<p>S is a rising senior, swimmer, with some AAA times under his belt. He's corresponding with a couple of D1 coaches and is likely to have five official visits next fall albeit not at any swimming meccas. Up till now he's been adamant that he wants D1... he wants a big nationally known school and "yes, Mom, I know how many hours a week swimming will take up". Out of the blue, he's been contacted by an elite D3 school. He has good academics and MIGHT get into this school on his own merit, but could certainly use that extra nudge. We looked at the roster and were he swimming there now, he'd already be a major contributor to the team and his times are still dropping.</p>
<p>Obviously we need to get a dialogue going with the coach, do an unofficial visit, etc, and if there is a strong interest level ask some pointed questions about his influence with admissions. But I can already see it coming that official visits for the D1s are going to take place October-ish, that a school making an offer will want to know THEN, but that ED admissions decisions for said D3 do not take place until December. Any parents got any horror stories about kids who let other opportunities go only to find out they were misled/strung along etc?</p>
<p>PS Swim parents out there, who else LOVES that new CollegeSwimming feature to see where your times stack up?</p>
<p>We too have a rising senior swimmer - but female. She is really on the fence about whether or not she wants to swim in college and we are OK with it - she has a serious love/hate relationship with swimming and is a strong student so picking a school on academics is smart for her and then if she can swim it might be a bonus. She too has a couple AAA’s but only in her distance events which sometimes isn’t the most recruited events. We also have a ds15 that will more seriously look at D1 swimming. </p>
<p>What collegeswimming are you talking about? Is is the website that ranks the kids as “recruits” in each state?</p>
<p>I would tell your daughter to keep an open mind and continue down the road with that elite D3 school. My son was in nearly the same position last year, although he had near AAA times. We visited a great D3 school around this time last year and he fell in love with the coach, the facilities, and the fact that he could probably swim at the NCAAs his first year there. Academically the school was the perfect fit too. The other school he was most interested in was a D1 powerhouse and he didn’t quite measure up to get one of the recruiting slots.</p>
<p>There was no guarantee at the D3 school, but it worked out and he was accepted. He is ecstatic. I’m happy because he will have more time to work on the very tough academics too. I believe he would have ended up choosing this school over the D1 school anyway.</p>
<p>With you D1 school she may get offered a real slot and that would be tough to turn down, but she may find the D3 school is actually a better fit overall. Good luck!</p>
<p>@Grude, thanks for the advice. I’m starting to understand why very few of the past graduating seniors in our class didn’t wind up swimming some place; the D1s who have expressed the most interest in my son are largely places I don’t especially want him to go to. There are a number where I know he could walk on, but could gain entrance in readilly enough without the swim boost anyhow. And if the education is inferior to our state’s flagship U’s, best not to consider it.</p>
<p>@ahsmuoh, yes, collegeswimming.com does some sort of algorithm where they take your times (either input by the student or harvested by data feeds from certain meets like States) and rank you both nationally and within your state. You can also store recruiting information there. The new feature: when the student logs in, you can go to “Find a College” and then sift by state, size, distance from home to get a list, and THEN click “How Do I Fit?” And presto! it shows you exactly where the student’s current times places him or her respective to the current college team. We’ve been trying to hone in on teams where he would be in the top 3 with his swim times right now, and this made the task that much easier.</p>
<p>@ByeBye, sorry about changing your son to a daughter. I had son originally and then glanced again at your post, saw ‘D1’, and thought “oh daughter - good thing I caught that.” His swimming should certainly open doors. I would not just wait for coaches to contact him either. If there are schools he is interested in, he should contact the coaches there and see if there might be interest. Also on CollegeSwimming you can often see many or all of this year’s recruits at any particular college. That should give you a good idea on his prospective fit from the coach’s point of view.</p>