<p>coase – the college soccer camp experience has been a mixed bag for us in S’s recruiting process, but I definitely recommend it if you do your homework and if your D can’t be seen at tournaments or on good-quality video by the coaches of the schools she’s interested in.</p>
<p>My recommendations:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Verify that the coaches the camp materials say will be there actually will. The fact that a coach attended last year doesn’t mean he/she will be this year. If the camp has multiple sessions, check directly with the coach or the camp to find out which week(s) the coaches you’re interested in will be present. S attended UPenn’s Elite 300 camp at Swarthmore in 2009, which had three sessions, and we were happy we checked ahead of time before registering.</p></li>
<li><p>Get in touch with the coach before she goes so the coach will be on the lookout for her at the camp and will be aware of her interest.</p></li>
<li><p>Unless you have pots of $ and plenty of time to spend on camp attendance, maximize her exposure by picking camps that have many coaches from the conferences/schools she’s interested in. For boys in the Mid Atlantic area, the Elite 300 and Bucknell camps are very good in that regard and S’s team mates who’ve attended both, too, had good experiences at them.</p></li>
<li><p>If D is very interested in a school that has its own camp, but a small one, perhaps not close to you, have her go if she has a realistic chance of playing for that team and the coach has no other way of seeing her. We did this for S this past summer and it turned out to be great for him. It’s a top LAC w/ very low admit rate and the team went to the NCAAs, so being on the coach’s list for Admissions (even if not one of the few slots) occurred only because he was seen at the camp. If he’s admitted, he’ll have a spot on the team in the fall. By contrast, he went to a camp equally far away at a coach’s invitation after a tournament that turned out to have no coaches present except that college’s coach (despite being billed as having several others there) and it was very small. Had it turned out to be a good fit for S, with mutual interest, the experience would have better. Still, a good exposure to a school he’s applied to, and in a part of the country he hadn’t seen.</p></li>
<li><p>Be aware that a coach’s invitation to attend a camp the coach runs (i.e., supplements his coaching pay from) does not necessarily mean the coach is really, really interested in D. Try to get a sense of the depth of interest ahead of time, unless there are enough other coaches that will be there that it doesn’t matter.</p></li>
<li><p>Talk to other families about camps they’re familiar with before plunking down close to a grand for a four- or five-day camp. What’s in a brochure may not reveal what that camp’s experience really is going to be for the player. Look for things like whether campers get written evaluations from the college coaches for their camp teams. At the Elite 300 camp at Swarthmore, which was large and had many top coaches and talented HS players, S was given a written evaluation by the Centennial Conf coach of his camp team and that coach offered to be a reference for S. S used it effectively in his dealings with other coaches, some of whom contacted that coach. He got the same thing at another camp, which helped him in the recruiting process.</p></li>
<li><p>Camp attendance is something to include on a soccer resume and being selected as an all star is nice to be able to include. At the camps, the all-star selections get more exposure, which can be important at a large camp.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>EMM1 – missswan has described the NESCAC process very much as I understand it generally to be and as it has been playing out for S in his sport, soccer. At the NESCAC schools recruiting him, there are three slots for soccer. Then, there are players the coach tells Admissions that he wants as they will have an immediate Varsity impact (this is where my S falls). They definitely are on his list to Admissions. The third group of players are those who want to attend the school and play and may have been recruited by the coach (and may even end up playing if they get in), but the coach is not supporting their application with Admissions. They are not on the coach’s list and they may end up on the JV team if they get in.</p>
<p>I second Caltech. There was an article on their basketball team stating that they have lost every match for the past 10 years and that they had more SAT perfect scorers than people who played basketball during high school.
