First, I am very sorry that this happened, @CLJNMOM. While NESCAC admissions are generally a bit more predictive than say Chicago or MIT, this does happen. Last year, there were complaints that recruited athletes were not admitted to Wesleyan, and several years ago a recruit was disappointed by Colby as well.
It does illustrate the NESCAC rule that admissions are made by admissions and not by coaches. Sometimes this result occurs by a miscommunication or misunderstanding. For example, an athlete is pursued by a NESCAC coach, but the coach never seeks a pre-read. Or, a coach says âwe really want you on the team, you can try out if you get in.â I will note that this does NOT appear to be the case here.
However, it is possible (not saying for sure) that the football coach hit his limit on supported recruits during ED1. The coach may have opted to support the ED1 athletes because of âa bird in hand . . .â Or, maybe some D1 guys dropped into his lap after ED1. You just donât know.
I do think it worth a conversation with the coach to see what happened. What are the chances in RD (although Colby RD rates are really low). From there, you will be better able to assess direction. Perhaps you can reach out to Hamilton again.
I will say that this is why I do not like publicizing commitments, not worth it just for bragging rights.
I was told by a person extremely familiar with NESCAC admissions that each school is allotted X number of recruited athlete spots across all sports. And so the slight possibility exists that the Lacross coach, e.g., has a superstar d1 recruit fall in his lap at the last minute, which then means one other recruit (could be in another sport entirely) is unexpectedly denied.
I think itâs still the case that NESCAC conference allows for a max of 14 slots for football, and 2 slots for each additional varsity sport. Schools have some latitude to distribute these differently, assign bands, and coaches can make âtradesâ from year to year (example trade an A slot for a C slot). Some schools also limit total athletic recruits to a smaller number than NESCAC allows, I believe Amherst does this. Amherst also incentivizes coaches to recruit diverse athletes.
I agree your stated scenario is possible, but wouldnât expect all recruits to have applied ED, so wonder why there would need to be a 1 athlete in and 1 out impact, assuming a star fell into their laps. Obviously all just speculating, and I hope things work out for the Colby recruit.
I know someone who had this happen last year in another sport at Hamilton. Had been talking to coach who was enthusiastic. Kid didnât do ED1. Decided to do ED2. Deferred and admitted RD. Was on team freshman year but saw little playing time.
Never worked out if issue was going ED2 rather than ED1 and the coach losing pull or if, based on playing time, coach was meh about this player.
Definitely talk to the Colby coach who can add color. If accepted in spring, you can decide if this is still a top choice.
This is what made the Wesleyan University ED1 thread so contentious last year. A lot of the discussion revolved around what it means when a non-football coach says you have their âfull supportâ. It canât possibly mean that everyone is a slotted athlete, yet the disappointment when those deferrals came through could not have been greater.
There was no contention on the thread or via PMs last year from people who are experienced in athletic recruiting.
All NESCAC athletes who have full coach support should be admitted, assuming they had a positive pre-read. Note that not all schools use the term âslottedâ (as you did in your post) to define a recruit with full coach support, but the rough numbers I share (14 football and 2 per other sports) are what we are talking about here.
The strength of NESCAC is that they have this process well defined. But clearly every year things can go awry, for a variety of reasons.
Some of the most recent info we have as to how a NESCAC school does recruiting is Amherstâs recent report âThe Place of Athletics at Amherst Collegeâ. Amherst allows 67 full support recruits each year which they call âathletic factorsâ (which is fewer than the allowed NESCAC max I mentioned in an earlier post). They also have another 60-90 âcoded athletesâ who are admitted at a relatively high rate.
In discussing roster athletes in this report, we make distinctions between âathletic
factorâ athletes, âcodedâ athletes and âwalk-onsâ. Athletic factor athletes are identified by
coaches and endorsed by the Department of Athletics as prospective students who truly excel
at their sports, and whose presence would have a significant impact on the success of the
teams. Their athletic prowess weighs prominently in the admission decision of these
applicants, and their numbers are regulated by NESCAC rules according to a formula based on
the number of varsity teams that the college sponsors. That number for Amherst is 67 per year,
with 14 of the slots designated for football, figures which are lower than the 75 and 20 slots,
respectively, at the time of the Diver Report.
