<p>My D will be senior in hs this fall, and is/will be heavily recruited for an indiv sport. She needs to practice A LOT to stay at the top (where she is). She goes to school with a lot of other athletes.<br>
It has been diffficult for her to do college app preparation like actually studying for SATs, because of enormous time demands of sport, and demands of regular school.
My husband and I told her we are curtailing her practice time in her sport over next 3 months significantly, so she can spend the time necessary to get her college apps in, tests taken, etc.<br>
She is talking to coaches who will get her an early "read" on her application, but she needs early test scores, transcripts ready.<br>
She does not like our decision. She is passionate about her sport and she thinks she will not be up to snuff sports-wise by missing practice to do college app things. Of course the reason she will get tips from coaches for admission is her top rank in her sport, so she has a point. But she wants to go to top colleges, and even with a tip from coach you can't get in with low scores, mediocre essays-- even minimal effort takes time.</p>
<p>As you know, the top colleges have an index number that must be met. I’ve seen kids that coaches really wanted miss that number. You need to decide together what the best strategy is to meet the school’s minimums and stay a top pick for the coaches.</p>
<p>I thought HS was supposed to prepare you for the SAT’s.?? Unless you are willing to spend way too much time on them, just take them. Most people do fine without undue prep. If the SAT does not work take the ACT. It’s less prepable.</p>
<p>As one sports parent said, “One does not need to be an Olympic qualifier to swim for Yale, but one needs at least a 31 ACT to be even considered as a recruited athlete there.” My point is that if your D is such a top athlete and wants to compete for a very academically selective school, she can sacrifice some of her performance (e.g., finish 3rd at State instead of winning it) and concentrate on beefing up the SAT/GPA part of her application. If she is looking at athletic scholarships at top D1 schools in her sport, then she probably needs to concentrate on her athletic performance.</p>
<p>It’s summer. Presumably she isn’t in school now? This would be the time to work on her essays and study for the SAT (Is she retaking in October? Does she have an earlier result?) Doesn’t she have 2 or 3 waking hours per day when she can do college app stuff for the next few weeks, freeing up her time when school starts?</p>
<p>college applcations themselves don’t take that long. as suggested alot can be done now, the basics of the application, essays started, recommendation materials gathered, resume done, college webistes checked for dates and requirements.</p>
<p>Once that is all done, its the essays that take time.</p>
<p>As far as the SAT’s, I agree with barrons (post #3). If I remember correctly, the last study of SAT prep courses I read indicated that they, on average, add something like 30 points onto a score, not the 100 or more advertised. Most of that can probably be attained by a student themselves by just getting a test prep book and reviewing the well known test taking strategies, and taking a couple of practice tests. I think the more time consuming process is the applications, depending on whether more than one essay will need to be written, and as one other poster suggested, a large part of that can be done this summer. My kids ended up having to write a couple of different essays, and then several 150 (or more) short answer responses to different questions posed by the schools they were applying to. If a student can get the major essay done in the summer, then those smaller written items can be more easily fit into a busy athletic schedule during the school year, which worked for my son, also an athlete. If your D is really motivated to keep up her practice schedule, then there are probably ways to satisfy both her desire to keep up her normal schedule and your desire for appropriate involvement on her part in the college search and prep process.</p>
<p>Common Application takes the time consuming component out of applying for colleges - you can usually use the same or modified version of your essay as well. If she is truly a HRA (highly recruited athlete) and will receive tips/sponsors from coaches, ask them candidly what the index is…usually an 1100 or 24 will suffice with a HRA at Patriot levels and the Ivys it can vary, especially if the GPA is stellar. If she is interested in pursuing her sport, has a sound GPA and can do some prep for the ACT, she should focus on her sport and not miss practice because the coach will definately not tip her if she is substandard or not prepared for her sport…perhaps you can assist her with the perfunctory sections of the application - input data, organize recommendaitons, files, etc. so she can focus on being a student-athlete, attending practices and preparing a few hours a week for the SAT/ACT using practice books like The Real Act. Many successful HRA have done this with great success. Again, the common ap takes alot less time, as you can generally use the same application for all of the schools you are applying to, or create different versions easily of the first common ap to customize if needed.</p>
<p>I know of so many hs seniors who dropped their sport because they were truly burned out–I think it’s kind of wonderful that your daughter is so committed. If this is her passion and she’s maintaining grades (and you’re aware that there aren’t many seniors whose grades don’t slip a bit, particularly second semester), I’d be hesitant to pull her back. She must have taken SATs at least once already, right? Is she in the ballpark of where she needs to be? </p>
