Hi all! I’ve seen quite a few discussions around the question of whether a top notch athletic recruit can get into an Ivy. My question has a little different slant. I’m wondering if my son’s very good academic credentials could help get the attention of Ivy lacrosse coaches. He’s only a junior, so hasn’t taken his ACT/SAT yet. He has a 3.96 unweighted/4.5 weighted GPA, ranked #25 out of 715 students in high school and will end up with about 12 AP classes (has 5’s for the 2 he’s completed so far). His PSAT was 97th percentile. For lacrosse, all of his coaches have said he’s an excellent player, but he’s not one of the flashy, #1 recruits that has committed early. So…in essence, he’s not the very TOP player, and not the very TOP student…but is VERY HIGH in both.
Since not all lax players can even think about attending Ivies, I’m wondering if his academic credentials are good enough to make an Ivy lax coach take interest? My presumption is that, because the recruiting pool for an Ivy coach is smaller than lower academic schools, my son might be more desirable to them than he would be to a coach who can accept lesser academic credentials. Just wanted to get some feedback on this theory!
We’re located in Colorado, so don’t have the visibility in front of many of the top college coaches like east coast kids, so my son is now beginning to reach out via email to coaches. If anyone has insight into this, I’d love to hear some of your thoughts. Thanks so much!!
Thanks Zinhead! I did read about that. My assumption is he’ll have a high AI, although potentially not quite as high as academic-only applicants. What I’m really wondering about is how much impact a high AI might have on a lacrosse coach to become interested in him, in addition of course to his athletic accomplishments.
@erinonline, based on what I’ve seen in the highly competitive Mid-Atlantic Lax arena, Ivy coaches are looking for top athletes first and then top students -if they can get both its a plus, but don’t think it’s the driver for most. Has your son thought about D3 NESCAC as another path?
Ivy coaches are not lacking for high stat kids who are also top lax players. Every player on the team will have high stas and be a top athlete. Having low academics might keep you off the team but having high stats will not get you on the team without the athletics.
I actually think he’s too late to be recruited in the class of 2019 at an Ivy. If you check the list of recruits for 2019-20 on www.laxpower.com all the Ivies already list 7-15 ‘recruits’ (Ivy recruits 'commit to the process, but to even get to this point they have submitted grades and test scores to the coaches) except Harvard that only lists 1 (they could have more students in the pipeline but those students didn’t announce); Columbia doesn’t have a varsity lax team (club only).
His club/hs coaches should have some connections and be able to help him. They may feel it’s worth it to still go after an Ivy team, but also may suggest other good teams/schools. Lax is a little different than other sports as the Ivy teams are usually ranked in the the top 20 in the nation and going for the NCAA championship every year.
He’ll still have a lot of options for good schools with good lax teams, but many of the top 20 teams recruit early. He really needs to get help from his hs and club coaches. There are a lot of former east coast lax stars who are involved in lax in Colorado and there are a lot of Colorado kids who end up on the east coast playing lax.
The Ivys are a tough ticket in general, maybe even more so in economically and geographically focused sports like lax, because there are a lot of individuals playing the sport with interest in the conference. While all Ivy sports are limiting the pool of available athletes because of their academic requirements, the pool is still quite deep, much deeper than I realized when my son went through the process, and I would not count on stellar academics to outweigh athletic ability. All of the kids playing in the Ivy have significant athletic skill sets, and there are going to be pretty bright line thresholds both athletically and academically.
As far as whether a first semester junior in high school is too late to get recruited in the Ivy, I would urge you to speak with your coaches and reach out directly to the schools themselves. I am not a lax guy and have always struggled with the idea that Ivy lax programs could fill their classes with kids who have at best half a high school transcript and likely haven’t even taken the SAT or ACT, but that is the strong view of several posters here. To my mind, it doesn’t cost much but time to reach out to the Ivy coaches at this stage, and allow them to make the decision whether it is too late to be recruited. My guess is that like coaches everywhere the Ivy lax coaches want to win, and if they feel your son can help them do that, they will make room.
Chembiodad…this would certainly be an option, as would a great MCLA school. With his background, we just want to ‘shoot for the stars’ …figure it can’t hurt! Thank you!!
@erinonline, absolutely good luck in achieving that goal. That said, the same stars can be found in the NESCAC as top-10 and top-20 schools are in both!
“based on what I’ve seen in the highly competitive Mid-Atlantic Lax arena, Ivy coaches are looking for top athletes first and then top students”
I agree. I also think they have no problem getting students who fit both bills - excellent student, excellent lacrosse player.
Although lacrosse is getting more mainstream popularity, it remains a very big sport at selective, competitive private day and boarding schools. These schools produce kids who meet both requirements. Add in academically strong players for public school powerhouses from strong lacrosse areas and there are plenty of solid recruits.
Would anyone know what an approximate AI would need to be for a girl that is one of the coaches top recruits ? I have a Freshman at Yale and know what was needed as a football recruit but not sure about banding and AI’s from the lacrosse side at the Ivy’s. My daughter is a freshman in High School and I would love for her to precede her brother as an student athlete at an Ivy institution. I appreciate the advice.
The AI for the class of 2021 won’t be known until the class of 2021 starts applying. You can say 'oh, an AI of 215 was the lowest last year" but if every single athlete in 4 years has an AI of 220, then everyone will think that’s what’s needed when it really isn’t.
FWIW I had a conversation some time ago with the coach at Brown about my student athlete who’s academics outweigh their athletic ability (sport is not lax). This was in response to an email he sent asking if my student would be interested in attending his summer camp. I couldn’t tell for sure if it was a personal email or just a nicely crafted solicitation. Having nothing to lose, I asked the coach the question that if my kid were to be accepted to Brown (for example, via QuestBridge) and that my kid was going to be on his campus, if he would want to know about it, in case playing for the team was even an option (as a walk-on). I received a polite “no”. I appreciated his honesty. We did not attend his camp.
Again YMMV.
I think this is a very important point. Much as we would all like bright line rules when our progeny are being recruited, the fact is that much of the system is unknowable to recruits and parents, especially several cycles out.
One point of correction, an academic index number is generated for each admitted student, not just athletes. Each spring, the league calculates the average AI of the four preceding classes and the standard deviation from that number for each school. Once that number is released, football, basketball and men’s hockey know their AI targets applicable to their systems, and the AD allocates slots and targets to other sports to ensure that the school as a whole comports with the rule that the aggregate AI of that cycle’s athletic admits fall within one standard deviation of the campus AI. This process happens in late May/early June. So technically, the target AI for a recruit in the class of 2021 will likely be known by the coach/AD about a month/six weeks after the class of 2020 is admitted.
Thank You for the information. My son a top recruit and was admitted in the second band. I am in the process of setting up clinics and camps for my daughter and just trying to get an idea if we would be wasting our time attending an IVY camp. Not sure if a first or second band lacrosse recruit would need similar academic qualifications as a top helmet sport recruit. My guess is not but just hoping for some confirmation so we can start paring down a very long list of prospective schools.
AFAIK, there are no bands in lacrosse. So if you are talking about a lax recruit with AI stats that are between a 1 and 1.5 standard deviation below the median AI, I would assume you would be talking about a significant athletic outlier.
Thank you!!