@EmptyNester2016 Thanks so much for all the info on Brown’s athletics, super interesting.
Not sure about their baseball recruiting, but the APR for the fencing team was most likely due to many of the walk-on athletes who had higher academic benchmarks to reach. I’m not sure it’s fair to say Brown is throwing away a badge of academic honor in this context.
I guess when fencing is a niche sport with low overall attendance (i.e. not a money sport), its head will forever be on the chopping block. As one coach told me with a sweeping arm to allude to a university at large “no one cares about fencing and that’s okay --but everyone in this room does, and that has to be enough.” Sadly, for Brown it was not enough.
I am so sad about Brown’s decision. Sucks. I don’t know how much money they will ultimately save on this - my guess is not much, but to eliminate the team in such an abrupt manner speaks volumes about the University’s attitude toward student athletes. Just terrible.
FYI, there’s a FB discussion on the USA Fencing website with lots of comments from current and former Brown fencers – also mentioned is that one of the team members has started a petition. I wish them luck.
Fencingmom no my son was recruited to a different program. We do have a friend on the Brown team whom just had his first year there and he had a great first year so we are sad for him. The fencing team reached out to my son this week to touch base which was very nice. We’re just hoping that campus will be open in the fall and that there is a season as well. Stay safe all.
@fencingmom Hi. Thank you for your speculation and large vocabulary. I wish I had your god-given intuition so that I too could make big assumptions on things I know little about. Despite what you might think, Brown IS actually throwing away a “badge of academic honor in this context.” The fencing team is not made up of a bunch of dumb recruits and smart walk ons. Brown Fencing has by FAR the highest academic threshold for recruitment of any ivy league fencing team. I had a 1510 SAT and a 3.7 GPA when I was recruited. The other recruit my year had a 4.0 and 1580. I worked extremely hard in highschool. I now have straight As at an ivy league school. Oh but I was a recruit, so I must be an idiot right? It must be the walk-ons that are the real brains of the operation giving us the those high APR scores.
Also this is not about fencing being a money sport. No teams at Brown bring in a net profit (not even football). Most teams at every school lose money. So it is actually not that simple (sorry).
Regardless, I hope you are staying safe during these troubling and uncertain times. Hopefully school starts up in the fall. I know thats what everyone wants. Thank you.
@lebronjames68
Appreciate your feedback and clarification regarding Brown‘s fencing recruits. Most people unfortunately underestimate and oftentimes assume there are lowered academic standards and qualifications for all recruited athletes. This differs from school to school and from sport to sport.
Congrats on that straight A average which is hard enough to achieve at any college let alone a well respected ivy.
Whoa there @lebronjames68 In no uncertain terms am I saying:
I did say this:
I actually should have said “may have had higher academic benchmarks…” Language, so important. Walk-on athletes don’t get pre-reads or a coach who’s actively advocating for the athlete directly with admissions. And there’s really no wiggle room like there MIGHT be for a very high level (points-wise) recruit who’s a little light in the grades and scores. I know this because I know many of these athletes personally. But the wiggle room is not the difference between “dumb” and “smart” by any means. I seem to have really hit a nerve, and if so let me be the first to apologize. Everyone at Brown deserves their seat at the table.
As a practical matter, Ivy League coaches (since we are using that example), cannot count on walk-ons to raise the curve, even if that’s really a thing. Walk-ons by definition must gain admission outside of athletic recruiting and their odds of admission are daunting under just about any circumstances. In fact, what happens is that, when a recruit with less than strict Ivy “standards” is recruited, another recruit with higher levels is added to balance. In any case, less than strict Ivy Standards is still at a pretty high level. For Brown to maintain such a high level of academic index is a testimony to the quality of its recruits. Walk-ons may enhance this, but they could not be counted on to assure it.
Although all eight Ivy League schools are waiving standardized test requirements for this year’s applicants, Princeton noted that
“Recruited athletes will still need to adhere to the Ivy League policy and submit standardized testing, though the Office of Admission will be flexible in its review for those who simply cannot gain access.” [https://admission.princeton.edu/how-apply/covid-19-update]
It’s unclear to me how schools will handle AIs for their incoming scholar-athletes when the rest of the student body isn’t submitting test scores. (Maybe they’ll use last year’s admitted students as their baseline.)
Yes @EmptyNester2016 -you’re right about this. This applies to all Ivy League schools. I called the AO for the Div 1 ivies since my daughter is a prospective recruit. The admissions officers all said the same thing. Test scores are required for athletic recruiting.
