Yes, keep in mind what @fleishmo6 says. If you want to look at some of the faster D3 schools, you will still need to make contact with those coaches. You want them to know you are interested because there are a lot of other swimmers out there with good times and strong academics. Once you have done the recruitment forms and established email contact, you can think of going on a visit with your family and meeting with the coach as part of the visit to the school. If the coach is seriously considering you for their team you will be invited for an overnight next fall. As well, you will most likely need to do that ED application.
I’m currently in contact with most of the nescac coaches and have visited almost all of the campuses
You might want to consider Hopkins and Emory as well.
Based on some discussions with the parents of my children’s teammates, the academic standards for Ivy recruits appear to be lower than for NESCAC schools. According to these parents, the minimum ACT score for a recruit was about 3 points higher at NESCAC schools. Assuming that parents of children with modest academic credentials don’t understate their child’s ACT and SAT scores when speaking with other parents, there were swimmers who were admitted to Ivy League schools with surprisingly weak grades and test scores.
For a strong student, like m4tt0201, the NESCAC schools which “may” have more strict academic requirements than the IVYs and definitely have less stringent time standards for recruited swimmers are a better option at this time. If he gets faster, some of the IVY teams might be good options as well.
One problem that some teams have is a lack of pool space to accommodate all of the swimmers who are able to finish practices and might be able to contribute points in dual meets. Teams that have 50 meter pools and separate men’s and women’s practices have more room for walk-ons than schools with more modest facilities. So schools like Princeton and Harvard, which have faster teams than Penn, might welcome an athlete that Penn wouldn’t.
I know that I’m pretty strong academically, and that I have most of the nescac coaches’ attention, but my question is: how much pull do the D3 coaches have. Even if you’re qualified to attend, tons of qualified students get denied. So how much can a coach’s support help at a school like Amherst or Middlebury?
It is a sliding scale depending on your priority as a recruit, the coach’s relationship with admissions and your sport’s priority at the school. Ask direct questions of the coaches recruiting you. They do this dance time and time again. There is nothing wrong with asking “Can you tell me what your success rate is in getting supported recruits with stats like mine through admissions?” My son did not look too closely at Middlebury, but he did like Amherst. The coach there certainly projected a great deal of confidence in his ability to read admissions. But again, a lot depends on your specific circumstances. If you are at the point where you have a relationship with some of the coaches recruiting you, ask them. See what they say.
If a college team is really interested in a swimmer the response time from an initial email can be measured in hours.
swimkidsdad,
I respectfully challenge your thought above, it is not our experience at all. One of the premier academic and swim programs in the US was recruiting our D two years ago. We visited unofficially in the Spring of junior year, and the head coach mentioned to us that they receive an average of 150 to 200 emails everyday from swimmers that are interested in their program. Their assistant coach in recruiting had taken a week off to attend a wedding. No one had touched the emails to their program during that week, and it took about 2 weeks to clear them out afterwards.
My view is that once personal contact is made with a coach–and they KNOW your email address–then what swimkidsdad says is correct. But I think it is quite easy to have your first email (or your second) get lost in the shuffle of college coaches lives. Most recruiting coaches are young and inexperienced, and organization is not their strong suit.
I still say, the squeaky wheel (polite and gracious but relentlessly determined) gets the attention, especially if your times are within range of the team.
In the experience with my son, the coaches who were interested were quite direct with him. “I want you”. A coach can tell admissions this is a person they would like to have on the team. That helps, but I don’t know if you can quantify it exactly, other than it helps a lot.
Some programs do a great job managing the recruiting process and others don’t. My daughter filled out a dozen online recruiting forms in early September of her Junior year. Some schools replied promptly with personalized emails. Others didn’t even send an automated response.
My daughter sent updates every couple of months and had several lengthy email exchanges with some of these teams. She was receiving encouragement from some of the faster teams while being ignored by other schools where she might have made a significant impact as a freshman. Although a few of these schools didn’t respond for months, they all ended up offering some combination of Junior Days and Official Visits and she ended up at one of the fastest of them.
Collegeswimming.com ranks recruits according to a Power Index. If you haven’t done so, look at the rankings and times of recruits who have committed to your targets schools from this year’s class. Clicking on “(How’s this computed)” under the Power Index will quickly show you what you are up against.
Since there are only 9.9 men’s scholarships on a fully funded swim team, athletes whose families make less than 150K per year may find that they can attend one of the Ivy schools more cheaply than they could attend a “swim school” on a partial scholarship. Harvard had 5 in the top 50 and a couple more a few spots back. Most of these swimmers have best times that are fast enough to make an Ivy A Final. Other Ivy League schools that have excellent programs and great academics will be much more receptive to someone who is an excellent swimmer but not as fast as those who are recruited at the top Ivy teams.
Some D3 teams have excellent programs and facilities and for many athletes are a better balance of academics and athletics than elite D1 programs. Good luck on your quest and let us know what happens.
The response time I quoted was best case . For the program you mentioned in post #46 it is possible to have a response from that program within hours if they look at new incoming email addresses first (emails for known recruits can be handed by an automatic email sorting program) and if the person reading the emails has a target list of swimmers they want to recruit.
Also, watch out for the quality of training and coaching in the Ivy League. The downside of the Ivy League being coy about its athletics and only competing against itself is that there is not as much transparency in the quality of their programs. Many coaches claim their lower level of division 1 performance has to do with only being able to recruit top students with lower athletic ability, but this is a time where top student athletes are very much top students and top athletes. The quality of the Ivy programs often consist of the kids putting in the hours, but the training being often flawed. They run the kids through the program and when they become injured after faulty training, the coaches want them to quit so they can fill the spots with the next round of healthy kids who have come out of quality junior programs. There is little accountability or natural competitive check-and-balance to have the schools support quality athletic programs. It’s a shame, because the league is asking students to be and give their best, yet the universities are not giving their best. The kids are quality student-athletes; the school programs and coaches are often not. Newer coaches trying to get make a difference sometimes don’t get the support of the school. Be careful of the long-term coaches (15-30 years). Many older coaches have given up and play the game by sliding by and getting in recruits because of the prestige of the school. They don’t have to produce a quality program. Some programs are better than others, just make sure to do your homework on the program.