Hello, my 2022 DD is a strong D3 level athlete and really wants to play her (team) sport in college. Signals from coaches are positive but some have warned her that this year is a mess with knock-on impacts of COVID on recruitment numbers. My guess is that she won’t be a tip anywhere and will have to hope at best for a walk-on spot. Her search has to date been very focussed on NESCAC and similar small northeast LACs. However, I worry that if she does not make the team, even as a walk-on, she may find being at a school that size painful. A larger school might have a club team and it would be less in her face that she’s not part of the varsity team. I think she should begin developing a list of schools where she could be happy without her sport.
If she loves schools like Bates, Hamilton, and Williams what mid-sized schools might be the basis of that list? She wants a liberal school that is neither too jock-y nor artsy and she does not want Greek life to be a dominant factor on campus. She wants a more rural than urban experience and likes walled campuses that give a traditional college bubble feel. She may be willing to venture beyond the northeast in this scenario but has no interest in the south or any conservative campuses. She has a 3.8 GPA from a well regarded private (I say this only because course rigor is known to admissions officers so while they don’t weight GPA it is pretty decent) but a disappointing ACT of 31. Good ECs, and a track record of very high commitment to her sport (which I hope will count even if she’s not being recruited).
Are there other class of 2022 student athletes facing this dilemma too? It’s hard to see your kid’s dream take such a beating.
University of Rochester might be worth considering. It’s D3, has club sports, Greek life is there but subdued. Very pretty traditional campus. It is technically in the city of Rochester (about 2 miles from the center) but it’s bounded by a river on one side and a cemetery on the other so it feels more separated when you’re on campus. It has a open curriculum similar to Hamilton.
Lehigh is another. It’s D1 but has many club sports. Gorgeous campus in the Lehigh Valley area of PA (Bethlehem). About 6000+ undergrad. It does have Greek life but it’s becoming less emphasized.
Tufts is in Medford, outside of Boston. Also D3, nice campus, very liberal leaning student population.
I agree with U Rochester. Lehigh is still quite influenced by Greek life, but it’s a good school and the campus is gorgeous.
Holy Cross is a wonderful school. Bucknell has a lot in common with Lehigh. Denison in Ohio is up and coming. Binghamton doesn’t have a stunning campus, but she would probably be able to play her sport and the campus is contained. It’s definitely nicer the more you see it, haha.
Tufts will be a solid reach for this student.
Why do you think she will find a small school painful? She can still find plenty of likeminded students at a small school. Or is her sport so crucial to her identity that she can’t imagine not doing it?
In the event that your daughter were not to make the varsity team, I assume you have looked into whether her sport might be offered on the club or intramural level at her primary colleges of interest. Some sports, such as soccer, for example, tend to be widely available on the club level. Also, should your daughter be open to seeking athletic competition outside of her current sport, an alternative, such as, say, club rugby (or even varsity crew), could be an option.
University of Vermont comes to mind immediately. It’s definitely liberal. Although in a city, it’s a small city (40,000+) which is considered one of the great college towns. At 11,000 undergrads it doesn’t have the feel of a big State U and in many ways operates more like a private college with 80% of its most recent accepted class coming from out of state. It’s probably this private school feel that contributed to its selection as one of the original “public Ivies”.
Fo similar reasons, University of New Hampshire (12,000 enrollment) has recently gained increasing popularity outside New Hampshire and is located in an even smaller college town. University of Connecticut and University of Delaware are both a little bigger (18,000 undergrads) but still smaller as state universities go and also have significant out of state enrollments and are in small town/suburban locations.
Yes that’s it. She has done this sport her entire life and it’s a huge part of her identity. She has never imagined not playing in college. In an ordinary year it would likely have been a reasonable thumb on any admissions scale. This is no ordinary year so we have to help her quickly imagine a different path.
Recruiting will be challenging for a couple of years, but I encourage your D to continue to have conversations with coaches…something might work out. Also, make sure at each school she is looking at that the coach/team takes walk-ons.
For many potential athletic recruits, even in ‘normal’ years, they have two separate school lists: One where they would be a recruited athlete, and one where they wouldn’t play their sport, or try to walk-on, or play club.
