Does anyone know what the timeline is for these pre-reads? In theory, how long before the July 1 date would a coach need to ask for the academic package to send to admissions?
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It can vary by school, and within school by coach. As you say, admissions wonât do pre-reads until July 1âŠsome coaches ask for info from students by July 1, and some donât. The pandemic impact is still out there, and there are many coaches who have a long list of students to see this summer.
The evaluation/pre-read/visit process will continue thru the Summer, and for some teams/coaches well into the Fall. Cast a wide net, keep an open mind, and stay in contact with coachesâŠfor many recruits itâs a long process.
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Generally for my 2025, the initial reach out with the NESCACâs for pre-reads occurred the third and fourth week in June. They asked for the paperwork and then it was quiet until July. Pre-read follow ups occurred after July 1, most coming the first and second weeks of July for my son. âOffersâ made really spanned the month of July into August. The NESCACâs did not seem to pressure a decision right away, but there was the expectation that my child would be applying ED in the fall.
I will add that I would not be surprised if everything takes a little longer this year. I know the team my son will be on had many take gap years (especially rising seniors) or took a gap semester. I wouldnât be surprised if it takes a little longer to figure out how everything will shake out this year. My son was also very fortunate to have visited with the coaches right before COVID shut everything down, which might have helped make communication easier as they had a name to a face and pre-read.
Keep the communication going, keep all the doors you can open, and stay positive. I found that this was the most nerve racking time for my son during the whole process.
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Thank you for the explanation.
How did communication go between the pre-read follow-ups and Nov 1, when ED applications were due? Specifically, were the schools looking for a commitment that your child would apply ED? Were they generally forthright about indicating the level of support they would offer?
I would imagine that during those 3 months or so there would be a lot of musical chairs, and I am not quite sure how the process works.
Thanks.
I will chime in with our experience. It is up to the student to ask the pertinent questions, and they will find that different coaches have different communication styles. Coaches also will have different timelines for the processâŠsome will wrap it up quickly, others will take a long time. Managing timelines can be tricky, especially if an offer from a not top choice comes before a higher choice.
Regarding pre-readsâŠreceiving a positive pre-read does not guarantee that an offer is forthcoming. Many coaches ask admissions to do pre-reads on more potential recruits than they have full support slots for. Your athlete needs to understand where they stack up in the recruit list, by position (where applicable). Offers may not come until months after the positive pre-read.
Throughout the process, itâs critical to understand the terminology the coach is using, and what that terminology meansâŠnot all terms mean the same thing even at schools in the same conference, e.g., slots, tips, etc.
The recruit wants to hear that the coach is offering their full support for the recruitâs application. It is common that an ED app is required in exchange for full support at NESCAC schools (as well as others).
Next, the recruit should ask what proportion of recruits with positive pre-reads and full coach support have been accepted. This will vary by schoolâŠfrom a very high likelihood of acceptance at many of the NESCACs, to lower at schools like MIT or CalTech.
Some of the NESCACs will do a financial aid pre-read for recruits who have a positive academic pre-read. It is ok for parents to get involved at the point when financial discussion are happening.
Bottom line, keep the communication lines open with coaches. Some will be more communicative than others. Recruits should also be open with coaches about where else they are looking, and other offers received. The coach community is really pretty small, certainly within a conference they all know each other and communicate with each other. Good luck.
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Quick question, can you share your experience with what happens on a Coachâs visit. My son was asked to visit some schools next week and we are unsure what to expect. Can parents go and be included on the tour etc?
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Assuming you are talking NESCAC/academic D3. It will vary somewhat by school and the day(s) of the week of the visit. For my kids, the coach arranged for them to room with an existing team member (soph and up). My kids also had indicated the types of classes they were interested in attending, so they were paired with another teammate(s) for relevant classes. Since the visits were off season, my kids went to a âcaptainâs practiceâ (coaches not allowed to supervise) if one was scheduled to watch and meet other team members. They pretty much socialized with their hosts who tended to socialize with other teammates.
