Our son just received a positive early pre-read from Muhlenberg and they are asking him to commit to ED. 3.4 GPA, 1340 SAT, may study economics/business. We think Muhlenberg is a good fit for him, he is wondering whether he should continue going with the likes of Skidmore, Union, etc. Some kids on his team told him those were more “prestigious” schools, although we can’t figure out exactly what that means. Would appreciate your thoughts.
Skidmore and Union attract more applicants than Muhlenberg does; they are therefore more selective, with slightly lower acceptance rates and slightly higher test scores. Skidmore and Union rank above Muhlenberg in the best known liberal arts college ranking, by US News & World Report.
Are these important considerations, if Muhlenberg seems like a good fit? No. However, another point to consider is that conventional “prestige” rankings are often (not always) correlated with institutional wealth, which in turn is often (not always) correlated with the ability to offer financial aid. In this case, Skidmore and Union both have larger endowments than Muhlenberg, and could conceivably offer better aid (although there are no guarantees).
If your son is accepted ED at Muhlenberg, you will be committed to accepting their financial aid offer, without the opportunity to compare it to offers from other schools. This may or may not be a significant consideration, depending on your financial situation.
With recruits, there are more factors in play than just US News rankings – considerations like where, and how, does recruit fit into the team, does the recruit like coach, team, level of competition etc. If the recruit is excited about school, team, coach, and has gotten answers to questions like – do you cut recruits, do I have a guaranteed roster spot for year 1, what about year 2 and beyond, how many other recruits in my position/event are you looking to bring in this year, where do you see me fitting in the team etc. – then ED can be the right decision. If you are eligible for financial aid, run the NPC and ask coach if financial aid office will do a financial aid pre-read, so that you are comfortable that it is affordable. For a non-athletic recruit, having to decline ED offer for finances is unfortunate. For an athletic recruit, it means they have given up their roster spot at one school and have to quickly see who else is still looking for an athlete in their position/event etc at the ED2 round, and there are usually very few spots left.
A long way of saying, if Muhlenberg feels like “it” for your kid, then why wait to see if Skidmore or Union comes through on recruiting just because they may be ranked higher by US News? The advice we got, throughout recruiting process, was to have the recruit imagine, what if they had a sports-career ending injury on the first day of pre-season – would they still be happy to attend THAT school? On the other hand, if he doesn’t love Muhlenberg, feels like he is settling, or just doesn’t feel good about it, then waiting to see what else may happen could be worth it.
You have a couple of months before you have to make the ED decision. I wouldn’t cut off the other schools if you are not 100% sure. Don’t lie to anyone, but you don’t have to broadcast your visits. Look around, take the visits, talk to the other coaches and see what is available.
I don’t know if this will matter but we got a much better NPC result from Muhlenberg. It could be because D would be a relatively strong student there compared to the others and thus eligible for better merit.
But also Muhlenberg seems to have a lower cap in home equity in the financial aid calculation.
Also Muhlenberg does preferential packaging and can be very generous to students they are very interested in. How this works with an athlete, I don’t know.
Thanks to all for your thoughtful responses. Great food for thought and we obviously need to have another talk with our son about the importance of fit (especially if he can’t play sports for some reason), not rankings. Financial considerations are obviously also important. This is a great forum.
Our DD liked Muhlenberg and had a coach encouraging her to apply ED as well. It felt like a big step, but two things made it feel more comfortable. First, do the CSS and get a pre-read. We did this and the estimate was exactly what we got. I suppose some large changes in your academic record could help or hurt, but in her case it was spot on. The other thing that takes some tension out of this is that the ED cut-off date is in mid-February. We were able to get the pre-read before sending in the ED paperwork. We knew the money would work and she felt comfortable on the campus and with the team, so ED wasn’t as scary.
It is probably not a good idea to “commit” now to Muhlenberg only for the sake of getting it over with. On the other hand, your son should “commit” if he is convinced it is the school for him.
You don’t indicate whether your son has had an OV at any of the colleges you speak of. He should go to as many as he can and then he can decide which school he prefers. Also make sure that your son asks the critical questions about tryouts, roster places, cuts, and the likes. One Muhlenberg coach told a recruit that tryouts were open and there would be cuts. The coach added that he didn’t see the recruit getting cut, and the recruit did play for four years.
You may want to explore the OVs, and get financial and admissions pre-reads to Union and Skidmore before making the final ranking.
All colleges we are considering asked my student athlete to apply ED. It’s like a “soft close” in sales talk.
Thanks again to everyone who responded. Our son has been on OVs to all of the schools where he got a pre-read and liked them (that’s how he chose where to submit his grades and test scores). Based on your suggestions, we have now initiated a financial pre-read. Should be done in a few weeks, at which point we should have all of the information to decide. Fingers crossed.
Wondering: when a recruit applies ED (or any student for that matter), will they be considered for merit aid the same as a student applying RD? After all, the merit aid is not needed to influence the student’s decision.
@LacrosseMama Depends on the school I’m sure, but my D3 ED athletic recruit got generous merit award, more than coach had predicted. We are full pay but could not swing it without merit award – we knew kid would be admitted, the big anxiety was whether the merit award would be sufficient. We did ask the admissions officer after his interview, during the “any questions from parent” part, as well as ask the coach, both before the ED app was submitted, so we felt we had as much information as we reasonably could.
My daughter applied to a school that had rolling admissions, but wasn’t notified of the merit aid until the normal cycle, which was in Feb.
Call me Pollyanna, but I think most schools award the same merit to the ED group as to the RD group. Once they accept you, they really do want you to attend.
Some D3 schools will do an ED pre-read in the summer before the kid actually submits an application and will be given an estimate of merit money or total cost of attendance. You could always ask a coach if this is a possibility.