unofficial visit with coaches

Athletic Recruits
1

<p>I want to know how long it will take to meet with coaches and how to schedule our college visit plan.
We are planning to visit colleges for my kid and it will be in really tight schedule to attend info sessions of multiple schools and several coaches at once.</p>

<p>Do you think we can assign just 3-4 hours for each coach?
Or just plan entire day for a coach? I don't want to give bad impression to the coach being late or leaving earlier than he think...</p>

<p>They usually want to meet around 1 pm. I don't know I can contact another coach(who also wants to meet my kido) in that town(30min. driving distance) to arrange to meet 9 am in the morning?</p>

<p>Please give me an advice.</p>

2

<p>We did a college trip this spring, including 8 unofficial visits with coaches. As a general rule of thumb, spent 1-2 hours with coaches, talking, touring on-campus facilities and another 2-3 hours watching practice. Coaches usually wanted to meet about 1:00pm to give the athlete time to do the info session and tour. For my daughter’s sport, this also allowed for time on campus to just hangout before practice. You could try to arrange a coach meeting at 9:00am on the same day as a 1:00pm coach meeting, but then you would not have time to do the campus tour or info session.</p>

3

<p>I agree
You can fit in 2 schools – in same town --if you are only doing info session /tour and then going to the other school for the afternoon info/tour (take notes)…</p>

<p>We found that the school/unofficals this spring required a day each–though they were a bit spread out–</p>

<p>for example–at one school
…we did am tour/info and then met coach mid day for a meet and greet–grabbed a bite to eat and then remet the coach for practice late in the afternoon</p>

<p>…another we did the am info/tour, lunch, afternoon engineering tour and then met the coach -toured facilities and kiddo watched a practice etc</p>

<p>Our kiddo emailed the coaches about the day we’d be on campus and asked if we could come by to check out the facilities. Really important this coach contact is from your athete—and that you are flexible with your schedule to meet their schedule. </p>

<p>Hope that helps</p>

4

<p>If at all possible, I’d recommend you schedule the coach’s meeting at the first school BEFORE the tour/info session… made for a much less hectic afternoon for us getting to the second destination.</p>

5

<p>Here is my plan.
First day:
Morning: travel and check in
3 pm: Meet with Coach A </p>

<p>Second day:
morning: no schedule (slot 1)
12: 30: Meet with Coach C
5-6pm: no schedule (slot 2)</p>

<p>Third day:
Morning: Possibly meet with Coach C (slot 3)
4pm: Meet with Coach D</p>

<p>Q1) I wonder, I should keep this schedule as it is or contact and add another coach(let’s say Coach B) on the second day(slot 1, slot 2 or slot 3) to be exposed more. </p>

<p>Is it good Idea to arrange another meeting with Coach B assuming all those meeting will last 2-3 hours?
All other coaches are from my kid’s reach school but Coach B’s school is relatively safe school. Should I include this coach B in this trip as back up? Or try reach school first?)</p>

<p>There are still two other coaches want to meet my kid in that area but I’m afraid adding more coaches might make our schedule really hectic. maybe plan to visit there another time…?</p>

<p>Q2) Usually how many round of trips to you do for those unofficial college visit?</p>

<p>All those schools are widely spread out and I don’t think we can visit all schools that showed interest to my kid.(Especially Cornell and Dartmouth and small LAC. Those schools are too far…)
In that case, what do you say to coaches who said to come and visit?</p>

<p>Overall… We decided that our main purpose of this trip is to meet with coaches not tour that school. We will definitely feel the impression of those schools but since students are on the summer vacation already, we can’t get the exact feeling when those students are in the campus, right?</p>

<p>And I think info session is not that important to us because all those informations are kind of reduntant with the one already in the website. :P</p>

<p>If my kid is really interested in that school, I think we need to re-visit when school is on the session…? If I’m wrong please correct me.</p>

<p>Q3) I’m kind of new into this forum (and I’m really glad that I can find here. So informative!!^^) but some of your abbreviations are difficult to figure out what those are.</p>

<p>I figured out:
RD: regular decision
ED: early decision
EA: early action
LAC: Liberal art college</p>

<p>What is Al, EDII, DS…?
Can anybody let me know other abbreviation that commonly used in this forum?
Thanks! ^^</p>

6

<p>AI = Academic Index for Ivy League
EDII = Early Decision II (second round)
DS = Dear Son (?)</p>

7

<p>if I were you I would consider not accompanying your son/daughter on the actual visit. let them experience the meeting with their potential future coach and any interactions with students/people on the team on their own. it lets them get a better idea of how well they would actually fit in at the school as well as making a good impression on the coach that they are mature enough to handle being without their parents for awhile. just a thought.</p>

8

<p>I think this is great advice for official visits, but I think it is important for parents to be involved in the unofficial visits. These are basically fact-finding missions and parents will see and hear things differently than a 17 or 18 year old. And there will be very little interaction with team members on unofficials. That sort of stuff happens on the official visits. Coaches expect and welcome parents on unoffficial visits. My daughter met with nine coaches this spring and I was present for all of the meetings, although I did not attend practice sessions. My daughter handled the conversations with coaches and support staff. I only spoke when a question was directed at me or there was something I had a parent question about.</p>