<p>Back in our day nobody studied for SATs. I agree that it’s not necessary to do much (any?) additional prep if the student has received a good hs education. And college applications really do not take that much time. My oldest was too much of a procrastinator to even think about working on them summer before senior year, although that is a good suggestion. The common app is a wonderful invention. We worked all application stuff in around the edges–maybe a bit on weekends, but mostly over Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks. There were no EAs/EDs, so Jan 15th was the first deadline.</p>
<p>Perhaps individual sports are different but in my D’s team sport the elite athletes have already committed by this time (sr year). It’s also important to remember that athletic scholarships are for one year only. Sure they can renew them but they’re under no obligation to do so. </p>
<p>Getting in is only the start of the effort. Once there, she’ll have to maintain her grades, her performance level and the practice/conditioning schedule of the sport. (That’s a year round effort for all athletes.) </p>
<p>If she’s concerned about her performance suffering because of studing for the SAT (the importance of which is, I agree, over blown) and practicing, how’s she going to feel about that 6:00 AM run and a 15 page paper due the same day? Or being away from campus for two weeks while she wins her NCAA title - then having finals the day she returns?</p>
<p>Bottom line: she has to be able to accomplish both of these goals.</p>
<p>I would suggest you reconsider your restrictions. As a senior, your D has already taken the ACT or SAT tests. If you expect her to study for a short period of time and do substantially better, you are likely to be disappointed. Clearly your D considers that some sort of torture and she is not likely to do well with that approach. Let her do what she really wants. Kids with passion and excitement are more likely to succeed. I would even consider stepping up and helping her manage the tasks that need to get done for applications. It should not be that difficult or time consuming but it is valuable to have a parent make sure no deadlines are missed.</p>
<p>SAT prep can be time consuming, and may be unnecessary. Find out minimum accepted score from coaches/admission at prospective colleges–one team athlete I know of was told 1200 M+CR by U of Pennsylvania, and they meant it; an individual athlete had lower than that but got into Duke. If she hasn’t taken SATs yet, were PSAT scores in an acceptable range?</p>
<p>Thank you all for taking the time to reply–comments very helpful. I realize we have been shooting in the dark somewhat. What I would like is more specific information, if it is to be had and if it can be relied on (therein may be the problem), about what precisely she needs to get into her topchoice college. There isn’t enough time and energy to do everything equally well, to the best possible in terms of sport and college applications to go “all-out” in all arenas. She is approaching competition season. My approach is/has been–I want her test scores as high as possible, best she can do on them, which would require more TIME. While this is absolutely D’s approach to sport, it is not to her approach to SATs, or applications, in which she has no intrinsic interest–she sees them as an annoyance which deserve as little time as possible/ just enough effort to get her in where she wants to go. She doesn’t want to leave any time on the table. In a couple of weeks coach of current-first-choice-college will take her existing scores and transcript to admissions for a preliminary read. After that, I think D will need to be very specific with her questions to him about what improvement is necessary, what retesting, etc, if she wants out of “jail”. Trouble is, I don’t know if coach can really say with certainty—Oh, gee, an ACT of 29 is enough, when that is below mean score for school. It goes against the grain for ME to leave anything on the table in this arena-- I found another thread on this website that talks about similar issues/ reliability of statements of coach in context of likely letters. We are not at the likely letter stage yet–What I am concerned about is the reliability (assuming we get an answer) re what the threshold is in terms of test scores etc. I.e. Does she need to do more? In any event, she still should take SAT Subject tests in Oct— this is just preliminary read we will get next month. D is not particularly realistic, she wants to take the Oct SAT day after a lengthy competition–I want her to forego the competition to be ready for test, which she sees as sacrilege.
Her grades are what they are at this point (very good), but she could improve test scores and still has to write essays (first draft yesterday was abysmal). So I want her to buckle down and put in more prep time, which means less practice time and travel time (travel time is huge–she travels a lot for sport). The relatively little amount test prep she did right before June tests helped her a lot (she had not done any before, not very much standardized testing ever, and her first practice tests were off-the-charts terrible).
She took the ACT and SAT in June. The poster above says you can’t get into Yale if your ACT is below 31. Well, my D is talking seriously to top D1s, at least one Ivy, top LACs and her ACT is below 31, and my D firmly believes she does not need to retake it–this is the type of argument we are having. Top athletes are frequently very stubborn, and she is no exception.<br>
I realize I am operating on a “throw 100% at this problem approach” to applying to college, and we don’t really know the target. I don’t think in terms of “target”–I think: “do the absolute best you can on this test” and I know she could do a lot better if she would focus on this stuff. D absolutely thinks in terms of targets.