At some point, there was alone time with the coach(es). The coaches will feel the recruit out on how they felt about the visit and the school. They will either voluntarily share or can be prompted to share how the recruit stacks up. Be aware that the coaches will also question the other teammates on how they felt about the recruit. In our case, the coaches indicated full support provided my kids applied ED. In other cases, the coach may be non-committal if there are higher rated recruits. In that case, it is up to the recruit to ask exactly how far down the pecking order they are.
I would advise parents not going. You donât want to be seen as âthat helicopter parentâ. We live in fly over land and we just let our kids fly to both coasts. One of the coaches picked them up at the airport and took them back to the airport when they returned.
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Thanks for sharing, given it is summer time, I think the visits may be a little less formal - no classes or practices. He has not visited these schools yet, so I am thinking a tour is the first step and hopefully a sit down with my son to understand where he falls. All coaches have his transcript and have invited him and asked that it happen in June. I would hope we could go on the school tours, but agree, we need to peel out at some point. I guess I should have my son ask if parents can be a part of the tour or we tour on our own.
@paso2424, there is no one right way to get through athletic recruiting, and I think you will find significant variation on how families worked through the OVs. We did it both ways, as the occasion warranted - sometimes a parent went along and sometimes the kids were on their own. In our experience, the better results occurred when the parents accompanied.
What it means to âaccompanyâ is the real issue here. There are certain times on an OV that the coach may actually want the parent to be there. We had coaches tell us that they wanted to meet the parent because âthe apple doesnât fall far from the tree.â There were other coaches who wanted us there to assess the interest of the athlete and family in the institution, because often the parent is paying for at least some part of the education.
For the vast majority of the time on the OV, however, the parent is a glorified bus driver. You do NOT want to spend the night on campus. You do NOT want to attend the captainâs practice. You do NOT want to attend a class. You CAN walk campus either alone or with the coach (if invited). You CAN buy a book at the bookstore and find a quiet cafe to read.
The advantage of parental attendance is at the meeting with the coach. The parent should NOT take over this meeting, but can offer assistance and assessment. Most importantly, the parent can ask the questions that need to be asked: Will you support my kid with admissions? What are his/her chances for admission? Have you/will you ask for a pre-read - what are the results? Where is my kid on your list? Does he/she have a roster spot? Over the years, how may kids in my kids position (i.e., grades and athletic ability) have been accepted, how many rejected? Will an early decision application be required for your support? How does financial aid work?
There are kids who will remember to ask all of this, but there are just as many who will not (or think some of the questions are too forward - they are not, they are essential). Also, the parent can add some maturity to assessing the coachâs responses to the questions. So, while it can feel like a colossal waste of time, there is value to the parent tagging along on the OV, but making him/herself scarce for the bulk of the weekend.
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Parents can and should do the general admissions tour, with or without the student.
For coach meetings, athletic facility tours and/or meeting with teammates, I did not attend those with the exception of one coach meeting who directly said âmom you stay, this is important stuffâ.
DH jumped on a couple of phone calls late in the game just to make sure everyone was on the same page.
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TY - super helpful!
Agree, depends on kid and depends on the nature of the visit. On school sponsored OVâs, we felt our kids could handle themselves, and we did not want to be a factor in any way on that visit. I am pretty sure that our kids wouldnât want to tell potential teammates that their parents had come with them. There are plenty of opportunities for a parent to talk to a coach. The most critical conversation that a parent needs to have involves FA or merit awards, if any. If you are visiting the school as part of a general tour, and you happen to schedule a visit with a coach, having a parent there is pretty natural.
How the communication went depended on how much the coach wanted my son. Some were quick to let my son know he passed the preread; some didnât even let him know about that, but made an offer (I guess it was implied he passed the preread) and some kept him hanging, not letting him know about the preread (âAdmissions is backed up, it is taking longerâ), because my son wasnât the number one recruit and they were waiting on their 1st choice to get back to them.
