indeed meeting coaches in person and visiting schools is irreplaceable, particularly for a kid who has never seen one. The bar will be high, since she’ll experience swim training in one of the most beautiful campus in America. By summer, her realistic swim target list will have shrunk to 5-8. The visits will cover a combination of schools in her swim list plus others, which should help her finalize her swim/non swim list.
12 is a reasonable number. My daughter did pre reads at 10-12 schools last summer and luckily we were able to visit nearly all of them during a crazy 10 day New England sweep and although she had a rank order for fit she didn’t truly cut her list down from that 10-12 to her top choice until she was ready to commit in late summer. Will you be able to plan a trip this summer while she is in the US swimming? Visits are really telling and although not all the students will be on campus in the summer, often the coaches and athletic staff will be available
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So far, several coaches have invited her for visits and confirmed they will be available. Obviously, this tends to be the teams where she is currently placing higher on their time sheets. We generally expect to be able to visit most of the schools over the summer, given most are either in California and the Northeast.
One question regarding these visits is whether they tend to be coach-athlete, or include parents?
The way we did it was that I attended the admissions tour and met the coach, but then my daughter did an athletic tour and chat alone with the coach at most schools. This was our only visit to most of these schools and I told my daughter I was only there to remove a school from the list, everything else was up to her. I will say she had received an offer of some type (from walk on to supported application to some scholarship money) from most of the schools by the time we did formal visits so we were in the final push and knew she would end up committing at one of these schools. But that is girls soccer which is an earlier timeline
There is certainly less pressure doing a visit after having passed pre-reads and received full coach support for one or more schools. This remains one of the big unknowns for D24 at this juncture, and may impact the schools she’ll be visiting. At this stage, it’s really a period of focus, heads down for training, racing, and indeed school work. Hopefully things will progressively fall into place
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All of our self organized visits, meaning we scheduled an admissions tour and reached out to the coach asking if they would be available to meet and show us the pool included the parent. Coaches were happy to meet and generous with their time, even at programs that would be considered reaches. They were happy to speak with both of us and answer any questions.
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Sorry for the confusion, my daughter did not have pre read results from the schools when we visited - actually got the first two results in the trip but knowing where she stood with the coaches made it easier to plan. As a single mom and teacher we had a very small window to get the visits in and they certainly clarified a lot.
D24 is confident she would pass pre-reads, and I presume it was similar in your daughter’s case. When you say “know where she did with the coaches”, does that translate into “you have full support if you pass pre-read” for at least certain coaches? I am not sure D24 will be there by June, but that is certainly her goal.
My daughter was not as confident for some of the schools as your daughter is. Additionally we needed scholarship/merit/financial aid money so both academic and financial pre reads were very important and there was some stress waiting for results.
She had a solid picture from the coaches at each school we visited regarding her place in the recruiting process - full support, discussion of athletic money (d1 and d2 school), roster spot but no support, in final two for the one spot and so one, and current depth chart in her position. With her position (goal keeper) schools will typically only recruit one each year or two every other year and playing time is difficult as backups rarely play.
She knew decisions were going to be made based on the visits so it wasn’t a super stress free trip but we had fun. Some of the schools you are targeting we visited- Franklin Marshall, Bryn Mawr and Haverford, tufts, Trinity, conn college, smith, Amherst, and then others of slightly lower academic standing - Clark (where she will be next year), stonehill, William smith, assumption,
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If you are traveling with your daughter, I think it is appropriate to meet the coach, go on the tour, ask any financial questions (of the administration, not the coach). You are international and the coaches know you can’t do multiple tours, and 17 year olds can’t rent cars or hotel rooms or whatever is needed to travel from school to school.
I think the coaches who didn’t include me made a big mistake as then when my daughter had questions, I couldn’t help her decide. She felt much more comfortable at the schools that did include me, and ended up at one where the coach brought in groups of 5, with parents, and designed the day around tours for the family (dorms, classrooms, etc) and then planned an evening activity just for the recruits (a soccer game when daughter was there), eating in the cafeteria, and then an individual meeting with parent and child the next day. They talked about the team and the sport, I talked about finances (the coach didn’t know as much as I did, as she was new to the state and school).