Although it did not explicitly stated so, using common sense, I conclude that this is no way in hell that Caltech considers athletic recruiting.</p>
<p>Royal, my DS was at Elite 300 camp 2009 and did not make it “All Star” player the end. I totally agree your point. My DS may play on JV if he got accepted. Who knows?</p>
<p>Northwestern camp is good one also. I recommend it.</p>
<p>I knew a kid a few years back who signed a letter of intent to play water polo at MIT. He did not have the academic grades to attend MIT at all, but got in. Any input?</p>
<p>I guess they needed a good water polo player! But he must have reached the threshold of stats to be admitted as an athlete. They won’t take someone who is incapable of graduating.</p>
<p>Well the reason I ask is because I’m signing an approved LOI for football tomorrow. The coach at MIT needed a kicker and just faxed my coach a form with their school logo on it which states “If I am accepted to MIT, I will commit to play football there”. I think I have the grades to be competitive, I just wanted to know how much of a boost it’ll give me (the football coach said I had the full support of the football office for admissions).</p>
<p>A big PLUS, in my opinion. Stanford just offered admission to a football player who is in one of my daughters class and is failing… </p>
<p>Colleges and universities should be for academics, and not as farm leagues for over-paid professional sports. Because someone is good in sports they should prevent someone who is gifted intellectually form getting a spot? And people complain about ‘reverse discrimination’ – Letting un-intelligent students in because of athletic ability defines the school. Has anyone seen Notre Dame described as ‘highly selective’? Are Ivy League football teams the best now? Is Reed College or Davidson or St Johns (MD) athletic powerhouses? No. Are they intellectual powerhouses? Yes. One precludes the other (Of course – before they are posted – The exceptions test the rule) Quality admissions will make quality colleges and universities. University of Arizona? Basketball and basketweaving. Pomona? Academic excellence and intramurals.</p>
<p>College sports have been a negative factor in US education. We may not have well-educated leaders, but we will have a lot of people who can dunk a basketball… Where are China’s athletic universities? They focus on important things … and buy our national debt … duh to all you athletes …</p>
<p>seung: I don’t know much about LOI, but my understanding is that it is a mutual commitment of acceptance between the school and you. Seems to me your agreement is between you and the coach, which is a different animal altogether, esp at a place like MIT where admissions keeps coaches at an arms length. Maybe those who have actually signed a LOI can attest to what the standard LOI states in this regard, but my thought is that this is just the coach asking you for a commitment and not an actual LOI as NCAA uses it.</p>
<p>mayhew: I would think a true LOI (for any sport at any level) would require a pre-read and pre-approval by Admissions (not the coach) which MIT is adamant that they do not do. Everything I’ve seen states that coaches find out same time as everyone else as far as admission results go. If there are under the table dealing that are not written or spoken of, I wouldn’t know, but would be interested to know. </p>
<p>I have seen references to such things, but it’s all been second or third hand reports (kinda like reports of kids getting ‘athletic’ money to the Ivys). Every single direct report, even by those who are well past the stage and would have no reason to hold things close to the chest, have indicated no special treatment as far as timing of finding out the admission decision. No Likely Letters either.</p>
<p>ihs76: I totally agree with you. It was a mutual agreement between me and the coach. I was just wondering how much of a push that commitment would have with the admissions office at MIT.</p>
<p>I too have never heard of a true “letter of intent” being used by MIT. </p>
<p>Seung, there are a number of comments throughout this thread about the relative weight of athletic recruiting in the admissions process at MIT. That’s probably as much information as people are going to be able to give you, unless someone has specific knowledge that football is treated differently than other sports at MIT - I don’t have any familiarity with football at MIT, so perhaps that’s possible. Good luck!</p>
<p>I can’t speak about all schools, but here is what I am pretty certain of:</p>
<p>1)In the Ivies, it can be a bit of a push, but you are not talking like division 1 where athletes get in who are almost illiterate (literally). The ivies don’t offer athletic scholarships, but I am fairly certain that the athletes they do recruit do get something of an edge, in that they will admit athletes with slightly less then typical grades and SAT’s (and folks, I am not talking 2.0, or 3.0, I am talking a 3.5 instead of a 3.8, maybe slightly lower SAT’s. A couple of years ago there was this ‘expose’ in the NY Times, that Columbia was allowing in football players with only roughly an b+/a- average and an sat that was not in the top x percentile, but perhaps a couple of percentile points lower (like instead of the 98th percentile, 96th). </p>
<p>2)At NYU, from contacts I still have there, athletes again may get an edge, they may be allowed to be slighly lower then their typical profile student, but it is more an edge then a ‘push’. If someone is 2.0 average they aren’t going to get in, I am pretty certain of it.</p>
<p>As for other LAC’s and such, my take is they probably are similar to NYU and the Ivies. I suspect that other then division 1 schools, the ones you see on tv, etc, athletics don’t have that kind of power (for one thing, not much of a revenue generator)</p>
<p>Even at the Ivies, coaches want to win games so if they can get a great athlete with any kind of grades, they will guarantee that ONE athlete admission. I know this for a fact because of my own child’s recruitment. You have to be top 100 nationally and it helps if it is a revenue sport. Universities hire coaches to win games and even some of the best schools make exceptions for the best athletes. I personally think every school does this to some extent. Do coaches come right out and say so? Not exactly… even if it is said with a wink and a nod, the coaches still tell recruits that the final decision is up to admissions.</p>
<p>“Pomona? Academic excellence and intramurals.”</p>
<p>I’ve learned that having any kind of reasoned discussion on this complex issue with people like kerfeet is useless. However, I would like to point out that Pomona is in fact associated with a variety of DIII intercollegiate sports. They are allowed to stick their noses up in the air because the teams are mostly composed of students who are admitted to Pitzer, where the admissions requirements are much less stringent. Don’t know whether Pitzer itself (like most DIII schools) makes additional allowances for athletes in the admissions.</p>
<p>In event, I can’t resist asking. Does Kerfeet think that Claremont-McKenna has gone to the dogs because they make allowances in admissions for athletes?</p>
<p>EMM1 I have to agree with you. My s spends many hours a week on the practice field for the two varsity sports he plays and then comes home to spend several more hours with his AP CALC and AP Physics homework. Kerfeet, he’s certainly not a duhhh undeserving of a spot in a top LAC school. He is able to perform very well as an athlete and a student and happens to be a musician as well. He has to manage his time and work very hard and he does it because it makes him happy. Certainly, there are many kids who spend every free moment studying and do extremely well and maybe that’s what makes them happy. From all that I have read and seen in the college admissions process adcoms in the top schools are looking for students who along with top grades, can also bring something else to their college experience.</p>