We did most of our unofficial visits during junior year and met with the coaches at most of them. Coaches like to recruit from those that show interest in their school/program. So showing up to find out about the program was probably the most important step in getting invited back for officials at the more competitive schools.
Last year virtually all conversations were by phone or text, between the athlete and the coach. This year I’ve seen coaches DMing my younger daughter and requesting to follow her on social media - perhaps allowed as a form of marketing akin to the stacks of letters that come through the high school coach from the college athletic departments - basically fishing for interest.
@jmtabb How have your visits gone? My D sent season updates to coaches at schools she is interested in (these are coaches we met it the fall), and she’s gotten some encouraging responses. Two have indicated she is on their list for fall recruiting trips. That’s nice to hear.
My biggest concern at the moment is that these are D3 private LAC’s and she is on the low end of their admissions stats. We have combed through all sorts of information to find her some safety schools, and the best options seem to be lower tier D1 public schools.
Does anyone have any insight on pursuing a D1 school as a safety? I’m worried about pressure to commit in November when most D1 schools solidify their roster. She will apply EA to her 1st and 2nd choice, but probably won’t hear about admissions (and more importantly - financial aid) until at least December.
We’re in a great spot! Did visits to two schools last week during spring break. Both were good visits, competitive DIII Schools. Both have followed up after and have indicated that they think my daughter is a good fit for their team. No specific talk about official visits other than that fall visits get set up in July/August.
We are in a fortunate position with top academics and top test scores, so that’s not an issue for any school. We are also fortunate in that financial aid is not a concern. For us, it’s all about fit within the swim program and at the school. And yes, right now there is s front runner.
My daughter has been receiving more recruiting e-mails from schools I think could also be a good fit, and has an appointment for a phone convo with another school this evening.
At this point I’m anxious for how the next steps play out - for her top three schools only 1 is EA and the other two have ED only. The school with EA is the front runner, but the coach was clear that they do not get “slots” to fill specifically - they can mark applications for support, and the school admits maybe 50% of the applicants they support. So do you shoot for your #1 choice with a 50% chance of acceptance, or go for one of the others with a better chance of admission when they are not your top choice?
In talking with other team members who are figuring out options for next year, not all spots are filled through ED. We have one teammate who took a recruiting trip to a lower D1 school just two weeks ago to meet the coach and check fit, and another who committed in late March to a mid D1 program (after putting in an ED app with coach support to a top DIII school but was not admitted). So I’m seeing signs that the process isn’t completely locked in by December, especially for the schools that are not NCAA champs contenders. Hope that helps! For our safeties, we’ve identified some schools (all DIII) where admission percentages are up in the 50-70% range, and her swim stats would make her a top 1-2 swimmer on the team (and points scorer at conference) and she’d have a pretty good chance to walk on.
Would be happy to share specifics by private message - since we’re still in the middle of this I don’t want to name schools here.
Should have added - the prospective student tour we couldn’t get didn’t matter - the coach gave us a 90 minute tour of campus and it was fantastic. At the second school we had a 1 hour meeting with the asst. coach and head coach followed by a general prospective student tour.
And finally, school 1 had an admissions rep in our area right after we can back home, so we went to his presentation, asked some questions about academics the coach wasn’t familiar with and got “demonstrated interest” taken care of.
Wow! Sounds like things are going really well. This is where it gets exciting! If financials are not a concern, I’d go all in on the #1 choice. After all, they don’t graduate to become a professional athlete, but I know for my D that she just performs better when she is swimming every day. That’s the main reason she would even consider D1. Some college swimmers have told us that they actually have better grades in season. Something to consider with D3 being out of the water after mid-March.
With the coaches we spoke to, they are “officially” out of the water after mid-March, but then captain’s practices start, and they are expected to swim with a club team over the summer.
We were visiting one week after DIII champs, and one coach said that one week off was fine, but they were expecting the kids to start filtering in (and she sends out practice sets by e-mail) within 2 weeks or so after champs.
That’s good to hear. I suspected as much but wondered how it is enforced or encouraged. That’s a great question for prospects to ask on the recruiting weekend. It also further supports my inclination that D3 is a much better fit for her.
At the schools we visited (indoor pools), the coaches have their offices right next to the pool, and they can see who comes in. Dry land training is still allowed out of season and that is expected.
One team also has a club team using their pool year round and some swimmers join the club team for practices. At the other, pool times are set by the coach and that school set aside lanes and times for the swim team even outside of official practice times for their use.
