After a pre-read is passed, the coach effectively becomes the sole decision maker on the application, barring any substantive change in the applicant’s profile. Some schools will have tougher pre-read selection for internationals. pre-read candidates are selected by coaches who do not have an infinite amount of pre-reads available as it takes a lot of time for AOs, so it is definitely a signal of clear coach interest, but it doesn’t translate into “strong support/recruit spot” for all those who pass it.
D24 has talked to coaches intending to recruit 5-10+ swimmers into their 2024 entering female swim class, so all things being equal, she’d have a higher chance of obtaining coach support from a coach with a larger incoming class of recruits.
Thought LLs were not issued by NESCAC schools but also read that some NESCAC schools (Amherst, Bowdoin, Williams) do issue them, maybe only to non-athletes?
Apparently the OP has previously requested that this thread stay open. I’m not sure what is going on in this 1700 post thread and I’m not going to read it all, but frankly, all the flags are getting tiresome.
I’m going to close it just until the evening so that people can decide if they want to continue to participate or not.
If people want to participate, please stick to the Forum Rules and TOS. Thanks for your cooperation.
This is not the case, especially with the NESCACs. The admissions team ultimately are the ones who make the final decision on an application. All the pre-read does is let the coach know how likely it is that their recruit would be admitted. There never is a guarantee, even if the recruit is at the top of the list. Trust me, the coaches are just as anxious on ED decision day as are the recruits. It is never a done deal until the recruit opens up their portal and sees the acceptance letter.
The link you posted is not focused on likely letters for athletes and is likely to further muddy the waters rather than adding clarity.
AFAIK, the Ivy League is the only conference that has a league-wide policy on likely letters. Ivy likely letters, contrary to what that blog posts suggest, DO guarantee admission. They state that a recruit will be admitted and league policy is that they carry the force of a letter of admission.
There are other schools that take a similar approach but that needs to be confirmed with the coaches. My impression is that the “likely letter” label gets thrown around a lot as if it means the same thing in every context or from every school. It doesn’t.
Agreed. My son committed to a NESCAC yesterday, and that is how the coach explained it to us. Based on the pre-read, the coach said he is highly confident that my son will be admitted if he maintains his grades and submits a polished application with a good essay. However, the coach in no way suggested he himself was making an offer of admission. The coach asked my son to commit to the admissions process, and my son felt comfortable saying yes, based on the initial positive feedback from the admissions committee.
I’m not an expert either, but I have been going through this process with NESCACs with my son. Based on our experience, your understanding is essentially correct. However, the feedback we got from the coach whose offer my son accepted was more positive than “in the range.” The coach said he was highly confident my son would be admitted if he maintained his grades and submitted a strong application. Although the coach made clear that he was not able to offer admission, we felt sufficiently comfortable after the conversation for our son to commit. We also asked the coach about his track record with admissions - has a student who has verbally committed to his team ever not been admitted, and if not, why. I also looked up the most recent common data set for the school. That made me more comfortable because my son’s GPA and test scores are near the top of the range for the school’s admitted students.
My impression is that the number of athletes a coach at a given school can support varies from sport to sport. I would ask the coach.
Finally, we found the recruiting process to be much less complex than OP’s experience.
I found lots of helpful advice in this forum, including on this thread. There are many knowledgeable people here, and their guidance was tremendously helpful!
I don’t really want to add to the length of this thread, but someone’s got to do it. Pre-reads are basically given three grades: green light, yellow light, red light. Green and red are obvious, so I won’t further explain. A yellow light means that the recruit is a possibility, but something more needs to occur (e.g., the 30 ACT needs to go up to 33).
There is a minor degree of variation in how many coach support positions are available at NESCACs. A general rule (excepting football) is 2 slots per team. Slots simply mean that the school will dip down below regular admission standards for 2 players per team. No one, however, can maintain a team with just 2 recruits a year. Tips are athletes who have the same admission standards as the non-athletes applying to the school. In theory, the number of tips a coach could recruit is unlimited, because these students are essentially the same as the rest of the class, they just happen also to be pretty good at their sport. In general, you will see about 3 tips (in addition to the slots) supported by a coach. This may change with the recent Supreme Court ruling, as some athletes were positioned in other buckets (race, legacy, 1st gen). If a team has a bad year attrition wise or if the tips were not all used, the coach might get another tip. Accordingly, overall, the total number is about 5. Football gets 14 slots.
Please don’t assume that slots are more likely to be admitted than tips. For sure, given supported athletes are more likely to be admitted as slots than as tips because those specific athletes probably do not have the academics to be admitted as tips. But a coach’s no. 1 recruit could have impeccable academics and would not need the slot to be admitted.
Another great post by @politeperson. A consistently knowledgeable poster.
I agree this article is very misleading and refers only to the non-athletic Likely Letter which exist in theory, are used less and less by Ivy AOs.
For the Ivy I interview HS students, I have seen these letters used in the RD round for students (non-athletes) who fill institutional priorities such as women interested in STEM and URMs with unique circumstances. Our interviewing committee has been told the non-athletic LL is generally being phased out as it did not have its intended effect on yield. Other Ivys may still use it.
Nevertheless, Ivy LL’s are generally used for athletic recruiting. They are only issued once a complete application has been submitted, and the receipt of one is a virtual lock on admission.
Some info previously posted on CC regarding athletic recruiting at the Claremonts indicates that coach support tends to be less influential, at least once past the two full-support slots per team.
For example:
And:
And:
Back to the current thread: Pomona and Claremont McKenna were apparently recently moved from the “too fast” list back to the swim list. If we are laying odds and taking bets, I would say they are by far the least likely on the current list.
The potential recruit’s season-best time in her best event this year (converted to SCY) would rank #10 at P-P and #9 at CMS for best times in that event this past season on their rosters. And those programs apparently have fewer coach-supported positions and probably also have a much larger list of pre-reads than the NESCACs, so making the pre-read selection means even less than the NESCACs and others in terms of eventually receiving an offer.
ETA: does this make a walk-on position more or less likely at PP or CMS for this athlete? Hard to say from the outside. Only the coaches would know. But based on times relative to the current roster times, I would wager that it’s a lot less likely than other places still on the swim list.
pre-read green: 3
pre-read to be confirmed: 6
D thinks 3-4 are too fast to recruit, fingers crossed on the others, and she can score points for several programs
She’s got her own tentative ranking of her swim schools, and her favorites.
If given support, she’s prepared a list of due diligence questions, which sounds a bit too long, but she’ll cross that bridge if she gets there
How many women swimming recruits received the same support I receive from you in 2022-2023?
do you send admission a ranking for all of us who receive strong support to admission?
Were all recruits admitted who received positive pre-reads and coach support last year for your team/school
How many were admitted?
How many were deferred?
Why were they deferred?
How many were rejected?
Why?
Were any other recruits for other teams with positive pre-reads either deferred or rejected?
**An answer of “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure” can be followed up by the request “Could you please find out?”
it’s the wording brought up by @goingthruaphase green meaning the positive pre-read doesn’t come with additional conditions requested by admissions such as higher SAT.
other outstanding pre-reads have asked to verify full pay/FA, single/double citizenship, ethnic identity
Has your daughter received coach support and a positive statement about her being recruited for any of these teams…or is she still hoping that will happen.
My understanding from what you have written is that the prereads she has gotten indicate she will be accepted by the college…but nothing about whether she will actually be invited to be on the swim team anywhere.