Her score is perfectly fine , but in the context of the schools I would not describe it as very strong.
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I get that, my kid turned down Grinnell for that very reason and is attending a much less prestigious school that was a better fit overall. What I think people are surprised with is how little importance swimming seemed to play in the final decisions - especially with some of your comments about how important swimming in college is up your daughter and her move to swim in the us this summer with a very prestigious program. It’s quick shocking after 2000 posts in a recruiting forum, swimming isn’t a larger presence on your final list
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I may be in the minority, but I guess I can see where OP’s daughter is coming from. Swimming is not her #1, but she tried to use the athletic hook to her advantage, and at the end of the day, the athletic hook did not quite get her to where she actually wants to go. She has stats that may get her into schools that she likes better. I think this is all perfectly fine.
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I have experienced this on my end. If sports could get them a hook into certain high academic reach schools that were on our list, then pursued. But was also looking at the overall picture for best fit, including factoring in if the cost was worth it, which some schools fell out.
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As an international parent, I also sympathise more with the need for a college that has brand name recognition with employers back home. I appreciate the search for ‘prestige’ comes off as vanity, but many schools below the top tier are just unknown to European employers, despite the wonderful experience and education they offer.
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I do understand what you are saying.
Problem is, the three coaches who made offers were massively misled.
An offer isn’t made in a vacuum. Apart from hedging with “I am considering other schools for swimming”, a coach isn’t making an offer unless you have expressed significant interest in the school, and given specific reasons why you want to attend and swim there.
Were those reasons (swimming and academic fit, love the town/campus, etc.) for wanting to attend, and wanting an offer, all made up?
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I don’t feel the coaches were mislead. They are playing the same game on the other side. They all have their “top” recruits yet they string along those in the second cut because they know they are not going to get everyone in the top cut. Unless the recruit says something to the effect, “you are my number 1 choice and I will commit if offered” and then the recruit reneges, it is all part of the normal recruiting game that coaches and recruits play.
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No they weren’t. Certainly no more than students are misled. They are collectively pawns in a chess game.
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Let’s put it a different way.
If any coaches saw the OP’s contributions on this thread, they would run 100 miles the other way.
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But that’s the parent, not the student. Part of the reason it’s best for parents to generally stay out of recruiting conversations between student and coach. Some parents have definitely caused coaches to ‘run the other way’.
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I long time ago in this thread, I recounted a story about talking to a friend who is a head coach. I asked the coach if they had troubles with helicopter parents. The response was no, as soon as they sensed that in parents, they simply stopped recruiting the kid.
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I agree with this. The coach extended an offer, the perspective recruit considered it and turned the offer down to head in a different direction. In this case, it might not involve swimming, but the coach just moves on down their list and made the next offer. That happens all the time.
If a perspective student athlete accepts the offer despite knowing they will choose not to compete after being accepted, then the coach has been misled. They could have offered the slot to someone else and made their team better. For better or worse, this case happens often, too. Coaches at highly rejective schools seem to learn to sense out most of the kids who will do this to them.
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Agree!
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^word.
Remember, this is the parent that told us that not swimming in college was defined (by him/daughter) as “failure”. Many of us pointed out that attaching a label like “failure” was not a good idea with teens. There could be opportunities for her to swim (i.e. club swimming) if she wasn’t fast enough and this idea was rejected.
At the end of the day, I hope the kid finds the school for HER. Not for dad. Not for coach. Prestigious or not. And that dad doesn’t define it as failure if she isn’t swimming.
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Agree on that for this thread. However it is not uncommon for parents to want one thing more than their kid. Such as playing a sport in college, attending a certain school over another to play a sport or for prestige, small school vs large school, etc., and the student may be on board but not to the same extent. Hence in the end the kid has input and may not go completely in the same direction that the parent would like.
My sense is that the OP/daughter tried to collect offers to use as leverage/enticement to get recruited at other schools that they were actually interested in.
OP has never confirmed that they actually visited all of the schools that made them offers this summer. (They did, however, visit a bunch of schools where there wasn’t a chance to get recruited). I don’t think they were ever seriously considering attending two out of the three schools they had offers from.
As a side note about “vibe”, I agree with others that it would be tough to really determine in summer visits. Montreal’s summer vibe is great, and is nothing like the reality for most of the school year.
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To me, it seems like OP has done a great job putting his daughter’s desires first. Not sure why everyone assumes the daughter is not the one running the decision-making.
I’m no expert, but many coaches are sympathetic and understanding of kids on the fence and kids that are hoping for more “prestigious” academic schools to pull through.
Two very recent examples from our swim team:
- Kid recruited at tippy top NESCAC. Kid, however, wasn’t satisfied and wanted to try for Ivies as a non-recruit. Rejected at all Ivies in RD. BUT he had kept in touch with the NESCAC school the whole time and committed there in the end. Now, he is super happy and thriving. Coach didn’t hold it against him.
- Kid recruited at 2 very high academic D3 schools – BUT kid wanted to try for Ivies as a non-recruit. Rejected at all Ivies in RD so the kid committed, reluctantly, to one of the schools they had kept in touch with. A few weeks later, she got off the waitlist at Barnard and walked on the Columbia swim team (where she was too slow to be recruited).
Just 2 examples off the top of my head, but lots of kids want to hold out for whatever their “dream” school is – even though it may make no rational sense to outsiders. My guess is that coaches recruiting very highs stats kids have experienced this many many times before and understand.
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Honesty has such a great vibe.
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Most people in the country have never heard of most of the selective LAC’s! I went to a very selective school back in the Stone Age, and I had never heard of the Bowdoin-type schools until recently. My growing-up knowledge of northeast schools was the Ivy’s and anything mentioned in the Preppy Handbook.
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