Coded athletes are academically high-achieving students (termed academic 1âs and 2âs
on a 7-point readerâs scale used by the admissions office) who are excellent athletes, and have
been so identified to the admission office by the coaches. These students are admitted at a
much higher rate than the general admission rate for students rated academic 1âs and 2âs.
There is no limit imposed either internally or by NESCAC on the number of students identified in
this way, but in general coded athletes who are admitted to Amherst number between 60-90
per year. It should be noted that athletics is just one of the many factors taken into
consideration when assembling an Amherst College student body. There are prospective
students who are excellent athletes, but who are also priorities for admission to the college for
other reasons, such as students of color, first generation college attendance, legacies, those
from low socioeconomic backgrounds or who have stellar academic qualifications. Coaches
may bring these students to the attention of the Admission Office without having them count
against their total.
The benefit at the time of admission that athletic factor athletes receive is substantial.
In contrast, the coded athletes look much like the rest of the student body in terms of
academic performance before matriculation.
The sources of contention in the other thread last year, which might be helpful to review for relevant context here, were:
the ambiguity involved in speaking with a coach and parsing through grammar in the English language that leaves the coach wiggle room with which to fudge the message (i.e., failing to corner the coach as to whether he/she has actually offered the recruit the highest level of admissions support available to him/her for any athlete);
the rumors shared by the two (understandably) emotional parents alleging that 25 slotted/fully supported athletes were deferred to ED2 (as far as Iâm aware, there was not then, and there has not been since, any evidence proffered to substantiate the claim); and
the poster who had theretofore lived on the Williams board whose obvious purpose for joining the thread was to fan the flames and make conclusory, biased and baseless observations.
So the lessons to be learned from that lengthy exchange are:
(a) be crystal clear about what level of support your coach actually gave your recruit before coming here with any expectations of informed advice;
(b) donât listen to rumors or conjecture about what is or is not happening with other athletes, when the reality is that you canât even know everything thatâs going on in your own case, much less the specifics or the subtleties involved in other recruiting situations; and
(c) take with a grain of salt the observations of fans of rival programs, because even at the D3 level passions run deep and people take this stuff surprisingly seriously.
I still maintain that there are kids who receive full support and who have positive pre-reads who are deferred and/or not admitted. Itâs not the norm, but it happens. I know it happens in crew.
@Circuitrider, what has changed the most in D3 recruiting in the last 20 years is the improvement in the quality of athletes and technological advances. I am aware of no League or NCAA rule changes that would affect the admissions information contained in the Amherst report. What is important about the report is that it comes from Amherst, rather than from a student piece in a college paper. It explains the use of slots and tips, although it uses the words athletic factor and coded applicants. So long as that process hasnât changed (and I believe that it hasnât), the article remains an important piece for anyone to read who is considering athletic recruiting in the NESCAC. Where it may have become dated is in the area of the GPA of athletes and the stats on how many walk-ons stay in their sport.
FWIW, the general rule is that football has 14 slotted athletes and other teams have 2. The rest of the team recruiting is made up of tips and other admission hooks. For a sport like soccer it will be 3 tips, but since tips have academic backgrounds similar to their non-recruited colleagues, in theory the number of tips could be unlimited. So, what if a team has been low-performing? The coach may submit a list longer than 5 to admissions. The adcom may say we can only give you X.
If forced to guess, I would think this is a numbers game. Perhaps the coach needed to get as many as possible of his recruits in during ED1. Once he hit the limit, the adcom drew the line. But again, it is just a guess and it is definitely worth it to ask the coach for a better explanation.
The average family going through all this for the first and perhaps only time, can be forgiven if they donât know the difference between a âslotâ and a âtipâ, especially when everything gets subsumed under the phrase, âfull supportâ. The rumor that spread very quickly last year was that thirty Wesleyan University slotted athletes had been deferred from the ED round when mathematically that was highly unlikely.
The terminology is difficult because itâs not the same from school to school, even within NESCAC. Wesleyan does not do recruiting like Amherst (although they have to follow the max numbers of slotted athletes per NESCAC rules). Regarding Wesleyan and last year, it seemed there were one or two slotted athletes who were deferred, similar to the Colby athlete this year (Iâm not sure anyone ultimately put much credence in the 30 number).
