No LL/Slot but Supported Recruit at Harvard

I’m interested if anyone has experience primarily at Harvard (but other Ivies too) of kids who weren’t offered admissions slots/LL but who were offered roster spots and whose applications were supported by the coach, usually by a letter of support from the coach. In some cases, these kids may be called recruited walkons. I’m curious how helpful this support really is and what impact it can have on admissions. I know of some coaches at Harvard who say they often get 1-2 kids in this way and that at Harvard these letters carry more weight than at other schools because Harvard has so many teams and the total number of slots is capped resulting in each team getting fewer slots than the same team would at other Ivies. Consequently, Admissions often wants to help the coaches by letting in one or two of their non-slot recruits as long as the kid has a high AI. Any experience with this situation? Thanks.

I was wondering the same. What sport are you talking about? I think it depends on the sport and institutional priorities.

I agree with institutional priorities, and I think it has a lot to do with the coach’s relationship with the adcom. I don’t want to get so specific as to make it obvious who the coach is, but I’ll say that it’s a women’s sport.

The Ivies have an agreement on how many overall slots are available to athletes, and the AD decides how to distribute them among the teams. I believe the overall number of ‘tips’ (those not on the official ‘slot’ list or with LL) rests more with the AD than the individual coach’s relationship with admissions. History may tell you how many the swim team gets or the volleyball team, but I don’t believe that the super nice track coach is going to get more just for having a good relationship with admissions.

I think it also has to do with the numbers D1 schools outside the Ivies are recruiting too. If a non-Ivy team is recruiting 5-6 freshmen per year and the Ivy team has 3 slots, that coach may be arguing he needs 3 ‘tips’ to stay competitive.

Thanks, two. What about if the coach has a troubled relationship with the AD? I don’t know that’s the case in this situation, but I would imagine it wouldn’t help the coach. In Harvard’s case, I think they often have fewer slots than not only non-Ivy D1s but also fewer than the other Ivies, which I think allows the coach to make an argument that he/she needs a few tips to remain competitive with their main rivals in the league.

There has been much debate on this point over the years on this board. While there are some posters who believe that there is some intermediate level of support a coach can offer in the Ivy (less than support for a likely letter but at least some bump or tip), I think the large majority of posters who are knowledgeable about Ivy recruiting believe that there is no such thing. Either a recruit goes through the likely letter committee or he/she is in the general applicant pool, where the sports “hook” is at best viewed like any other significant EC.

If you think about it for a minute, to do otherwise would gut the structure of the Ivy Common Agreement, which is the document @twoinanddone is referencing above. Under that agreement, the Ivys commit to limit themselves to a certain number of special admits for athletic purposes based on the number of “Ivy championship” sports the school supports. I believe the current max cap is 230, although most schools admit less than the allowed number. Yale and Brown, at least based on fairly recent reporting, appear to utilize the fewest admits. That can certainly vary over time.

If you are interested, there is a thread I started a couple years ago on this topic in an attempt to get all of the then current opinions in one place. Like many threads here, it soon devolved into nit picking and tangential point making, but there is some good information there on this topic. In particular, I would read the posts by @varska, since he actually wrote a book on Ivy recruiting a few years ago. Here is the link. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/athletic-recruits/1819605-ivy-recruiting-a-theory-p1.html

Thanks, Ohiodad. I actually found that thread after I started this thread. There is quite a bit of good info in that thread. I guess I’m in the camp that believes there may be some intermediate level of support in the Ivies, and that’s because a coach told that to my kid’s face and to her club coach and I doubt the coach was lying.

Most ivy coaches would welcome a student who can get in on their own, but then walk onto the team. This raises the team AI without having to give up a coveted LL spot.

The thing about Harvard is that the admissions office hates to read extra letters. For some reason they get bent out of shape by having to read an extra letter. I’ve personally witnessed an admissions director publicly state that 2 letters are enough, and that anything more would be detrimental. In this regards, an extra letter by the coach won’t go over so well.

But I’ve heard that other Ivies apart from Harvard actually will take a serious look at a Coach’s letter of support. This again varies by sport, and is all anecdotal.

Interesting thoughts, Sgopal2. That seems to conflict with the coach who told us that he has success each year getting kids in with letters. I can say, though, that I spoke with a football coach at another Ivy who told me that every year he has a few kids that he wants but for whom he didn’t have enough slots to offer LLs so, if they have strong academics, he sends their names to the adcom. No letter – just a list of names. He says that just sending the list ensures that these kids won’t get rejected ED – they’ll either be admitted or deferred. If deferred, the coach has a few more months to lobby the adcom to get the kid in.

