Sorry I’m just really anxious
My daughters have said that Stanford wants two Olympic Trials cuts. Harvard, Princeton and Yale are generally looking for recruits that can make at least two A finals and a B final, or an equivalent number of points, at Ivy Championships. Because of relays, more sprint freestylers are needed than those who swim other events.
Although the number does vary, I believe the Ivy schools you are considering will normally have 6 recruits. Teams are allowed 18 swimmers at Ivy’s. Three divers counts as one swimmer, so it would be reasonable to assume that a team will take 16 swimmers and 6 divers.
If you look at the number of points earned by the lowest earning team member at conference championships, you can get a rough idea of what it takes to be recruited by each team. Although some recruits may never make it to a conference championship, others who didn’t earn many points may have been having a bad meet. So comparing your best times to the number 16 swimmer on a team should be close to what is needed to be offered a coach’s support.
Your academics are excellent, so any coach that recruits you doesn’t need to worry much about admissions. Unfortunately, as has been pointed out, coaches want the fastest swimmer that they can get in. Someone like you, who is an excellent student and a very good athlete, will lose out to a recruit who is a good student and a very fast swimmer. Don’t hesitate to contact any school that you are interested in, but understand that your best options are going to be the excellent D3 schools that you mentioned and the lower ranked Ivy swim teams.
Thanks that’s what I figured. I thought I would just contact them and see what happens. I don’t by any means expect to be recruited, but maybe a little support through the admissions process.
Also apparently strong academics can not only allow a coach to have no worry about admissions, but can also incentivize the coach to assist the athlete assuming that he has some possibility of being competitive.
@hangNthere do you know where I can find the times of the#16 swimmer?
Just go to the website for each school in which you are interested, find the swim team page, and fill out the recruiting questionnaire. It takes about 5-10 mins per school at most. That’s the first step.
Easier place to find times is to go to collegeswimming.com, hit the “teams” tab, then enter search parameters that will lead to one those Ivy’s that you’re interested in. If you’re smart enough to get into an Ivy you’ll find your way to the conference championship times.
Ok thx
The link below shows meet results and the ranking by points scored at the 2014 Ivy Championships. It shouldn’t be hard to find this year’s results.
It is definitely worth your investment of time to research the swimming universe, looking at current teams, recruits and who is graduating to see where you might fit in. Furthermore, it is useful information to you if you really want to pursue it.
Doing a college sport can be incredibly rewarding and add a lot to your four years, but there is also opportunity cost associated with it. In pursuit of this one great thing you will miss out on other cool opportunities. Swimming, especially, is a sport that demands a large commitment. Even though NCAA rules cap at 20 hours per week of scheduled team time, many athletes put in more time on their own.
Being organized and prepared to present yourself to the coach and school can only help you in your due diligence and networking. Have a one page summary. That due diligence will also help you decide if you want to make the commitment to be a true student-athlete.
Knowing where you fit swim-wise and what you want academically will help you hone a good college list and most importantly find yourself the perfect fit. There are many college kids juggling both academics and sports at the highest levels; you may be one of them… Good luck to you!!
For us, that’s a key consideration, m4tt0201. As ThankYouforHelp points out, D1 is very intense – even at the Ivies. We recently spoke to coaches at several of the LACs you mention, and they all reiterated that it’s school first at those colleges. They want to win. No mistake there. But it’s a much better balance.
In response to this from above: “My daughters have said that Stanford wants two Olympic Trials cuts. Harvard, Princeton and Yale are generally looking for recruits that can make at least two A finals and a B final, or an equivalent number of points, at Ivy Championships. Because of relays, more sprint freestylers are needed than those who swim other events.”
While I’m sure that her daughters were told this by Ivy League coaches (I heard similar statements from one Ivy coach), I would just gently suggest that there are VERY few high school juniors or seniors who can both score in the A Finals of an Ivy League Championship AND maintain the grades necessary to secure admission to Harvard, Princeton and Yale. Does Harvard occasionally recruit a swimmer who can do that? Yes. But that bar is far too high for most prospective swimmers, even those who could go on to be very fine Ivy League swimmers. The reality – the difference between the swimmers these Ivies claim to recruit and the swimmers they actually get – is that most of the Ivies are very happy to recruit swimmers who qualify for the USA Summer Junior Nationals in one or two events or could score in the C Final of an Ivy Companionship. And they recruit plenty of swimmers who have done neither. Take a look at the most recent class of Brown recruits at SwimSwam (from April 23, 2015):
http://swimswam.com/brown-university-mens-swimming-and-diving-sign-8-to-2015-16-season/
All are wonderful swimmers, no doubt, but none are A finalists (or even B finalists). So look at the type of swimmers who are actually committing to these schools, and you’ll find that the bar is generally quite a bit lower than suggested above. If by your junior year in high school you have at least NCSA cuts, mostly A’s, and strong SAT or ACT scores, then you’ll be in the mix.
It can’t hurt to try.
But be aware, if you don’t have the times or near the times, chances will be very small. Ivies and Stanford tend to advertise their recruiting classes pretty hard, and want national quality athletes for the most part.
