<p>S is a swimmer and a rising senior. He will go on OV to an Ivy soon. His fastest times are similar to their incoming freshmen. His AI is above 210. Would anyone care to guess what his chances of being offered a likely letter are?</p>
<p>Doesn’t passing the “pre-read” mean that the athlete has the “green light” from Admissions? If that is the case, then is every athlete who is invited on an OV automatically eligible for a likely letter (barring any major social problems arising on the OV)? Or am I missing a crucial second step in the admissions process?</p>
<p>I think Likely Letters are for IVY’s. NLI is for kids offered money. If you are not going to an IVY and were just offered a spot/slot you get nothing? Imafan will tell us :)</p>
<p>Typically more OVs are offered than the the spots available. I guess it will depend on how high your swimmer is on the coach’s list, assuming the visit goes well.</p>
<p>S did submit his transcript and test scores for a pre-read so I assume that that went well. We are not expecting any athletic money from an ivy. I was wondering how many OV are generally offered per spot? First hand knowledge or speculations are welcome.</p>
<p>They usually bring out more kids for OV’s than they have LLs. If an athlete is being recruited by 1 Ivy, there’s a good chance they’re also being recruited by a couple more. My best guess is that a coach may bring out twice as many kids for OV’s as he has LL’s - knowing he may not get every athlete he wants.</p>
<p>All OV kids have gone through pre-reads. Also none will receive athletic money because Ivies don’t offer them. You may want to do some search for this OV topic, I remember reading about the OV spots versus actual LL offers. During or before the OV, your S can and should ask about where he stands with the Ivy.</p>
<p>Pure speculation: if this applicant expresses a strong desire to commit to the coach the coach will reciprocate, and the LL process will commence.</p>
<p>Although the number of Likely Letters varies by school, a reasonable guess for most Ivy swim teams would be six men and six women. </p>
<p>Most, if not all, coaches are looking for the best athlete that they can get into their school. A slower swimmer with a 230 AI is less likely to be offered a LL than someone who is a weaker, but still acceptable to admissions, student that has better times. In addition to ability, a coach wiill consider team weaknesses and strengths when evaluating recruits. Because of relays, a team requires more people who can swim a fast 50, 100 and 200 free than it needs to swim the 200 fly or the 400 IM.</p>
<p>swimkidsdad,
There is no athletic money from Ivy. we went through an academic pre-read and a FA pre-read. As the FA pre-read did not pan out, we declined the OV as we know we’ll not be able to afford the tuition there. Make sure you get an FA pre-read unless you plan to foot the bill yourself.</p>
<p>I am in a similar situation with taking a visit to an Ivy League school for swimming this fall. From what I have gathered, an Ivy League school is allowed to give out about 8 likely letters (It was 7 or 8, I don’t remember exactly), with about 6-7 going to swimmers and 1 going to a diver. Every school will be different, but the one I am visiting is bringing in about 20 recruits, so they assume that they will be able to give likely letters to 1/3 of the recruits. Whether or not they give you one will depend on your visit, how you rank against the other recruits, and how many want to ultimately get likely letters to the school. If you are ranked third for example on their recruiting board, you probably wont have a problem getting in if you have made it this far and want to go there. If you are ranked 15th and 10 people in front of you want to go to the school and get likely letters, you probably wont get one. Obviously it depends on the situation. The swim team is capped out though on the number of likely letters that they can give out. </p>
<p>At this point not as much will matter on his academic standing. The pre-read that the Ivy League school does is to give the athletic department (or the swim program in this case) the go ahead to continue to recruit the person. If you pass the pre-read, the rest of it is on how well the visit goes, and how high they rank you. </p>
<p>That’s about what I know. Hopefully it helps, and if you have any further questions feel free to post back on here or shoot me a PM. Thanks.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for all the good advice. It sounds like coaches have 33%-40% slots available per athlete invited for official visit. Some athletes will have multiple offers for official visits at ivy schools (S currently has 3), while other athletes will accept other offers at non ivy schools. There may be some swimmers who accept a likely letter without an official visit but I think this is a rare occurrence. Of the top nationally ranked swimmers I have known all have taken official visits at the schools that they signed with. Based on all the comments here I estimate that the chances of being offered a likely letter after an official visit at 40%-50%.</p>