We will never sort through exactly what happened, but the onus is on the coaches to make sure the recruits understand the level of support they are offering and historically the proportion of athletes who have been admitted with that same level of support.
When things donât work out for committed student-athletes, that spreads like wild fire through the recruiting community and can make it more difficult for these coaches and schools to recruit next year. NESCACs are already at a disadvantage to some other leagues in recruiting, so it is in their interest to have things work out too (disadvantages include relatively late recruiting calendar, no NLI/LL/guarantee, no merit $ at most).
Perhaps not by you and the people you identify as having experience in recruiting, but a good number of other posters took it quite seriously and of course ran with it, which in turn kicked the rumor mill into tilt mode. Hence the many âthanks for the warning!â and âthey are deliberately misleading kids!â and other outrage posts. Thanks Mr. Antelope.
That thread itself is what should serve as a warning ⊠to not jump to conclusions.
I may not be one of the people who is experienced in recruiting, but our anecdotal sample size of coaching conversations is quite large, including most of the NESCAC. Walking that trail taught me that the conversation with coaches is not as straightforward as itâs often made out to be here on CC, and some of them are simply not forthright.
I agree entirely, but you also have to look out for yourself. Thatâs why my participation in these conversations is usually focused on parsing through what the coach said to the parents and recommending another contact with the coach when the message isnât precisely clear, which is often the case.
Wouldnât even that scenario be a misstep by the coach? Donât they know how much space they have in ED1 vs. ED2? And what should a parent conclude about ED2? That their kid was a tipped (not slotted) athlete all along?
I think this happens more than people think. I also think Covid played havoc with recruiting in a lot of programs. There were a lot of accepted students from prior years who deferred attendance, additional applicants because of students choosing to take a gap year and the move to TO, all of which caused AOâs to be more selective in who they admitted, very likely hitting the âtipsâ.
Looking back (preCovid), even though all the coaches that recruited S said he had full support and they were 95%+ he would get in ED, I wonder if he was only really going to get a tip. He was at the 75th percentile in test scores and grades with good ECâs/honors beyond his sport. A slot may have been a âwasteâ as the coaches tried to maximize their roster.
@cquin85, In reality, none of us will ever know for sure. We donât know what was said by and to the coach. I wouldnât make this a coach misstep unless we know for sure that the coach said, âsure go ahead and wait until ED2, you are still gong to get in.â Look, most coaches will encourage recruits to apply ED1, if only because his/her recruiting work will be over earlier. There may have been a glitch with the posterâs application (schools sometimes mess up) or maybe the poster was looking for a better offer or applied elsewhere ED1. The coach or the school is an easy target here, but it is never good to jump to any conclusion. Remember how everyone jumped to the conclusion that the USWNT was paid less than the USMNT (that claim was dismissed).
Parents should ask coaches: 1) is my kid going to get in; 2) have you sent a request for a pre-read; 3) what did admissions say; 4) where is my kid on the list of recruits; 5) what percentage of similarly situated kids have been admitted in the past; 6) what about denied or deferred. You also should ask about RD/ED and specifically you might want to ask about ED1 vs ED2. I will say that it is CC lore that athletes should use ED1, but I know kids who have been recruited through ED2.
One final point about tips vs slots. As mentioned previously, whether you are a tip or a slot shouldnât matter to the applicant. A slot simply means that the school will dip below its usual academic standards to admit a kid. You could be a slot and be number 3 on the list if no. 2 and no. 1 have stellar academic credentials. It is good for parents to understand tips vs slots, but ultimately they may never know if their kid was a tip or slot, as the process is inward-facing. What matters is that you have full support and where you are on the coachâs list. If you are number 5 on a list of 5, then you could get bumped if a last minute superstar appears.
Many coaches donât always have their recruiting locked up by ED1 deadlines (and some sports just recruit later), so ED2 or RD recruits with full support definitely exist.
Thatâs the answer to the question. That should be pinned somewhere on CC. I honestly didnât know that and had always assumed that ED1 was indicative of a recruitâs priority with a coach.
