The home country option appears to be military service. From April:
“namely that Canadian schools provide assurance of acceptance, and that several UCs are completely safety schools with admit rates from 30%-50%. If she can’t get admission to several schools with 30%-50% admit rates, she will take a gap year and enroll in military service, and complete junior officer training, which is very formative.”
Of course this was when they weren’t aware of the international acceptance rate of UCs, so those admit rates weren’t correct. This was also when they said:
“we’re fine with a US shut out. I personally don’t think it’ll happen and would bet $5000 with whomever wants to take that bet. we have a detailed understanding of what it means to be rejected, though we don’t understand what it means to be rejected by Harvard since parents both got admitted there, but opted to attend another school.”
There was no clarification about whether this meant undergrad acceptances or to a master’s program.
Ok…I can contribute something here. Admissions to places like Harvard have become MUCH more competitive since the parents a generation ago were admitted. This is old information and a metric that can’t be used now.
The thread is about the OP’s daughter’s chances at recruitment as a swimmer, not about the effects of legacy on admissions. That would be a separate topic for a different thread.
D24 summer meets in the US are a great opportunity to learn the dynamics of US meets, which are similar to meets she’s previously participated in (LCM, team events), but also different (no marshalling, meeting with recruiting coach). She wasn’t expecting PBs because she missed two weeks of training during her school tour, maybe it’ll get better at her second meet.
Great that she had an opportunity to meet with a coach.
It can be a great to experience the kind of depth in a USA Swimming meet. Being a foreigner myself, even from a country where swimming is reasonably strong, I can really appreciate that.
In hindsight, I would have done college tours after the swim meets. I also would have focused on finding a meet that is less competitive in order to have the chance to swim finals. Even better would be to find a SCY meet, although where that would be in the summer I don’t know. I really don’t think college coaches give much weight to LCM times. One can convert every which way and another but at the end of the day a lot of kids are better in LCM or SCY. Unfortunately, that is a problem coming in as in international swimmer - the coaches really don’t know how she would do. Obviously if an international swimmer has killer times than going a little slower in SCY would be ok. If you are on the border then it is more of a risk.
I agree with this and I think it was mentioned up thread. It’s a mistake made all the time. More than once my swimmer has opted for the smaller meet to get bigger swim opportunities. No coach cares where you got the times as long as you get them. These big meets can be quite humbling.
others may know better, but international swimmers who are completely foreign to how US meets work, from qualifying, registering with US swimming, affiliating with a club, and what times count to qualify, are better with joining a team and competing with that team. of course, one can debate about the choice of team, but she’s been training with a premier club with both high school and college swimmers, and that experience has been invaluable for HER. other choices may have been better suited for others. Trying to do all that solo would have been the worst choice of all.
The timing of visits was planned to meet specific coaches who were on site during every during visits, which was also important for her to gauge how she liked the school, coach, facilities, town/city. with so many moving pieces, it’s near impossible to optimize in every parameter, so we make choices and move on
All I know is kids who are die-hard swimmers do not miss two weeks of swim practice. Assuming coaches will be around at the end of July, I would have focused on swimming, done a meet or two, then leave after this meet for college visits. Now doing another week of practice and then flying all the way to Florida for another swim meet just seems a big waste, especially as there are no colleges to visit anywhere near St. Petersburg. But I totally agree she is having a great opportunity to swim with a top club.
The above post was back on February 8th. That’s a lot of time to digest and heed that advice.
I’m glad that it has been a good experience so far, but I thought these two meets were stated as being critical to improve times in for recruiting?
Swimming in a big Sectionals meet with stiff competition, and only being able to compete in a few events with one prelim race in each seems like a recipe for disappointment. The same goes for not properly and carefully planning the training schedule of the six weeks leading up to them.
As it stands now, if there haven’t been time improvements in key events since last summer, things are unfortunately not on a good trajectory. Rather than doubling down and attempting improvements in Florida in less than two weeks without the training base to realistically execute that, perhaps a better course is to use that time instead to visit the two schools that didn’t make the previous itinerary, but which seem to be the ones that have shown the strongest recruiting interest to date?
That is not what I meant. I presume the kids who don’t have sectional cuts are also going to meets. The suggestion was to elect to go to that meet instead, being that the stated objective had been to have a chance at improving times.
Still, I think the choice of college tour over swimming was the right one. The reality is that the vast majority of female swimmers (and many men) do not drop significant times at this age. Mentally it can be a very hard time on the tails of seeing times drop at every meet as they go through puberty.
If there is a local meet (Sr Champs? Zones?) and more schools to visit, Florida may not be the best use of the limited time in the US.