Amazing about Williams women’s crew – my D has a friend who walked on, never having rowed in her life. I’ve heard that there are a good number of walk-ons on the women’s side. (My D is a committed NARP.)
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I had to laugh because we have had this experience more times than I can recall. My Gastro went to Williams and so she loves to ask about the Wesleyan kid. She has told me stories about her family being clueless about Williams College, and she grew up in the Mid-Atlantic. “I thought she was a really good student. Where is this place again? Why isn’t she going to Notre Dame?”
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Crew is different from most other sports that way.
It is technical and you do have to learn how to do it. But unlike tennis or golf or baseball, you can pick it up much the way a fast and agile kid can find a position on the football field w/o much experience.
If your D’s friend walked on, she is probably oozing with potential and the crew team knows they can show her how to row. Most sports aren’t like that, but crew is. If the geometry and power are there, the coach will know it and say “come on board.” They’d rather have the kid with the raw stuff they can’t develop or coach than a small kid with limited power and range but who really knows how to row technically.
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So interesting, thanks. My D inherited her NARPiness from me 
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Congratulations to your D! It’s such a great school. The rivalries in the NESCAC are fun. Best of luck to her!
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Interestingly, my son eventually turned down NESCAC and Patriot League offers for a high acceptance rate mid-major because he couldn’t get past the small school sizes of the LACs.
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Yes, of course, everyone should pick schools based on overall fit. Geographic location, size, setting (urban, rural), choice of majors, residential life, vibe, etc. are all factors. Sometimes, you can’t get everything when you are also being recruited, so you have to weigh pros and cons and take the best choice for you.
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I’m secretly hoping he can redshirt his freshman year(but play in a few matches) and use his deferred eligibility for year one of grad school.
But a positive pre read is not necessarily an offer of full (slot) or soft (tip) support. Most coaches will do pre reads for many more recruits than they can support. A positive pre read only means that the AO, based on tests, grades and classes submitted by the recruit, would likely accept the recruit if the coach fully supported the athlete. Clear communications with the coach on the level of support after a pre-read is critical. If the support is a slot, the likelihood is probably over 90% that the recruit will get in. If it is only a tip, the chances will vary with the strength of the applicant/application.
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Maybe what I should say is, positive pre-read with coach encouragement that you play your ED chip. At that point in the process, the coach should be as transparent as possible about the level of support he/she is providing and how solid the pre-read turned out to be.
This is the area in selective D3 recruiting where the misunderstandings and hurt feelings happen. And, unfortunately, it’s where the few bad apple coaches abuse their position and mislead athletes. The Haverford men’s lacrosse thread on CC a few years back is a legendary example of this (to the extent it’s true).
Related question re: my kid’s recruiting process (NESCAC). Submitted transcripts per request by coaches in July. Came back very competitive (3.9 UW with all IB). Asked to visit. Visited. Coaches and kids on team like my kid; reciprocal. Now requested to have school submit transcripts and school profile. I presume we are in the “pre read” stage now? Seems late. Is this a “super pre-read”? (joke) Kids on team said he was first or second (varied at schools) kid to visit (maybe not insane as it seems fewer spots this year with the '21 kids taking year off / seniors taking extra year of eligibility and competing now for those spots). Thought the July review was pre-read. Coaches told kid has full support for slots and wants them on team, if gets past next step (2 weeks at latest). Input welcome. All new to us.
Interesting point made that ‘80% of kids would not have gotten In without the athletic bump’ But at a very selective lac with so few spots that’s really true for all admits. No one is getting in on stats alone. The super smart athlete gets in because he is useful to a team, a high stat kid is also an accomplished violinist and that makes the difference, another smarty pants makes the cut because she did something very notable in her community, the smart legacy gets the legacy tip. Pretty much every admit to these Slacs has a little something extra that gets them through. The super smart kids within the extra something have much longer odds.
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The timing is honestly a little fuzzy right now and others here are better on the time logistics. Initial communications were all over the place and started at random times, one going all the way back to 8th grade (Vassar) for one. And visits and all that stuff seemed a bit all over too. I remember some in the late fall and some in winter. All during junior year of course.