I would think very critically about such a statement. Not only because such a system is against the rules, but because football is maybe different than other sports in that each Ivy is given a number of likely letter slots that is equivalent to the roster limit. In other words, football is not in a position that some sports apparently are, where a certain number of walk ons are needed to fill out the roster. So it is unclear where these kids who were not offered a likely letter are ending up, if they are ultimately admitted to the school.

Correct me if I’m wrong, and I know that this will vary by school, but I don’t believe that there is a 1:1 correlation anywhere. Each Ivy is limited to a certain number of recruiting spots, somewhere between 175 and 205, and the AD then allocates them out by sport. Although I would assume that the AD would cover the money sports on a 1:1 basis. But for other sports, there is no guarantee that the number of slots will equal the roster. Also, as we have seen in recent years at Yale, just because the Ivy League allows a certain number of slots does not mean that the college will use them all.

Now, whether a particular coach has any influence with admissions over and above the allocated slots, I have no first hand knowledge. But I imagine that it will vary by school/sport.

Generally you are correct, but in football each school gives 120 likely letter slots over a rolling four year period under the band system. That number is equal to the roster limit for the sport.

Ohiodad, I’m not thinking critically or otherwise about that statement – I’m merely repeating accurately what that football coach told me.

And would that arrangement really be against the rules? Say they send 5 names and all 5 get deferred. Maybe three eventually get in RD, and all three are strong students with high AIs. How does that violate any rule?

Well, if there is any athletic boost provided outside of the AI system, that would quite obviously circumvent the structure of the Ivy recruiting model contained in the Ivy Commin Agreement. My real point though is that all eight schools provide 120 likely letter slots for football over a four year term. This number is equal to the roster limit. So the question is where are these “extra” kids going if they can’t be rostered? Now there are circumstances where a school may not roster 120 in a given year, and the administration may be unwilling to “make up” the lost slots in any one cycle (I am thinking of the Mangurian years at Columbia or the early Reno years at Yale where there were large numbers of kids dropping from the program). But in the main and over time the Ivies are rostering pretty close to 120 with recruiting classes that account for that number. That is not to say walk one don’t exist, they do. They just are rare. I think my son has played with two in his three years. For that reason, a coach who says he does this every year with a couple kids would give me pause.

Well, we know for a fact that Ivy coaches write letters of support for kids they recruit and offer roster spots to who don’t get LLs, which I guess is what you mean by outside of the AI system (although the kids I’m talking about do affect the team’s AI). Whether those letters constitute a “boost” is up for debate, but I doubt the coaches would go to the effort of writing them if they didn’t think they would help.

As for football, given the commitment involved and the lack of athletic scholarships, it wouldn’t surprise me if 2-3 kids quit Ivy teams per year or are cut. But obviously you can tell me if that number is accurate – I have no direct connection to Ivy football.

And with regard to the football coach with whom I spoke, I can’t say for sure that he said they do the thing with the list every year. I think he said they do it, but I guess that doesn’t necessarily mean every year.

Interesting - I never knew that. Thanks.

@turnandrake, this is one of those areas that is unclear from the available published documents, but I don’t believe that recruits who are not offered support for a likely letter fit into the AI calculation until they are rostered, which would be in the academic year following admission. At that point, their score forms part of the team AI, which may assumedly impact the AI target a coach is given (in sports other then football and men’s basketball and hockey) in that cycle. But as far as the cycle in which a non supported recruit is admitted, that recruit’s AI is immaterial because they are not being judged for admission on that basis. Make sense?

As far as guys dropping off rosters, you are not wrong, although based on the research I did when my son was going through the process (basically comparing the historical rosters over time) the more stable programs didn’t lose that many. Then too there is clearly a system which allows schools to “make up” extra slots in an out year when there is some type of roster attrition. This is clear from looking at recruiting classes that include more than the standard thirty kids. I have never seen anything written on that process, and only had a brief conversation with one coach on the topic. If I remember correctly, at that school at least they could make up slots for kids who stopped playing for medical reasons but not slots where kids washed out academically. While that seems reasonable to me, it wasn’t in any way a detailed conversation, so at best I am making a somewhat educated guess. On the other hand, something was clearly going on at Columbia when Bagnoli took over, because his first couple classes were huge, and Columbia was rostering well less than the max (I think like 100-105) before he got there.

@skieurope, da nada.

As far as the effect of a letter from a coach, you may very well be right that it is helpful. I would certainly think it could be at least as helpful as any other strong recommendation letter. But the decision on that particular recruit is going to be made in the general admission pool, subject to whatever requirements that admissions office has in that cycle, rather than through the likely letter review process. That’s really the point.

I spoke with one Ivy League coach about this and he told me that, even in the case of a 4.0 Olympian, his hands would be tied and he could offer no help whatsoever if he’d already used up his alloted slots.

Ohiodad, I completely agree with you that the decision on a kid with a letter and roster spot but no slot is made outside the LL review process.