We just got back from our #2 OV. Coach and school are great. My kid even received a likely letter.
Meanwhile coach from my kid’s #1 choice sent me an email stating he would be “inviting other recruits on his list to fill his roster” and that he couldn’t “reserve a roster spot” for my kid in regular decision. He’d been asking if kid would apply ED and I told him at least once, maybe twice, that my kid would be an RD applicant due to financial aid issues. I send him an email asking for clarification but have not yet heard back.
He told us earlier in the summer that my kid was his #1 recruit. They are a D3 team not ranked in the top half of their conference. Space on his roster is not an issue. My kid could literally be a walk-on and play in their starting lineup.
I’d do what you are supposed to do. Not apply ED unless you are certain you can afford the cost. Especially since your kid seems to be a very competitive recruit and has other good options.
Agree that this is normal operating procedure. It’s two way street - your kid applies ED and coach holds a spot on the team and gives your kid a tip with admissions.
Most college financial aid offices will give you a pre-read as mentioned above.
In D3, without likely letters or NLI – ED is the only way the coach knows they can stop recruiting for that spot and the student knows they have a roster spot. If your player passes on ED application at this school, then coach goes hard after a couple of other top recruits, say he lands at some. Now coach does not need your player and is not going to hold roster spot for someone who is not committing to play for them.
If it is your kid’s top choice school and the coach has said your player is their top recruit, then ask coach if you can get a financial aid pre-read to see if you can swing ED. On the other hand, if you want to see the Ivy lottery play out, then let the coach know you can’t do ED and move on.
It is a trying time, there are a lot of moving pieces, and it is exhausting.
It just didn’t work that way with my kid. The admissions office at her school told us very clearly not to apply ED if we were not prepared commit to attend. The first year coach was very surprised, but we felt like we had to do what admissions told us to do, not the coach. Our kid had a positive pre-read on the transcript but a financial pre-read was never even mentioned or offered. We had special financial circumstances which I explained to admissions, so that might have been a factor. The EFC calculator was useless in our situation so we had no idea what amount of aid we’d receive. We had to wait late April to be able to make a decision, because even though she was admitted RD in late March, they didn’t have her FA package finalized until a three weeks later.
Kid ended up getting a good FA aid package and is now attending the school, so it all worked out in the end, but the process was stressful for us all.
Thanks good advice. We started a financial pre-read, but their finance office came back with a bunch of questions about the non-custodial party, answers I didn’t have immediate access to. I guess I should follow up with that immediately.
Did the coach say there would be no roster spot on the team or no admissions help in RD? I’d think long and hard about playing for a coach who said there wouldn’t even be a spot on the team if you didn’t do it his way and apply ED. However, if he said, “take your chances, I can’t help you with admissions in RD and I won’t save a spot for you but if you get in and there is room, you can certainly play” then you know that he’s wanting to fill his roster but is willing to give you a place on the team if you do it all on your own. He may very well have no pull in RD even if he still needs 5 recruits.
Some coaches have their rules, ED or bust. Others are just telling you like it is, that they only have pull in ED. A lot might also depend on the stats of the student and how good of an athlete he is. We have a friend who just started school and he was a top athlete (state player of the year). He did not apply ED anywhere because he just wasn’t ready (and he decommitted from his junior year choice, so he really wasn’t ready). Not a top academic, but no schools (that he was interested in) required him to apply ED and all were still guarantying not only a spot on the roster but a starting spot. Really, it’s all up to the coach. Many of the Olympic swimmers didn’t commit or go ED because they wanted to finish the Olympics before they committed, and no coaches had an issue with squeezing them in at the last minute.
Agree with @twoinanddone. Have seen D1 ACC scholarships for RD commits - it comes down to the coach’s need. Same holds true for NESCAC and other top D3 conferences.
@LeastComplicated, there are always exceptions that more than complicate the general rule. But, the general rule in D3 athletic recruiting is that if you want that “preferred spot” in admissions and you want to be a rostered athlete, you apply ED. If you apply regular decision, your athletic background is treated with the same weight as any other extra curricular activity – no different than the debating team. We have talked at length in prior posts about the multiple reasons for this. It is a bit unfair to expect a coach to give a recruit a leg up with admissions over other (perhaps better academically qualified) applicants and not know if the recruit will be there come September. Admissions committees would be besieged with coach requests for support – perhaps 25 or more per team – if the applicants were not asked to apply early. If an adcom limited coach support to 5 recruits (as they often do), without an early admission requirement, a coach wouldn’t know if he or she could even field a team.
I don’t doubt that there are exceptions, as you have noted in your instance. In fact, I know of a coach that said that an ED application wasn’t necessary. But, I think it is a disservice to others reading about recruiting on this site to suggest that applying ED isn’t necessary. I know of a number of kids who thought it wasn’t necessary who were left out in the cold. My advice: If you love a school and a coach says to apply early, then apply early. The odds of admission change quite a bit if you do not apply early as a recruit.
