The Havard Coach for track recently offered to write a letter of recommendation to the admissions office to aid in my application. (not fast enough for likely letter or official visit) How much do you think this will increase my chances of admission, or what my chances of admission in general are? I have a 1560 superscored SAT, 780 chemistry subject test along with a 800 math II test. My GPA is 5.0 (max) weighted, and 4.0 unweighted with 12 or so AP’s. I also have volunteering hours at a hospital, debate, and NHS as some additional ec’s. Thanks in advance
Unless you’re being recruited — and it doesn’t sound like you are (correct me if I’m wrong) — I doubt the LOR would have any sort of significant impact on your application. The exception here is if you have worked closely in some regard to the track coach and feel as if he/she knows you well — better than whatever alternatives you have for what I’m assuming is a third recommendation.
I think more context regarding your relationship with the track coach is needed to really offer my input here. What is probably NOT a good idea is having the track coach write you a LOR if he/she knows nothing about you personally: your work ethic, passions, strengths, obstacles, etc.
It really will depend on the interest of the coach ( doesn’t sound like a firm recruit) and many other factors. The list is pretty short for some sports and longer for others. You can ask him/her what times they are looking for in recruits. Often they can tell you specifics and you can then see if you match. Your SAT scores match most at Harvard and your high GPA doesn’t really mean as much until it is put in context with the school you attend. Some schools are just harder than others. Also did you take standard courses or are there some interesting ones in there? Are they all the highest level? (I’m assuming yes due to your GPA). But it you can create a story via classes and interests that is much more interesting.
Having something else that’s outstanding would help. Your ECs sound a bit weak but there may be some you didn’t mention. Were you TOC for example in debate?
I think checking the recruit thread is a good idea then communicating with coach to get more information.
I’ve heard firsthand that this particular choice has a decent record of success when he submits LOR for an athlete.
He is not using a recruiting slot for you, but you have an excellent academic profile and he’d like you on the team. Harvard likes athletes and this may end tipping things in your favor during the admissions process.
Does he have a relationship with you outside of the recruiting process? If not, zero. His weight will only hold for recruits getting an LL, unless he’s known you for years and can write about you outside of track.
^^^. Not to argue, but that’s not true. A letter from a coach can help. I don’t know how much, but I can tell you that I’ve heard if this particular writes you a letter, you have WAY better chances than the normal 6%. And I mean WAY better.
The athetic departments only get so many “slots” they can use, and they often need more kids than what they are given to fill key roles. When a kid like this who has great stats, but not be the #1 choice athlete the coach wants. he might still want them… and so he writes a letter, and these letters are definitely taken into consideration.
It certainly won’t hurt. I think with some coaches at some schools it matters, at others it doesn’t. Theoretically it shouldn’t help because that goes against the spirit of only having a certain number of slots, but that doesn’t mean it won’t.
If you have other good options, I would think long and hard about relying on it though. Keep your options open with other coaches.
Then we’ll have to agree to disagree. I stand by my statement as it applies to Harvard, and more specifically, to track at Harvard, which is what the OP asked. It may be different at other colleges, and within Harvard, a select few coaches may have an intermediate level of pull over their LL allocation. Otherwise the rec will have no more pull than a LoR from Greg Mankiw or Henry Louis Gates, Jr or fill-in-the blank. Which is to say, if the LoR can provide information that is not contained in the required LoRs, it can help, but the help is not based upon who wrote it.
Yale’s recommendations for LoRs would, IMO, apply to Harvard as well:
Now, what he can do that could help, and this may be a question of semantics, is provide admissions with a list (and perhaps add some bullet points) of applicants that he would be pleased to have as walk-ons and ask that those applicants get a careful review. But ultimately, the admissions determinations will be as a result of the admissions packet.
So I think it’s important to distinguish between what the coach actually said versus what one heard/inferred. “Go into your Common App account and add me as a recommender” is different from “I can send a note to the admissions office to attach to your application.”
@Phoenix17: Because you shared your academic statistics but not your track times, I think that the impact of the coach’s letter will depend upon how well he or she knows you on a personal or academic level.
The recent Harvard admissions lawsuit has shed a lot of light on this matter. Apparently Harvard rates each applicant along several personal qualities. In addition, one of the ratings includes athletic ability. Having a good score on the athletic rating apparently can help (even for non-recruits). For details see the Arcidiancono report, page 15:
Sounds like you are not good enough to be recruited. Recruited athletes get an athletic rating of “1” (the highest score). But a letter of recommendation from the track coach might help you get a “2”, which would be a great score. I disagree with the posters above. I don’t see how this could hurt.
Thank you guys for the responses- The coach actually said this: I’d be happy to recommend you to our admissions office", is this different from just a letter of recommendation using the “other recommender” portion of the Common App?
FWIW, different sport, but when my daughter was going through process over the last few years, we treated those sorts of offers of “letters of support” as basically worthless.
