial) ~ supported/LL recruits; recruited walk-ons ~ athletes who may get some kind of boost from being an athlete, as with other kinds of ECs, but not like what the LL folks get; and pure walk-ons ~ pure walk-ons.

With so much competition for admissions in the Ivies, I guess it’s not surprising that some of the ones in the second group in particular are also legacies (who obviously get a boost from that as well as whatever boost they may get from athletics).

As an aside, it’s interesting to me that Ivy football teams can have up to 120 supported/LL recruits across classes, where D1 FBS schools are capped at 85 scholarships . . . not sure what to make of that.

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@fenwaypark,

I think we’re all on the same page that there there are the listed/supported recruits - and their chances are 95%+, and there is everything else. A letter from a coach? What’s that? A slight bump for an applicant that would already be seriously considered? I’d call that more of an application enhancement than support. But, as @Ohiodad51 pointed out, if he does that with 10 athletes and 2 get in, those 2 will be convinced it was the letter that nudged them in. So the anecdotes of 'soft support" continue.

More accurately I should have said, before pulling the ED/EA trigger - know exactly what you’re getting. Are you being supported or aren’t you? I think for many recruits, the easiest way to cut through any ambiguity is to ask about the LL. While it is possible to be supported without one, if coach tells you he has requested a LL for you, that indicates exactly where you stand.

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It isn’t a flat slots / 4 = # freshmen. And it’s also not number seniors graduated = # new freshman.

It’s a good starting point for approximations. And I am very intrigued what a large portion of each admissions class is legacy and athletes…

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@bluewater2015, I think this is a really good analogy. As I said up the thread, I think there are a number of men and women who are recruited right up to the end, but who for one reason or another do not make the final cut in both “regular” D1 and Ivy. Some unknowable percentage of those “recruited walk ons” are going to get into Yale or Penn or wherever, but they are going to do it through the general ED or RD pool, rather than in the expedited process set up for supported athletes and likely letter review. How much a coach’s note, or just the fact of athletic participation, helps in that endeavor is information we are never going to have. Yet another reason to always listen to @varska:

Building on this a bit, and to @startingblock’s point above about circumstances where a likely letter may not be issued, I think it behooves all recruits to ask precisely where they stand. Sure there are individual circumstances where support is given but admissions decides it won’t review the application in the likely letter process. But I would want the coach to explain to me why that was the case.

As far as the question about the difference between the 85 head count scholarship limit in D1 FBS (or 63 split among no more than 85 in FCS) and the Ivy 120 roster limit, realize that while the scholarship limits are 85, non Ivy D1 teams can roster up to 110 players. The extra 25 players are usually recruited walk ons. Also, regular D1 schools can use medical exceptions to both the scholarship and roster limits for injured guys while the Ivy can not. One last point, I do not believe Ivy schools recoup their likely letter slots on a one for one basis if a kid quits, while in scholarship D1 you do.

And thanks for the well wishes about my decrepitude. I occasionally forget that I am no longer 21 years old and working out every day. My body sometimes takes steps to remind me.

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ClarinetDad16, I think that as a general statement, supported athletic recruits have a significantly stronger hook than legacies. At HYP, roughly 20-30% of primary legacies are admitted and the percentages are much higher for supported athletes (who, to be sure, have already been through pre-reads etc. by then so it’s an apples to oranges comparison). For those who fall into both categories, so much the better for them.

Of course there are “regular legacies” (with parents who are generally successful at their work but not to the point of being big donors) and then there is a much smaller group with their family names on campus buildings etc . . . it’s probably higher than 20-30% for the latter group.

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A few comments about this analysis

The 2003 article by the Harvard Crimson indicates that the cap of the recruited athletes of 1.4 times the size of travel squad does not count the football team and the football team is simply limited to 30 recruits per year.

A NYT article indicates that for all sports except football, men’s hockey and basketball, a four year rolling average of the AI for freshman athletes is used to determine if a school meets or exceed the athletic AI target. The four year rolling average makes it easier for a coach to offer full support for a likely letter to a sophomore or junior.

The following is from the Harvard Crimson:

Not all athletes that receive likely letters accept them, some recruited athletes that are accepted do not end up matriculating, and some recruited athletes that do attend do not end up playing their sport. I would be careful about drawing conclusions about the Ivy League recruitment process based on the number of freshman athletes on a roster.

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@bluewater2015 - agreed and it isn’t just the bump in admit rate. Look at a class of 1000 freshman and 300 of them coming in through a special door. That leaves 700 spots - how many of them for regular decision? Those unhooked RD kids probably have a 2-3% acceptance rate when all is said and done. That’s insane.

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Agree that recruited athletes will get more of a bump than legacies. Legacies are lucky to get in with average stats, and Ivies definitely take athletes who are above average. The stats from Penn indicate that the average ED-admitted legacy at their school has stats higher than the average stats for the RD class that is admitted.

Please note that national recognition, for all but football where there are many many spots, is what we see as most important to Ivy coaches. Performance at recruiting camps, even with current players, is ignored if the player is not ranked nationally (team sports, individual sports are different).

Turnover for Ivy athletes can be high.

20

For any youngsters who may be interested in becoming an Ivy athlete, here is my take:

  1. Ask for an academic pre-read. If this comes back positive;
  2. Ask the coach if you are being recruited as a student-athlete, or are being offered an athletic "recruitment slot" as those terms are used in the link provided by bluewater above, and here:

http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/03/04/with-expansion-changes-to-recruitment-policy-unclear/

  1. If the answer is "yes", ask what the policy is at the school and for that team about notifying you of your admission status earlier than the standard notification date. (likely letter) This is especially important for you if you may be facing an NLI signing period that occurs earlier than the standard Ivy admissions notification date.
  2. Request a financial pre-read, if this is relevant to your family situation. If this comes back positive;
  3. Go on the OV that will almost certainly be offered to you. If this is positive;
  4. You might want to pull the trigger on committing to the application process.

Note, if the answer to #2 above is negative and you are not being offered a slot, you can expect no advantage in the admissions process due to your athletics–other than that of a nice EC. Of course you can try to walk-on to the team if you are admitted on your own. In my limited experience, teams that accept walk-ons have legitimate tryouts, and individuals who are in this situation are not allowed to use varsity facilities before they possibly make the team (for insurance and other reasons).

If you get in on your own, no recruitment slot and…voila…find yourself on the varsity roster, welcomed in the varsity weight room, with a uniform number and everything, without going through a legitimate tryout…well I have no experience with this, maybe others can comment.