“The Last Stretch”: Recruitment update for our D21
After starting the formal process early this year (Feb/ Mar) when we emailed to a combination of Div 1 and 3 schools hoping to get noticed by Coaches, we have now come to the end of the musical chair where our D has formally accepted a written offer and committed to fence for a Div 1 school (non-Ivy) that matches 3 of our main criteria:
(1) Academic rigor of her intended Major (note not the overall school - rankings, etc.);
(2) an equal balance or focus on the Fencing program;
(3) affordability considerations
The school we have chosen is part of our initial Top 3 choice and broadly meets our above criteria. We are very happy with how the Coach handled the whole process. He was not afraid to tackle difficult questions (e.g. do you think your program will get cut like Stanford or Brown?), very transparent (“I have 2 slots for your D’s weapon and I am giving one to her”) and explained things to us very thoroughly including the Admissions process (“she passed the pre-read and deemed competitive to be admitted to her intended major”). Coach got my D in contact with the Department she was interested in enabling our D to be a lot more informed. In the end, this open communication made our family much more comfortable that he would do a good job not only with fencing but with overseeing our D in general.
We were in contact with our top choice until the last minute we accepted this offer. In the end, that coach said his slots were cut to due to the crisis (true or not we take it FWIW) and he said he could have offered D a slot if it was a normal year. Any parents out there with similar experience?
Obviously, it’s still not over until we have that Final acceptance letter from Admissions - some black swan event can still happen which we are also preparing. But given all the uncertainty we decided to lock in at this stage given there are probably a few slots left (Ivies seems to have locked in theirs way earlier).
Given the difficulty of the current environment due to the pandemic and extreme competitiveness of the recruitment process we still feel quite satisfied that we were able to navigate this whole journey and knowing we are able to achieve our objectives Fencing-wise with a couple of formal Div 1/ 3 offers, walk on offer from an Ivy league, well over 50% response rate from initial email (some we did not pursue due to various reasons - school not an academic fit, too expensive, etc.). Overall, it was still a fairly smooth, textbook perfect process for us except maybe a slight delay or variation in some of the steps like the pre-read or obviously no Onsite.
I found this CC Fencing thread over 2 years ago when my D was still piling up her fencing resume. I have read every single page of this thread from page 1 until now (page 70+)! Thank you to all those who contributed their knowledge, time, experiences and shared this with other parents/ fencers. Special mention to @BrooklynRye whom I constantly bombarded with questions in this whole process but tirelessly responded to every single one of them and to other parents whom I’ve DM’d! It is our turn to pay forward whomever wants to learn from what we went through. I will update the thread once all are formally settled and all ready to start for our D21 in the Fall of 2021 (how this will turnout is anybody’s guess) - we can only wish and hope for things to move on to the new normal.