@Chembiodad, once again, I don’t disagree that there are exceptions to the rule. But, the general rule is that recruits apply early. The problem is not for any given individual applicant. The problem is if newbie readers think that regular decision is a preferred or realistic option for athletic recruits looking for a nudge up in admissions. I contend that it is not. Here is a 2013 quote from Lacrosse Recruiters about NESCAC recruiting:
“To get started, it has become increasingly important for recruits to apply early decision. Almost 95% of recruited athletes will apply early decision at an institution. This is a way for the coach to know that the athlete is reciprocating the effort they are making to bring a player to their school. The effort is also monitored by admissions liason who goes between the athletic department and the admission’s office. By going early decision, the coach knows that if you are accepted, you will be coming.”
A Middlebury article said as follows: "The recruiting process also encourages more athletes to apply Early Decision. In 2014, 44 percent of Early Decision 1 applicants who enrolled were recruited athletes. “
Remember, there is a theory in college admissions that athletes are the reason that a higher percentage of applicants are admitted during the early decision rounds. If you take away the athletes, the admission percentages early and regular are not very different.
If a recruit isn’t sold on a school or team, then RD is the right choice. But, you roll the dice and you take your chances. I go back to my prior stated view. If you love a school and the coach tells you that you should apply early, then apply early.
@gointhruaphase, don’t disagree with the likelihood of ED admission for a recruit with full support. My point is that I think too many athletes settle for an ED school that has the most enthusiastic coach instead of the one that is the best academic fit for fear of being without a spot - reach a little with the knowledge of knowing that there’s a good chance of a target choice still being available in ED2 and probably even RD as many schools are holding tryouts after it’s all said and done anyways, especially the top D3 conferences since there aren’t any formal commitments or scholarships.
@gointhruaphase In our case, being admitted wasn’t going to do her any good if we couldn’t afford the COA - even though she loved the school. Which seems to be the case with the OP also.
With the admissions office telling us that we would be held to the ED decision (I don’t see how, but that’s what we were told) and the coach being new to the school, we thought it best to listen to admissions, not the coach.
Instead of lecturing me about the disservice that I committed by sharing our experience, maybe it would have been better to address the OP’s financial concerns, and speak to the “general rule” of what happens in a ED athletic recruiting situation where a student/athlete’s is admitted but the financial needs aren’t met. How often does that happen? What happens if an ED admit has to back out of the ED commitment due to unmet need? Maybe this issue has been discussed ad nauseum in prior posts, but obviously the OP has concerns about it, so how about elaborating on that a bit?
I think a great deal depends on whether the student can get into the school without support from the coach. If so, the student can apply RD. The power changes to the student (unless the coach says the student will not be allowed on the roster).
My daughter was admitted to the school before she signed her NLI, so we didn’t need the coach’s help. I asked the coach what the benefit of signing the NLI early was, and she was honest and said there would be no loss of the scholarship money if she waited till April, just that it was nice to get the decision over with. And she was right - there was a huge relief to be done in November.
@twoinanddone, absolutely agree that if an applicant can get in a college without coach support and the coach will guarantee a roster spot, there is no need to apply early. Those situations do happen, as in the case of your daughter (although it is a bit different because your daughter was not asking the coach to hold open a roster spot). What I was referring to was the more common instance where the recruit needs a boost in admissions or wants a guaranteed spot on the team, and primarily in the D3 context. In those instances, I believe it is both reasonable and customary to ask a recruit to apply early.
@Chembiodad, absolutely agree. No athlete should “settle” on a school without the right fit. Fit is the most important consideration in college admissions. So much can happen after a kid gets into a school, which has been discussed in other posts at length – injury, coach leaving, getting cut, etc. An applicant should decide where they would like to be if any of those things were to happen. If a kid isn’t sure, then ED is not the preferred route. What I was referring to is the athlete trying for having their cake and eating it too by applying RD and still expecting that same boost with admissions or a guaranteed roster spot. I go back to my point, if you love the school and the coach tells you to apply ED, then you should apply ED. Obviously, if a coach says no need to apply ED, then you have different marching orders.
@Least complicated, not trying to lecture. I do believe that recruits should have frank discussions with coaches about the consequences of applying ED vs RD, including the financial consequences. Getting a financial pre-read can be a great assist. I do not pretend to know the all the consequences of backing out of an ED commitment, but I understand that it is allowable at most schools if the financial aid package is insufficient to allow matriculation. I have seen data on a school or two showing a few each year that back out.
Yes, inadequacy of financial aid offer is the only allowable reason for declining ED offer. For a recruited athlete, the challenge is that, if the ED1 school doesn’t work financially, there may not be many open roster spots left at other schools after mid-December. It depends by sport, and school, of course. But having to decline an ED1 offer because the finances don’t work means there are probably many fewer options at ED2 or RD. Coaches may invite RD admits to tryouts as walk ons, but that doesn’t mean there will be a spot on the team – again, depending on the school etc.