Please bear in mind admissions has become much more competitive at these already very competitive schools. How each school conducts pre reads is different and it is not just a pass/fail bar. There is a lot more nuance in the application process at this level (high academic D3) -even for sports recruits- than we can even appreciate. Therefore it is impossible to be certain that once x,y&z happens, she’ll be admitted and the uncertainty is greater when she is not a top recruit.
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we expect the coaches who ask for the pre-reads to know their school requirements well, and have verified before hand that the grades/SAT/ACT/senior year classes are satisfactory. if the athlete is within the school’s GPA/SAT/ACT, wouldn’t that be sufficient to pass a pre-read?
understand there are (minority?) cases where admissions also requires a short essay, which is written at home with plenty of time and preparation. Would appreciate if anyone knows of specific schools that are seeking more than that in their pre-reads? or in fact any additional esoteric information.
I think what they are saying is that it’s hard to guess what the standards are these days, and that everyone should try and hope to surpass, not just meet, the bar.
One of the coaches on your list suggested that the school prefers that athletes also check another box.
They are just gently reminding you to keep expectations in check and not assume that it’s a slam dunk.
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A coach who has been at a school for 20 years does probably know which students will pass (or not pass) the pre-read but not all coaches have been at their schools for 20 years. My daughter played for a new coach - new team for this school, an AD who really didn’t know much about women’s sports and nothing at all about lacrosse. When we were having the financial discussion, this coach knew nothing about other funding available (Florida bright futures, there resident grant, pre-paid tuition and how much that would cover. She was just trying to build a team and since it was an engineering school she couldn’t restrict the majors. I think it was her third year there when she recruited a girl who did not get admitted. (we didn’t really have a formal pre-read, just a review). I think the girl actually applied and just wasn’t admitted. She’d been listed as a recruit for more than a year. Coach didn’t know she wouldn’t be admitted.
Also remember that many recruits will pass the pre-reads but the coach can’t support them all. There will be some students who will pass who will not be offered a spot. There may be recruits who don’t even ask for a pre-read and who apply RD but the coach really wants so that recruit may ‘bump’ someone who was higher on the list.
You are also an international applicant, and the coach may not be as familiar with the foreign schools or what the admissions office is looking for. Some of the coaches get to know the big schools or club programs and what the stats should look like but can’t possibly know every school in the world. A ‘B’ on a transcript doesn’t mean the same from every school.
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fully understand the dynamic of coaches issuing more pre-reads than they have slots to manage their funnel, and the dynamic of coach-athletes positioning for their respective commitments.
But taking all that aside, would AOs at any school really (taking out MIT & John Hopkins who demand 1500 SAT) not approve a pre-read for an athlete with 3.9 GPA & 1450 SAT from a well established high school for example?
One of the coaches on your list suggested that the school prefers that athletes also check another box.
which school and what box?
Maybe, depends on the student’s transcript. So not your D, but someone with a 3.9 GPA might not have much rigor, to take one example. Also depending on the type of slot/tip, a 1450 might be asked to apply TO. A colleague had a recruit this year at a NESCAC that has been mentioned on this thread with an ACT 33 and the pre-read was green light, but apply TO.
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in cases where an athlete with either 1450 SAT and/or 33 ACT is asked to apply TO, isn’t really a case of the athletic department and/or admissions accepting the pre-read but wanting to optimize/doctor their team/freshman year stats?
Yes. Depending on the institutional priorities and where those scores were falling, definitely yes.
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I can’t answer that definitively. GPA has the rigor or not, that’s pretty straightforward. Many schools don’t recalculate gpa, or publish avg gpa for incoming class…if they do it’s usually garbage.
In terms of TO or not…Maybe manipulating in some cases, but in others those stats might not be enough for a tip.