I will keep this short. In sum they do recruit but either don’t have a lot of pull with admissions or the coach we dealt with seriously misread the situation with admissions. They do offer official visits. My student was told “chances are very good with admissions” and “put your mind at ease”. As MIT was my students first choice he did not want to take a chance of missing out on MIT by accepting other offers. Because of the strong words from the coach he really thought his chances were good. Multiple emails giving him confidence that things were looking VERY good with admissions. Once he did not get in the coach just apologized and said it was out of his hands. Although we knew MIT couldn’t offer a LL we thought the coach, based on words like “you have a very strong application and we don’t get that about all our recruits” my son passed on two other college offers. It is a hard lesson to learn but DO NOT hold out for MIT if you get a good second offer. We learned the hard way that these coaches want to keep kids on the hook and keep them from committing elsewhere just in case they get in. Heartbreaking lesson in our case. Wishing we would have never let him go on the official. Great school… Very shady for recruiting athletes at least in our case. DO NOT TRUST THE COACHES if you get another opportunity take it.
This has been discussed a number of times in the past:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/1724688-recruiting-for-athletics-mit.html
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/1183292-mit-athletic-recruiting.html
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/massachusetts-institute-technology/950656-mit-recruited-athlete.html
Coaches have very little pull with admissions. They can express support for a recruit, but there are no athletic “slots” and they do not present or sit on the admissions committee. The admissions staff is very up front about this. I’m very sorry if you feel your student was mislead by a coach and especially if your student missed out on other opportunities.
collegehunter16:
What you described happens at many schools over and over again every year. Your advice needs to be heard by all athletic applicants. Year after year, too many end up like your student did.
I’m curious. If you student (or son?) heard from MIT in mid March, that should have given him plenty of time to evaluate and accept either of his two other college offers. How exactly did he pass up on two other schools?
MIT admissions include an EA round, which is unrestrictive. I don’t understand why your student didn’t cover all contingencies and apply to the other schools during the early admissions cycle… MIT is Div III (except for crew, I think) so your student should have known that the coaches don’t have much pull with admissions… That said, my DS applied EA (he was encouraged to do so by the coach), was admitted at MIT, and is now on the traveling squad of his team. His coach wrote a letter in support of his application, which may have helped, or maybe not… There is evidence that athletics as an EC can help; I’ve read that the acceptance rate for recruited athletes at MIT is around 30%, which is far better than 7-8% for the general applicant pool. But there is no “thumb on the scale.” The MIT admission committee expects strong grades, test scores, etc. even for recruited athletes.