Yale:
“ Prospective student-athletes will be required to comply with Ivy League policies and provide test scores for compliance purposes. Specific cases of prospective student-athletes who demonstrate that they do not have access to standardized tests will be considered on an individual basis. ”
Cornell:
“ Ivy League athletics:
Applicants who expect to play on one or more of Cornell’s 37 varsity teams must continue to align their activity with Ivy League policy, which currently requires test submissions.”
Columbia:
“ Columbia will continue to follow the guidance and policies of the Ivy League in regard to testing requirements for applicants who expect to participate in Columbia’s varsity athletic program.“
Most Ivy League coaches are finalizing their recruiting list in July. The Ivy League is aware of the difficulty for student athletes (like the rest of the general applicant population) to take standardized exams, but for some reason instead of being more understanding and lenient - SAT/ACT test scores are still a must.
Agree. Even if one was able to test early (in the fall) the opportunities to improve scores over a few tests were lost, as were superscoring opportunities. It’s too bad for kids who would likely have met the requirements but lost the chance due to all the test cancellations. Notwithstanding excellent academics and challenging coursework getting the coach support seems to be difficult without meeting the usual testing standards already, unless the student takes a chance on applying to the school without a slot/coach support (which would be risky especially if ED was otherwise being considered).
Hi @downallunder I’m new to the forum and I can’t PM people. I have a few questions for you. If possible, do you mind sending me a PM so we could start an offline conversation? Thanks!
In light of Harvard’s announcement today, along with Princeton, about how they will conduct next year mainly online with choppy on campus presence across varying classman, and the upcoming July 8th Ivy announcement on fall sports… does anyone thing that there will be a NCAA fencing season this year? Will there be a mass deferal of current and incoming athletes? How / Does this impact the 2025 class? Clearly, extremely speculative at this time but since we have been very quiet of late thought this might bring an interesting discourse.
Great topic for speculation, but I suspect that scholar-athletes will not be happy when the news comes out. My wager is on the Ivy League not having athletes on campus this fall, and that decision will provide fodder for lawsuits against schools that make decisions based on money, not public health concerns.
Especially right now with the recent surge in most states, it is impossible to know what the NCAA will do. A guess would be that they treat all winter sports similarly, as they did when they announced cancellation of the Winter Championships in March. If so, then the other sports will be watching what they do with Men’s Basketball, since March Madness is so critical for so many school’s athletic department budgets. If I am correct about that, then they won’t do anything special for fencing. If they did, then it would be easy to push the season to after Winter break since some schools already do that normally (i.e., Stanford, Duke), but my guess is that the NCAA will decide on Basketball and the other sports will probably follow. That said I wouldn’t be surprised if individual colleges cancelled specific sport seasons or even the Ivys decided to do that. If there are insufficient teams fencing, then there might not be a fencing season this year even if the NCAA decided it was ok.
I suspect we won’t really have a strong understanding of what the the fencing season may look like until after we have to commit fully for the year, eliminating deferral as a good option. Do you take the plunge and hope for some semblance of normalcy, or throw in the towel now and defer? Our coach mentioned the potential for more dual meets, and less travel. Really agonizing for these kids who worked so hard to get into their schools…
From our current experience with our D, it seems recruitment is still ongoing. She is now in the pre-read stage for 6 schools, i.e. coaches have submitted her profile to Admissions.
One coach from our top choice just told us the good news about the pre-read. That my D is admissible per their academic standards if my D gets a recruitment spot.
The only catch is that the coach said he is not ready to finalize his list yet and told us that ‘he needed more time to decide’ which might take his timelines to late Aug/ early Sep and my D is still in his shortlist. Previously he told us he will decide in July.
How I read this is that he wants to be very cautious of the recruitment spots he would give out. Perhaps his top choices probably has not come back to him yet to commit and taking longer due to all the prevailing issues? Plus all the uncertainty with the sports calendar, cancelled season, potential deferment/ gap year for class 2024, etc. He’s probably holding on to us given my Ds lower standing in the pecking over just in case. Who knows we might just get lucky once other fencers make their choices and release their spot from the school?
Though we are still waiting on the others which are good school choices for us as well. Agree with previous post that school/ academic fit comes first and fencing a bonus.
@newfencingdad Thanks for posting the link. Just saw this a few minutes ago. I know the program had some issues with funding a while ago, but there was also a lot of enthusiasm on that team. Very sad.