@Toosaucy, if you are not graduating until 2020 you have oodles of time and a lot can and will change. If you are focusing on STEM (I am inferring by your MIT question), then keep working on practicing your SATs so that you can bring up your scores. If your test scores fall in the top 25%, that would be a huge boon to your candidacy even if your grades are not in the top 25% of your school. And, if you are focusing on STEM in college, then finding the right sports/academic balance is really important. You will get a lot clearer on what you want in the next 15 months before you have to commit. If you are invited for Junior Days by all means see if you can go. The more time you are able to spend on campuses while classes are in session, the better you will feel the vibe and energy of the schools. Best of luck in your adventures!
She has a lot of time if she decides D3 is for her, not so much time if she’s focusing on top D1 programs like Cal and Stanford. Until this year, those spots would have mostly been taken by sophomore commits by now. This year I think they will go in the fall to juniors.
@otisp would love to learn your D/S’ academic basic stats and if you required FA or received some type of “merit” at Pomona as our S is in final throws now, Congrats on a wonderful school and perspective on D3 balanced with academics.
@CallieMom can you expand on “thresholds” of athletic ability/tiers you referenced? Are you being specific to Pomona, or NESCAC/Ivies? What did you find were “acceptable” or admittanle stats at Pomona? Can you expand? Congrats! D3 schools in various sports can actually outperform D1 on the field (think individual sports) occasionally and you’re getting a richness of experiences beyond being a “number” often.
@bigfandave We did need/receive need-based aid (as others have mentioned, Pomona doesn’t offer merit). @CallieMom pretty much captured why my D decided to go D3 - D1s would not have allowed her to study (and play) abroad, and would have made it difficult to carve out time to do the research and volunteering she need to apply to med school. She also accurately describes the application process for academically inclined athletes. My Pomona kid was top 5% in HS and after a pre-read was told if she got her ACT/SAT up into Pomona’s mid-range and applied ED1 that she would receive “support at the highest level.” Obviously, the contact rules have changed, but under the old rules she started hearing from D1 coaches early her sophomore year, and as @twoinanddone says, D3s didn’t really start reaching out until late junior/early senior year - including several selective LACs, whose previous prospects were apparently having issues maintaining the academic levels that they required for admission.
@otisp sounds like Pom was asking yours to retake the SAT/ACT again (“get up”, and also judging based on comment on late Jr/early Sr year, yours did in order to get in median range? Ex 1440/32? Couldn’t remember your sport. I’ve heard often a push to Pitz for the wanted athlete that could be borderline at Pom, and what is vague is the pull a coach has there towards Pom for such a student-athlete. Obviously, cost comes into play, as outside Ivies, most all D1s are half the price or less. Congrats!
At the time of the first pre-read she (luckily) had already scheduled an ACT retake on the Sept date of her senior year, and when a 34 came in, she received the “support” message from the coach. Of course, at the time we hadn’t quite mastered “coach speak” so we had no idea what that message meant until we talked to another club parent who’s daughter was dealing with NESCAC schools. From what I gather, it is SOP for the PP coaches to also suggest consider applying to Pitzer to just about everybody (Pitzer’s accept rate was down to 13.2% this year, so I’m not sure how much that helps!). The admissions offices of the 5Cs swear they operate completely independently of each other, so even after comparing notes with other team parents, we still don’t know if or how they coordinate cross-applications of athletes for the PP and CMS teams. As far as cost, Pomona actually ended up being about the same or cheaper than we estimated the D1s would have been, particularly since at least a couple of those subtracted out athletic scholarships from need-based aid (and I can’t remember anybody offering her a “full ride”).
D1 schools don’t usually offer any need based money once athletic money is granted as the need based money would then count against the team’s total. A D1 team has 12 scholarships for women’s lacrosse. Usually the freshman recruits are dividing 3 full scholarships, so most are getting somewhere between 10%-50%. To get a 50% scholarship, you’d need to be a superstar. A guy I know who got a 50% scholarship was his state’s high school player of the year, on the state championship team for two years, and as a freshman in college an All American and a Tewaaraton finalist.
Just don’t get a C of any kind in any subject your Junior year!
@otsip just curious how your P-P journey has been going. S keeps discerning a huge (quality for himself/fit) divide from one vs the other in favor of, you guessed it, the one with the 7% admit rate; recruited athlete.
MIT and Caltech sports teams do recruit. They are just not given guaranteed slots. The coach’s can submit a limited number of support letters which would elevate the sport EC to a higher level. S was recruited by both MIT and Caltech with grades and test score that were squarely in the median. The coaches’ stated “odds” with their support was 50/50, much better than the avg applicant, but far from a sure thing. S was also recruited by Pomona. Here he was 99% in with support if he applied ED (the AO had already conducted a pre-read with access to test scores, transcript and list of senior classes).
Let’s not revive dead threads