I think the “let’s do this” calls started happening in late winter/early Spring and from then on everything turned on ED deadlines. Then the coaches would call in the Spring and Summer: “Have you submitted your ED application yet?” The ED app is your real commitment. After that, we waited for the letter.
I think, but don’t know, that if you visit early you have to sit tight because the coach doesn’t know what he/she has by way of other recruits.
I would have thought your son would have passed the preread before being invited to visit, if the visit happened after July. Of course, the answer to all your questions is: ask the coach! They are the only one that knows for sure where your son is in the process.
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@wisteria100 That is an interesting point, but I think it is not really what the statistics say, at least as I understand them.
At a school like Harvard, let’s say half the applicants are qualified to attend - the other 50% get put in the reject pile straight away. No idea whether that is too low or too high. From the qualified pool, those kids with the amazing EC’s get in because those EC’s “break the tie” and get them chosen over equally (academically) qualified applicants.
In contrast, the Harvard data shows that most of athletes would have been culled out in the first cut, demonstrating that it is much more valuable being a star athlete than being an excellent (not world class) viola player or a great juggler or making a notable difference in the community.
While Harvard/Ivy’s seem to compromise academic standards more than NESCACs in order to get good athletes, their larger undergraduate population means athletes make up a smaller percentage of the class, so there are still lots (relatively speaking) of slots left for NARPs. However, when you only have 2000 students and you need to field a full complement of teams, athletes can make up 30% of the admits (looking at you, Williams). Maybe this speaks to why the top LAC’s seem much harder to get into than their admission rates imply.
Related trivia question: Which school has the largest population of varsity athletes in the NCAA division 1?
A. Alabama
B. USC
C. Michigan
D. Harvard
Yep, it’s Harvard at 1100ish. Cornell is close; the famous athletic schools have significantly fewer varsity athletes.
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@rockysoil Agree with you on the D1 and Ivy’s. But do think it’s different at D3 SLACs because the pool of athletes that can compete D3 vs D1 is so much bigger. And what people forget or don’t want to admit is that those athletes put in a ton of time and effort honing their skill/talent whatever you want to call it. I feel like sometimes on CC posters want to give much more credit to the musicians, debaters, artists etc as being more worthy than the athletes. It comes down to schools needing more athletes than musicians. I guess that’s a preference, but it’s not like they get in (for the most part) without a stellar resume.
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I don’t have experience in any of those other categories and so I won’t say they’re not the same. But outside of being “recruited” to a conservatory or something analogous, you’re comparing something that may or may not make a kid interesting to an AO to an established part of the admissions infrastructure, replete with quotas and rules, etc. Another adult with access to the system is saying, “I want this one.” Feels different to me but I could be wrong.
At Bowdoin 43% of the students are varsity athletes.
At Connecticut College it’s 50%.
I think an initial “feasibility” read happens before officials but then the real one happens later. I seem to recall it going that direction.
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The percentage of students who are varsity athletes is pretty high at a lot of small LAC’s, but not all varsity athletes are recruited. Sports like XC often don’t have cuts, so you can have some big rosters that include a lot of walk-ons. According to a 2019 opt-in survey by the Wash Post, Williams, Bowdoin, Colby and Bates all had 35-36% of the student body playing at least one varsity sport.
@wisteria100 I hear you about the time and effort the athletes have to put into their sport. I’m not trying to take a side in debate about whether college athletic admissions are good or bad, just sharing some of the knowledge I have collected over the past few years with two of my kids. D19 was a stellar student with a 4.0 at really tough magnet program, top 1% SAT scores, and a champion debater. D21 was a 3.4 student, 200 points lower SAT, and his only real EC was his sport, which he is very good at. Guess which one got recruited at schools like Pomona, Davidson, NESCACs? And guess which one was waitlisted at a couple of NESCACs? I think they are both wonderful kids and both ended up at the perfect place for them, but it was a very strange process which I was uber naïve about.
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