Even in less numbers-based sports, they want national rankings.
swimdad99 mentioned the NCSA cuts, coaches from both Dartmouth and UPenn were in attendance at this meet last year (NCSA Junior Nationals in Indiana) and may or not be at the meet this year, Brown and Yale coaches were there as well. The coaches can observe you during the meet and are not allowed to talk to you until after the finals session of the last day. I do not know if your club team is attending this meet but if so, it would be a good idea to attend if you can. You mentioned earlier that you expect to have a strong long course season and this would be an excellent opportunity to showcase your talent.
SwimDad99: While your comments about Brown are certainly correct, they don’t accurately reflect the recruiting standards at HYP. Since the OP had just emailed Harvard and had mentioned Stanford, I wanted to share my children’s experience. One of my children had very strong academics and had best times that might have placed her in 2 Ivy A finals and she was fast enough to make B finals in more than one event.
She reached out to Stanford, but there was no interest. Although she was recruited by at all 8 Ivy teams, I don’t know if she would have received likely letters at all of them. When she was evaluating the likelihood of a spot, we put together a spreadsheet of how many swimmers on each team had swimmers that earned 66 points or the equivalent to three 8th place finishes, 45 points or the equivalent to two 8th place finishes and one 16th place finish and so forth
Eleven of the swimmers at Harvard that year earned at least 45 points or the equivalent of 2 A and 1 B final. I believe that only two swimmers at Brown and Dartmouth earned 45 or more points that year. That’s why I suggested that the OP look at how the swimmers that went to the Ivy Championships did and see how he would compare to them.
Since some swimmers never swim as fast in college as they did in high school, telling recruits that they are seeking 2 A and one B final as the coach at the school that my daughter is now attending said in an email isn’t that far off. Although she is swimming faster in college than she did in high school, she is nowhere close to the best swimmer on the team and is never certain that she will make the Ivy championship team.
You make an important distinction, hangNthere, that I failed to make – the difference in the recruiting experience of girls v. boys. I have a son, and the OP is also a male; so I got stuck in that mindset. You’re absolutely right that many female swimmers peak in high school and will have to show very fast times by late in their junior year of high school – generally speaking times that will score (or nearly score) in the Ivy League Championship. Young men, on the other hand, will likely get faster every year of high school and then college, and it’s again unlikely that very many 16-year-olds will be swimming A and B Final times. Some recruits certainly will, but the numbers won’t begin to fill the rosters of eight Ivy League swim teams.
As for Stanford, I wasn’t challenging your assertions there. That school sits at the apex of academics and sports in America, it can certainly recruit Olympic level swimmers. Also, Stanford can give sports scholarships, so it’s really a different kettle of fish.
And, yes, HYP are probably the fastest swim schools in the Ivies, but the OP is speaking generally about the entire league. And I already suggested to him (OP) that Harvard was super fast and probably out of reach. Unless he gets much faster, he should be targeting Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, Columbia, and Penn. I can pretty much guarantee that a male swimmer with a couple of USA Jr. National times will draw considerable interest from several of those schools depending on their particular needs that recruiting cycle. Our OP isn’t quite there yet, of course.
My larger point buried amid all of this is that we don’t have to endlessly speculate about how fast is fast enough to be recruited at Ivy League schools. We don’t even have to listen to what the coaches or their recruiting assistants say. We need only look at the actual times of actual recruits. Those numbers are out there; we can point to them; and they generally fall well below A and B Final times.
Sorry for the bad grammar and terrible punctuation. I accidentally posted while I was typing and didn’t make enough corrections before I ran out of time to revise my mistakes.
Although it’s nice to have ambitious goals, the OP may be happier at a school where he will have an impact once he matriculates. Princeton and Harvard had the #4 and #5 recruiting classes in the country a couple of years ago. All of the schools on the OP’s list are excellent choices and he should be proud to have an opportunity to attend and compete for any of them. Boys can get much faster in a year and perhaps he will end up being recruited at schools that now seem out of reach.
Thanks everyone for your advice and thoughts, I ended up reaching out to both Harvard and Penn. I’m still waiting on a response from Harvard, but the Penn coach responded quickly. Unfortunately, I currently am not fast enough to walk on to the Penn team. I guess that was expected. I’m expecting a similar response from Harvard, or no response at all. I guess that I will just train hard this summer and see what happens. As hangNthere pointed out, guys can improve greatly in just one year. Hopefully that will be me and I will be reevaluated by the coaches. Either way I can still apply to the schools solely based on academic merit, and if I’m not accepted there I have quite a few LACs that I could probably attend and be a top swimmer for. I guess I just have to wait and see what happens.
Yours is the right approach, m4tt0201. The faster you get, the more options you’ll have. But your years of hard work in the classroom have already assured that you’ll have lots of great options.
Best of luck to you, and please update us as things develop!
With that mind set I would definitely recommend staying in touch with the Middlebury swim coach
where your times would be in the mix
The other thing you need to consider is that the top NESCAC schools are very difficult to get into without going ED and /or without the coaches support
So if you wait to hear about acceptances at the Ivys you will be in the RD pool of students at the LACs and your chance of getting in is diminished
Many of the NESAC schools fill up 40 percent of their freshman class via ED as their coaches need to fill spots
Keep that in mind when deciding