Trust me, they’re watching. We all know that this is not a sport you can drop for 5 months and pick back up in September. The expectation is still there for mostly year round swimming, at least at the schools we visited.
Most of the D3s have league rules about out of season practices or captain’s practices. In NESCAC schools these practices are voluntary, and I think that means they have to be truly voluntary. The students who choose to play more than one sport need to be fully released out of season. That said, I am relatively certain that the captains inform the coaches which kids are the “hard workers.” In my experience, the teams were such a tight group, none wanted to miss a practice unless they had a class with a lab or an important test around the corner.
@jmtabb, did the coaches you met with talk about admissions pre-reads? If they didn’t, you should have your daughter should straight up ask the coaches if they will ask for a pre-read. The answer to this question should inform you to some extent about where your daughter fits into the recruiting picture. Make sure to ask your high school registrar for an unofficial transcript before the school year ends this June. Sometimes the registrars get busy with sending colleges the transcripts of seniors, and they put on a lower priority the transcripts of juniors.
@heartburner, if you are paying for the visit, it is unofficial. I would contact the coach and tell him. Include some stats like times, GPA and board scores. Remember, this may be a tough time for the coach if T & F is in season. Just don’t take rejection as definitive. Keep at it.
That 50% acceptance is for ALL the applications he/she supported. If your daughter’s stats are in the upper 25% of the schools accepted student profile, your chances of admission will probably be higher than 50%. And as others have mentioned, ask for a pre-read.
The coaches have her unofficial transcripts and test scores now. Will send updated transcripts and test scores once available.
Academically she’s there, for any school she wants to apply to - 36 ACT, 4.0 unweighted GPA, 3 AP classes with 5’s on the tests from last year and another 5 AP tests being taken in May. One of the two (the EA school) does not do prereads or likely letters according to the coach.
Without revealing too much, I’ll just say that we’re not putting high hopes on her stats being the tipping factor. All of the schools at the top of her list are reach schools for every kid.
At what point do we ask for academic prereads? Now? Or does this happen in the fall?
You can ask for the coach to do an academic pre read at any point. The Ivy has a formal process for admissions pre reads that happens beginning in July prior to senior year, but I do not believe that any D3 schools follow a similar policy. I would say though that for stats like you have listed the non Ivy style pre read itself will probably be meaningless. Pre reads are most helpful for gauging whether a particular recruit’s stats line up with what admissions expects. 36/4.0 obviously will satisfy that bar any place (assuming nothing weird with the rest of the application picture). Of much more interest for your daughter is the question of how many supported recruits with stats similar to hers has the coach failed to get past admissions, and why.
Like @mamom says, whether a coach has been successful at maybe bending the line on lower stat recruits isn’t gonna tell you much. What you want to know is if your daughter checks all the academic boxes, will the coach’s support be enough to tip the scales or whether admissions is still somewhat of a crap shoot.
Thanks - at school #1 (the EA school) the coach was clear that it was a crap shoot with coach support. No guarantees, but they end up with about 50% admissions of supported applicants.
My daughter had a good phone convo with school #3, and she’s pretty happy about that, so it feels like we have a top three (for now)
So how many schools should she be talking to? I can’t seem to get a read on this. I want her to be addding a couple more that have more realistic admissions stats but I’m just not sure how many schools she ought to be in touch with at this point.
We kept the funnel wide for S through the summer before senior year. He was in contact with a dozen or so coaches through the summer. He ended up doing 5 official visits in the late Summer/Fall, all D3’s. Similar to your situation, 2 schools were EA and the coaches could at best offer support and a 50/50 chance even though his scores/GPA were at those school’s median. The other 3 were ED. He ended deciding to apply EA to Yale but not as an athletic recruit because it was his first choice. He was contacted by some coaches after the EA announcement date to see if he still was interested in their support for ED2/RD, so at least in his sport (baseball) not all positions are claimed by RD time. He would have been a high band kid, so the coaches probably still had some recruitment “coin” to use for him. So, I think our situation is somewhat similar to yours with your high stat kid. If one of the ED schools is her clear first choice, then it is an easy decision. If the 50/50 EA school remains her first choice, it might be worth a gamble to apply there EA and see what happens. If she is a top recruit, coaches at the other schools may still have some room to support her ED2/RD, and with her stat’s, she may not need a recruiting boost at all. If she was recruited, I don’t think she will have any issues as a “walk-on” – it’s actually a bonus for the lucky coach.