Many good school suggestions so far, I will add Bucknell (rural), U Richmond, Lafayette, William and Mary, Emory (not conservative, but too south?), Case Western, WashU. Is she interested in women’s only colleges?
Just like there are academic reach and safety school, there are reach and safeties with regards to sports. Would it make sense to target some sports "safety " schools? For example, Bard is a great school but has a terrible men’s soccer team,. Another example is Vassar – elite academics, weak men’s soccer. Have you tried to find these types of schools?
There is a variety of Catholic schools that would seem to foot the bill but not sure if that is too conservative or religious: Villanova, Marist, Fairfield, Providence and Dayton come to mind. Of those, Marist is probably the least religious or conservative. You might also want to look into Quinnipiac as a lay version of Marist.
One suggestion is to widen the net at the D3 schools just to open the possibility that a coach will want her. Given the schools on her list, she may like Trinity and Connecticut College. Some of the LACs in PA, such as Dickinson could be good choices as well.
I agree that Rochester and Holy Cross could be solid choices.
My kid ultimately chose to pick the school over the team – his top choice schools were not ones where he could get recruited. Lots of kids like him ended up rowing and playing rugby and ultimate as well as very engaged in intramural sports. He had high school teammates that chose schools for sport then decided to stop playing and transferred. This is a very tough decision, especially because any kid who is recruitment material at any level has likely been doing their sport for so long that they can’t imagine life without it. But I will also say that when college athletes stop their sports, which many do prior to graduation, it can feel quite liberating.
I would suggest looking at Kenyon: a good mix of sporty and arty students and anything in between, and an idyllic rural campus. Greek life isn’t prominent (my daughter and her friends aren’t into it at all and loved their first year there, even with a remote second semester). Very friendly, collaborative atmosphere. Students are very liberal. Fantastic professors, very caring administration. Their admitted students’ stats have been rising in the last couple of years, but your daughter’s (very good) ACT score is still in the range, and they’re known for holistic admissions.
My D was in a similar position this year deciding between mid to large schools with strong academics vs. small schools (also with strong academics) where she could compete in her sport. She wasn’t recruited to any of the D3 schools she was interested in, but reached out the to coach at a top choice school on her own, and got an offer to join the team if she was admitted. She was! And although the club teams at some of the bigger schools seemed like great options, she ultimately decided to attend a school that is letting her compete on a team and still has the elite academics she’s looking for. She’ll be at Vassar this fall and is super excited about it!
I agree with those suggesting you widen the search to include potential athletic safeties. Maybe you’ve already explored this? If not, I’d take the next few weeks to widen the net in terms of geography and selectivity. Contact schools out west and in the midwest. Carleton, Grinnell, Macalaster, St. Olaf, Pomona, Oxy, Whitman, Lewis and Clark, Puget Sound, etc…There are a lot of great LACs outside of the northeast, and if there’s any interest from coaches you’d have time to hop on a plane this summer for a quick visit.
It’s fine to open up to the possibility of the athletic path not working out. Every athletic recruit should be thinking about that possibility from the start. But it’s early to conclude that it won’t work out, and there’s no rush in switching to the parallel track of a non-athletic search at this point. Things will get a lot more clear by the week this summer, and you should have a much better sense in two months of where the athletic recruiting stands. You can easily switch gears at that point and explore other schools (which would still put you ahead of most students on a “regular” college search timeline).
@NoraBarnacle
If you are comfortable disclosing her sport, there are enough parents on this forum that can provide you more specifics. They may know about programs, coaches, current team rosters etc. I may have missed it in an early string - if not, it would be helpful to get more specifics.
I’m curious what your feel is for how impacted recruiting is for D3 sports? And is it some sports more than others? Are D3 coaches telling your D22 daughter that there are limited spots due to older teammates staying an extra year? I figured D1 would be impacted for the next few years but that D3 sports wouldn’t have the same percent of students opting for another year of eligibility.
I always think students should have a separate list of schools that do not take a sport into consideration. I know too many students that have gotten injured, academics are too tough with the training schedule, changes in the athletic situation lead to tuition being unaffordable, etc. I encourage students and parents to consider how the school would feel if the sport was cut on day one.