She thinks she is done! Obviously, now I think of it, it needs to be the coach not me who tells her she is not, if she is not. (But can we believe him? I guess if she applies ED and he told her incorrectly and she relied on having good enough scores, there is always RD and other schools, but by then, no more time for more tests . . . .) D took the ACT and SAT in June, did OK on SAT Math and Writing, but pretty terrible on CR, and took the ACT and did OK on Composite, but terrible on the Writing/English—I think she was really tired. Those tests were a week apart, and the first one came within a few days of school getting out. D does not want to repeat either of them, and I think she should repeat one of them. Anyway, THIS IS A QUESTION–from what I understand, the colleges “highgrade” the SAT—=will take best score from different sittings, so one tactic would be to work on doing better on CR on a subsequent SAT. On the ACT, she told me when she got home from test that she didn’t think she’d done very well on the essay–and it turned out her score on it was not good, substantially lower than on the SAT essay. DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW THE COLLEGES COUNT THE WRITING/ENGLISH SCORE OF ACT? To D, it isn’t a great score but it is an OK score, and in her world, spending time prepping for test scores she thinks she doesn’t need is torture. There are lots of completely unsubstantiated and vague rumors floating around that the kids hear about how “low” some kids scores were who got into such and such a college----this is worthless info, probably flat wrong (below 600 for Ivies), cannot be taken out of context of whole applications, but it feeds the attitude of “I’ve done enough” to a kid who wants to get back to normal life----competition and regular school. I guess I am just tired of this whole application process! Thanks for listening.</p>
<p>D is in individual sport and in her sport there are not commitments at this point.</p>
<p>Seems to me if the student was a highly recruitable athlete that process would be well underway by the time the summer before senior year rolled around. Therefore, unless the coaches have said as much, she has no real idea how high on their list she is. Or does she? Also, with very competitive academic schools, a coach does not have the final say, especially at the Ivies and top LACs (which typically are DIII). It really is all about the match and I wouldn’t want my kid attending a school, playing a sport and not having enough time for the challenge. I also know that a coach can say… we’d love to have you and the kid doesn’t get in. In my world and what I tell my kids is… it’s all about options.</p>
<p>Reply to Modadunn: D is very blessed to be highly desirable athlete, top ranked (at this time-- one can never presume such stuff, accidents and injuries happen all the time.) Coach said she is at top of list. My questions relate to what she needs to do notwithstanding her high rank as athlete. The recruiting process cannot start during junior year. And, she is young for her grade. Her coaches urged her to take an extra year of high school so she could take a lighter load. There are times she is on the road for (many) weeks at a time. I think that she would have benefitted from another year of high school to spread this out over, but she wants to finish earlier rather than later.</p>
<p>I googled if Yale did require 31 ACT for their swimmers. This is what it states on the website:</p>
<p>[Yale</a> Swimming and Diving](<a href=“Yale University - Official Athletics Website”>Yale University - Official Athletics Website)</p>
<p>Yup, it looks like that lady was right. I suspect for team sports like football and basketball the requirements might be a bit less stringent.</p>
<p>Reply to Bunsen Burner: Well, that website is interesting–thank you. Yale makes it very clear. D WOULD have to retake the ACT if she were applying to yale (she is not). BTW I have never seen a college website that states the threshold test scores for recruits. Doesn’t look like they leave any leeway either.
Question: Everyone (eg yale website) pretty much just refers to the composite score in ACT, as compared to 3 scores for SAT. D did much better on Composite than Eng/Writing in ACT. Does this mean we do not need to worry about ACT Eng/Writing?</p>
<p>Perhaps you need to wait for first-choice-coach to get back to you. His telling D she needs to study and retake might pull more weight than you telling her.</p>
<p>Beyond that, aren’t there any less selective schools that could recruit her? It honestly doesn’t sound like she’d be happy at a very academically focused school like Yale.</p>
<p>Reply to qialah: I think you are absolutely right we need to wait for coach to get back to us. Talking this through makes me realize this–it is just we are making/curtailing travel and competition plans now, but we’ll just have to pull back from that planning to extent possible, leave as many options open as possible, until we hear specifics from top-choice coach. Re your comment re going to less competitive school, this is a possibility and maybe a better choice. Actually, re Yale, a lot of people in our family went to Yale, though D is not applying there. D is a very intelligent kid—right now, her passion and energy are focused on her sport. At some point, that will wane, though perhaps not for many years. I would like her to have most options possible for education component.</p>