Were the coaches looking for an ED committment? 100% yes. They are offering something valuable, they need to know if thee spot is taken or not â they only have a few they can give out, they donât want to waste a spot on someone who wonât come.
The best coaches are very clear, and specifically say âYou have a spot on the team and I am offering my full support with admissions.â You need to hear both pieces. My son went to a boarding school, and his college counselor called Admissions and verified that my son had the coachâs support. As the CC said, âI heard what I needed to hearâ.
Yes, there are musical chairs. Some coaches make offers that have a time limit. One NESCAC gave my son a week to accept, and Iâve heard gossip of another giving a recruit 24 hours. But the other schools my son had offers from did not impose a deadline.
Side note: coaches want kids that want to be at that school. At the school that became my sonâs number one choice, he told the coach that if the coach made an offer, my son would accept on the spot. And thatâs what happened.
(Re: musical chairs, this coach had been recruiting a boy for the previous year for my sonâs position. The coach saw my son for the 1st time in August; offered my son a preread 2 days later; 2 days after that we visited the school and met the coach in person; the coach told my son it was between him and the first boy, and they were seeing that 1st boy at a clinic at the weekend. Thatâs when my son told the coach heâd accept on the spot. That weekend, after seeing the 1st boy the coach called at 9 pm Saturday to make the offer, and my son immediately accepted. It was 10 days from the time the coach 1st saw my son (and had even heard of him, as my son had not been in contact previously) to the date of the offer.
So, my son took the spot away from the 1st boy. On the other hand, a school that had been recruiting my son for the previous year made him an offer after my son had already accepted the earlier school. The recruit that eventually got that spot at the second school was quoted in the soccer press as saying all of a sudden the school came out of nowhere to speak to him and make him the offer â because my son left an opening. I give these example of how the âmusical chairsâ aspect can play out.
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@cinnamon1212, your post not only illustrates the musical chairs analogy, it also demonstrates the value of the athlete being assertive in telling the coach how much he wants to be on the team.
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Thank you for the detail. Yes, this does seem to be a nerve-racking period of this process. My daughter is in the thick of tournaments and camps this month. Iâm sure these coaches have long lists of recruits to watch this summer, so it will be interesting to see if it follows previous timelines.
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Hold on - and plan for a wild ride Popular post for all of us parents from the Class of 2021 is titled âRecruiting is not for the faint of heartâ 
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Thanks for all the information.
How binding are the statements that are made after the pre-read but before ED?
E.g., if a coach says that a kid has his full support if the kid does ED, and the kid says yes he will do ED, but then another kid who was higher on the coachâs recruiting list falls into play, will the coach honor the promise to give full support?
Or the reverse: If a coach offers full support (with a time limit), and the kid accepts, but a couple weeks later a school that was higher on the kidâs list offers full support, is it too late?
Nothing is technically binding for either party (assuming an NLI isnât part of this). Each side is making a commitment and trusting the other to do what they promise. But it would be pretty unusual for a coach to withdraw an offer of support from a committed recruit just because a better prospect comes along. Itâs not just sleazy and unethical. Itâs also a quick way to get a bad reputation thatâll impact future recruiting. I donât know of any coaches that have or would do this.
For the athlete, thereâs nothing preventing commitment to a different program and this probably does happen occasionally, such as when a late call from an Ivy coach entices a D3 recruit to change plans. It can make for an awkward phone call, and maybe some resentment from the D3 coach, but thatâs about it.
One thing Iâd say though, is that once a recruit makes a commitment they usually inform the other coaches that theyâve done so. So even though recruits have some freedom to change their minds, itâs pretty poor form to be out shopping after a commitment has been made (and in fact, could lead a coach to withdraw an offer).
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Thank you - this is very helpful.
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Division 3 schools donât use an NLI.
Even if there is an NLI signed, it really doesnât require the school to admit the student or for the student to attend. All it does is set the amount of the athletic award and, once signed, prevents the student from playing for another school for a year (assuming there is no release and that the student actually IS admitted.