^ that’s how I’d view this also, at least in terms of deciding how to proceed with other commitments. While there may very well be a positive impact as others have suggested, the key point is that the OP has no idea what that impact may be. So I certainly wouldn’t pass up other opportunities and make an EA commitment based on this. But if you’re applying anyway and the coach isn’t asking for anything else from you, I’d thank him for the support and keep exploring options. I assume if you are marginal for Ivies you may have good D3 running options with firm coach support.
We have been down this road many, many times on this site. I appreciate what @sgopal2 is saying about the new data we have from the discrimination law suit against Harvard, and I agree that a recommendation letter from a coach can’t hurt. The question though is whether and how much it helps. At the end of the day I personally don’t believe that a coach in the Ivy has much if any real influence with admissions outside of the likely letter process that exists.
I say this for a couple of reasons. Allowing some type of intermediate support flies in the face of the Ivy Common Agreement and the likely letter system as a whole. The schools involved collectively choose to handle recruiting in a certain way, and they set up the Ivy Common Agreement to memorialize that. There is no provision in that agreement for athletic support outside of the likely letter system. If there was a second tier of support contemplated, I think it is very, very likely that it would be set out in the agreement. That is the whole purpose of having conference wide recruiting standards. What is more, the schools have agreed to a formula where by each school is granted a maximum number of likely letter slots based on the number of Ivy championship sports the school supports (up to a cap of 230 per year iirc). Every published report I am aware of on the topic tells us that no Ivy uses all of the allotted slots in any given year. If that is the case, and admissions is already restricting the athletic department to fewer slots than what would be allowed by conference rule, I don’t see the logic in admissions then “backdoor-ing” some number of those slots back to the AD by some type of recommendation process. Why would they not just grant additional slots to begin with, and run the process as it is intended? It just doesn’t make any sense to me.
I think the idea of some intermediate support in the Ivy persists because it really costs a coach nothing to write a recommendation letter. If the coach writes ten such letters a year, and one of those kids gets in, then that kid and his parents will be convinced that the recommendation letter helped. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. But we will never know.
Agree with @skieurope and @Ohiodad51 . We have had direct experience with Harvard (not this sport) where the coaches were willing to write support letters vs Yale, Princeton and Dartmouth where the coaches were pretty blunt if you weren’t a recruit, they could offer you no support. It is not an LoR that goes through the Common App, but is a note they send to the AO. In our case, the support did not get my D over the top even with an AI at the 220 level. While, the note certainly doesn’t hurt, I would not expect or plan any real boost and would make recruiting based decisions accordingly, e.g. if Williams is giving you a slot if you apply ED, assume your chances for Harvard are the same as for any student with your stat’s and other qualifications. You still might choose to roll the dice but you would be giving up a near sure thing with Williams.
I wonder what the coach would say in such a letter. Echoing @skieurope, if they only met them for long enough to determine that they weren’t recruitable, I don’t know what they could say beyond “I met this kid and I’d be happy to have him try to walk on”. Not sure how much weight that would carry. Couldn’t hurt, though.
Taking account of the material that’s emerged from the lawsuit, I’d guess the following: if the OP was good enough that the coach was willing to spend meaningful time with him/her and determined that they weren’t recruitable but were worth the effort of sending a note to the admissions office, the OP might be an athletic “2” anyway (maybe they’re captain of a good team, or won a regional championship, or something). Of course, maybe the OP wasn’t that athletically distinguished and the coach (for Harvard PR purposes) sends a form note for everyone who calls him/her up regardless of ability, in which case the note might mean little or nothing.
What we can guess from the stats is that the OP could well be an academic “2” also (I don’t see evidence that suggests they’re one of the 100 or so applicants a year who are academic "1"s). If so, the analysis from the CC hive mind would suggest that, with two "2"s, they’d likely pass the first cut, but would need another “2” somewhere, or have a hook or fill an institutional need, to really be in the conversation. In other words, I don’t think the note from the coach is going to influence the outcome meaningfully.
Chiming in as I had a child get recruited and runs track at Harvard. Was told 'was coaches # 1 recruit and a likely letter was offered and received". I am not sure what weight a LoR carries, I would expect not too much, but I suppose it could not hurt. I also do not know anyone that had LoR so I really do not know.
I do know of recruits that during official Ivy visits were told they would Not get a likely letter or support with admissions but if they get in they’d be welcome on the team, so the LoR doesn’t sound right to me, though I will take the word for it.
One thing to look at is where your times place you on the team and at meets. Most higher recruits are the ones that can come in and score points in meets right away. Those are very good grades for a lot of great schools, especially when combined with being a recruit so good luck!
As noted by several, it makes a lot of sense for the OP to compare his or her time or event results with that of the rest of the team. I suspect that there would be a difference between being in the top quartile of the team times over the bottom quartile. That said, you will get the most accurate information by asking the coach directly about the impact of such a coach LOR. You have to be fairly specific in your questions, however. Ask how many athletes the coach actively recruits, how many are slotted. It could well be that the coach needs about 8 recruits each year and only has an allotment of three LLs. Also ask how many times the coach has sent such a letter to admissions. In how many instances was the athlete admitted, wait listed, or denied. Asking the coach directly is usually the best way to assess the value of any type of support.