That seems to be a consistent issue based on what I have seen and heard over the years. Most of us as parents want to add at least a few more schools and kind of spread the risk, and most of the kids think they are juggling too many balls already. My personal opinion is that kids should be over inclusive, at least initially. And then the list slowly whittles away as the schools’ and your daughter’s interests become clearer. Different sport, but my son started with a list of maybe twenty schools that he thought were at the right academic level and mostly within his athletic range (he was pretty clearly a D1 level kid, but we included some high academic D3s kind of like athletic “safeties”). Then by the middle of his junior spring he was maybe really talking to 8-10 schools. All high academic schools, mostly in the Ivy with a few NESCACs and Patriot schools thrown in. Then that group whittled down through the spring/early summer to four, which is where it sat until he made his decision in July/August. Throughout the process, he grumbled about keeping his list so big, because like a lot of recruits he assumed that his general all around awesomeness would mean that most if not all schools showing interest would want him. I did my level best to try and scare him into keeping his options open as long as possible.
I would really try and convince your daughter to be receptive to any schools that she thinks are an academic fit, at least until she receives a clear offer of support from a school she likes and that you can afford. At that point, you can start culling the list down a bit.
I agree. My daughter was so ready to sign the NLI just because she wanted it to be over. If the parents are willing to do some of the work (talking finances, arranging visits) the recruit will probably be willing to keep a ‘maybe’ on the list, but the kids are bombarded with texts and emails from so many schools they just want to be able to say “Sorry, going to State U.” Even then we had D3 schools calling and saying “You know, you don’t have to go to that school you committed to. You can come here and play”
I agree with @BKSquared. I think it is a good idea to keep a lot of schools in the mix until your daughter starts getting invites for official visits. Although her academics are great, you have been told that choice no. 1 is a crapshoot. Strange things can happen (both positive and negative) in athletic recruiting. Having other options available as back-ups is a good idea.
Official visits can be fun and informative. On the other hand, traveling to schools particularly at a distance can be draining and can interfere with senior year obligations (not to mention exhausting to the parent if he or she accompanies). That’s why I would start the funneling process once invitation visits start to come in, and of course it is helpful to have submitted the pre-read (and hopefully received the response) well before those officials.
Personally, I would not wait too long to ask for the pre-read. The ideal situation is to get the pre-read after all of the grades are in for junior year. Summer is a perfect time. If you wait until the fall, well the admissions folks get pretty busy reviewing actual applications and things could get delayed. You would be better off knowing where you stand before the start of senior year.
@jmtabb some great stats for your daughter! In our case, the coach(es) automatically did the pre-read after they go the initial read done. Pre-read was done in July. I would certainly ask before/in June, because then depending on where you are and when school gets out, you’ll need to get her transcript out - late June/July is normal here for that in the Northeast. I agree - registrars get busy…I’m in the school - yes. Yes, they do! What @gointhruaphase said is absolutely true for timing - graduates come first, then incoming seniors on the pecking order.
We found out in August that our S had the greenlight from admissions to apply ED1. And…here’s the cautionary tale from our Accepted Students Day recently:
So, S applied ED1 and was admitted in December. What I want to share is that even if you’re given that “slot”, even at a highly selective LAC, I would caution anyone from assuming that your app goes into a different pile and stamped “Admitted” with little time taken to peruse the application by Admissions. They’re still reading your app…and closely (I always hoped that was true).
We found this out because at the presentation by the Dean of Admissions, he highlighted 3 essays/applications of admitted students. The 3rd happened to be my son’s. On the ride home my son said that he felt further validated that it just wasn’t swimming that got him in, but that they actually took the time to consider the essay he took time to write and they still looked at the rest of his app. The Dean met with my son and me later in the program and told S it was quite the memorable essay.
So, moral of the story is, still take time to write the good essay. Still take time to take care with the application. Even though Admissions tells the coach “yes”, there are schools that still want to make sure…and that makes me feel even better about where my son will now spend the next 4 years of his life…
Best of luck to you! Sounds like you’re daughter will have some great options!
Thank you for this. We are approaching all of this very cautiously - we ran the private/boarding school gauntlet in 8th grade, had similar stats… and got waitlisted/denied everywhere. In many ways it feels like we’ve done this whole application thing before, and since we didn’t have the outcome we wanted then, we are guarded in our hopes for this time.
@gointhruaphase - school is out in late June. We have one week after school is out before school offices close for the month of July. But the office knows us, and it shouldn’t be a problem to get the transcript before they close. And then we can update all and start looking at the prereads.
You all have been so helpful, and I really appreciate it!