Hi and thank you to everyone who posts here. The information is plentiful and helpful. We’re trying to take it all in. I’ve read virtually every women’s rowing thread and I still have a few things I’m unsure of. Rowing recruiting seems to have a lot of moving parts but I’m still trying to get a general sense of things. So please correct me if I’m wrong. It seems in general, that at top academic schools like ivy’s, Stanford, Duke etc., they have 2-3 “slots” where top recruits – sub 7:15, 6’ tall girls with decent academics 3.5+ gpa & 1350+ sat can get supported and possibly admitted. For the rest of their recruiting classes the schools take girls anywhere up to 7:40ish 2Ks with stellar academics (3.8+ gpa 1500+ sat). The higher the AI, the slower the erg time can be. These girls get a note or call to admissions that can be helpful but far from a guarantee. This all happens in ED time frame. A few girls may not work out for each school so then coaches continue recruiting for RD but can only offer very limited admissions support. Is this generalization sort of correct-ish? Thanks
Based on my experience, Ivy schools have 10 to 12 slots with admissions for open weight women. Within those slots, I don’t know what the academic mix has to be, but I do know that some of those slots are allocated to kids whose stats are closer to the lowest 10-20% of the schools admitted class. So, for example, approx. 20% of the current Princeton freshman have SAT scores of 600-699 per area (old SAT) and 8.4% of the freshmen have GPAs between 3.5 and 3.74 (most of the rest are higher in both SAT and GPA). Those numbers would set the general floor for admits. Coaches are going to recruit kids who meet, or will meet, the rowing standards of the program. Princeton would have a different erg requirement than Dartmouth. The boat average for the 1V8 at Princeton would be sub-7:00 while the 1V8 at Dartmouth will be a north of that, and coaches need enough rowers that will hit those numbers during their time in the program. What that means is that Princeton is highly unlikely to recruit anyone with a 7:40 erg, while Dartmouth might and probably does. Height is not as much of an issue (although some coaches are more influenced by size), but the shorter rowers do bring strong erg scores. Coaches at the top tier programs try to lock up their recruit roster in ED/EA, but it does seem that there might be some slots held for RD on occasion.
Thanks so much Rennie17! Are you a rower?
@tarrydad Rower? Nope, too hard, just a parent.
One follow up question regarding slots. Are the 10-12 supported slots spread out over 4 classes, or is that for each incoming class? Thanks
That’s each year. And to be clear, admissions makes the admit decision. The coach will use pre-read results to guide their decision to offer support, but it’s only a done deal when the likely letter comes from admissions.
Got it. Thanks so much!