Need recommendations for swimmer

<p>A friend has asked me to help her son find a college. He is a junior with a 3.0 gpa, 1150 on SAT's (Math and CR only), swims year-round and went to the state tournament with HS swim team but did not place. May or may not need financial aid. Currently at a semi-rural HS of 1,000. Not a urm.</p>

<p>He would probably like to stay on the east coast and would like to continue swimming in college. I assume he couldn't get into a D-1 school scholastically anyway so probably looking for a lower tier school. Interests are english and communications (perhaps advertising). His parents are U of Del. alums. Suggestions? Is there a website that lists D-3 swimming schools?</p>

<p>D1 and D3 refer to athletics. There is a huge academic range of schools in both D1 and D3. Big state universities are D1. A smaller school would probably provide a better opportunity for him to continue swimming. Depending on how good he is, he could be attractive to some D3 coaches at schools below the top academic tier.</p>

<p>kathiep:</p>

<p>swim times are critical for comparisons. For example, years ago, a good friend was best butterfly kid in his state (Ohio), lived in Columbus, but never got a look from that D1 school since the kids in Texas, Florida and Calif were just so much faster.</p>

<p>The NCAA website lists swim schools for D1, D2 and D3. The site will allow you to sort by state, division, conferences and regions. The site will provide links to the schools and within the school's athletic website men's swimming will appear with a roster and swim times for their current and past seasons. Usually also have records there as well.</p>

<p>Depending on the state he swam in for state champs would also give student/parents an idea of where he should look. Year-round swim is broken into divisions across the country. Some regions are faster than others, much faster. There are some D3 schools with faster times than D1 schools. Depends on how deep the coach builds the team.</p>

<p>DD left the fastest region (her junior year) to a much different region. Her state qual and finalist status in the first region meant alot more than her state medal status in her new region.</p>

<p>Again start with the NCAA website.</p>

<p>Hope this helps.</p>

<p>Kat</p>

<p>I've e-mailed my friend for more information about her son's swimming stats. He's in Pennsylvania. I'm thinking schools like Arcadia or Goucher might appeal but I really don't know much about swimming programs and it's hard to tell from a website. The NCAA website is great (thank you Kat!) at listing the schools but I'd like another one where I can weed them out by major and avg gpa and SAT. The PR site is so inaccurate that I hesitate to use it. I've got another site up that sorts by geographic location and major preference but doesn't allow me to sort by gpa or sat.</p>

<p>kathiep,</p>

<p>You have to find a school that fits him academically too. Unless he is a star and would be a huge asset to a building team, there is unlikely to be too much "give" in terms of SATs, grades for a male swimmer. (Due to title nine, there might be more "give" for a female.)</p>

<p>I would sugggest you cross check the D3 list with schools that have SAT range where his SATs get close to 50%. Then narrow down according to teams where his times match the HS times of the current swimmers. These are easy to check as you can pop on the college's swim team web page, then google the name & home town HS of the various team members-- lots of HS times and meets will come up.</p>

<p>this may help find schools ... </p>

<p><a href="http://www.d3swimming.com/listings/index.php%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.d3swimming.com/listings/index.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>SBmom,
I know that's what I should do, but it's so time intensive to look that much in-depth at each school. It looks like there are over 100 d3 schools in the northeast and south. I would really like a search engine where I can find 1) d3 swimming schools in the northeast and south 2) SAT and GPA range 3) english, communication majors. </p>

<p>I'm not a novice at the college search but don't have much experience with athletic college search.</p>

<p>3togo, will look at that website.</p>