9

<p>100% agree with fishymom on this. Like fishymom, I was present at every single coach’s meeting - & my very independent daughter wanted me with her, just because 4 ears are better than 2 - she heard lots of things I missed, and vice versa. It also helped tremendously when she wanted to discuss/dissect the conversation afterwards that I knew what she was talking about! I think it is a bit much for a 16 year old to be expected to make rational, calm decisions, not to let emotions run the show, etc. without some outside (in this case, parental) opinions, grounding, perspective, etc. Being able to share impressions has been HUGELY helpful.</p>

<p>Being alone with a coach and the team is what Official Visits are all about, in my opinion.</p>

10

<p>My D always did the regular information session and tour first, and then met with the coach afterward. Several coaches commented she should have let them give her a campus tour, but we felt we wanted to experience the same introduction as a non-athlete. Some coaches did show her the relevant athletic facilities later, though. She only needed about an hour or maximum an hour and a half to talk with the coach. However, she did not watch any practices, and nor was she invited to. This is probably because she’s a runner, and made her unofficial visits in the fall. You really can’t watch a cross-country practice too well. The kids go off for a ten mile run so you’d just be standing there, lol. So in her case, we could handle two visits per day, but it was a little tight.</p>

11

<p>S1’s unofficial visits were similar to your D’s, GFG. He and DH fit 2 visits in per day… consisting of the information session with admissions, and/or a guided campus tour, and/or a private athletic facilities tour or simple meeting with the coach. Time was tight, and the pace frenzied. S1’s sport was not in season either… so there were no practices to observe. If he is invited back for officials late this fall/early next winter when it appears to happen for DI/AA and D-III football… he will travel without us.</p>

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<p>Did anyone see the post on college visits in the Seattle Times by Jay Matthews?
[Travel</a> | Taking the college tour? Chill, says dad | Seattle Times Newspaper](<a href=“http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/travel/2012191290_trcollegetours27.html]Travel”>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/travel/2012191290_trcollegetours27.html)</p>

<p>"Why, in other words, can’t we have fun? The more I think about the standard advice to record every iota of information, the more ridiculous it seems.</p>

<p>The chances of our children being admitted to some of these schools is similar to our chances of winning the office Super Bowl pool. Why not save those inspections, audits and overnights for April of our child’s senior year, after the acceptance letters arrive, so when we start calculating dining-hall calorie counts, it will be at a school our child has a 100 percent chance of attending?"</p>

<p>Too unrestrained for you? Or fair enough?</p>

13

<p>You know, to a certain extent, I agree with him. The best part of our two week college tour was getting to see so many wonderful, historic schools that helped to shape our country. To me, that was an education in and of itself. As recruited athletes, our students have different goals and considerations in their college search than the average student, so college visits will have a different focus. But it is important to make an effort to just enjoy the time spent visiting schools, even for our hyperfocused student-athletes.</p>

14

<p>Well, the problem is that for student-athletes the process is different than for other kids, and as such the decision-making will likely be pushed up to early fall of senior year or even to sophomore or junior year for certain sports–but certainly not as late as April of senior year. The system of verbal commitments, National Letters of Intent, and Ivy likely letters mean your athlete will be deciding before April.</p>

<p>For our D, the goal starting fall of junior year was to formulate a list of schools, around 15, that met her original broad criteria of academic and athletic level, as well as location and financial considerations. Then we visited these institutions unofficially and met the coaches. In this way we eliminated a few of them. One or two more schools fell by the wayside during the following months as D learned more about them and their athletic program. </p>

<p>So we did take these visits very seriously because by late August and early Sept. of senior year D had to accept or reject offers of official visits, which meant narrowing the original list down to only 5 choices. After that, she had to say yes or no to those 5 schools. Some kids in her sport were done by Oct., D’s last visit was in Jan. and she decided on her final choice then.</p>

15

<p>Unofficials I believe call to be scheduled at the whim of the athletes. Road trips and student union picnics can be loads of spontaneous fun.
Coaches like the athlete to confident enough in their ability to pop in, announce /introduce yourself and ask for your chances for the school making you part of the team. </p>

<p>Basically most student athletes get an indication of where they will be accepted when a coach extends “the committable offer”. Some of these you get before a visit… some don’t even come with an official visit.</p>

<p>If it is your #1 school and the coach delays an official visit schedule to later in the semester, tells you they want you to think over your decision/want to meet momma, or you don’t get a fed ex letter in the mail right away with the offer of the schools committment to you, you may be on the recruitment board, however don’t forget there are others on this board too.</p>

<p>Jay I think highlights the have fun part… this comes with recruitments too. Enjoy and be proud your accomplishments.</p>

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<p>my d had an unofficial visit with a school that was a few states away. We accompanied her and was present when she had the meeting with the coach.After the meeting the coach said she wanted to recruit her and wanted her to go home and make sure this is what she wanted. She also mentioned there would be an atheletic scholar ship envolved. Has any parent had this happen to them and how long did it take for the coach to get back to them?</p>

17

<p>golgole - Welcome to CC. Sounds pretty normal to me. This is how they typically work. The “ball” is in your daughters court now. If this is where she wants to go, I would suggest getting back (asap) to the coach and discussing next steps or getting her questions answered. I would want to know scholarship details and FA package if they are unknown. Depending on the school or situation, you may be asked to sign an NLI or apply ED, EA or RD. Typically, once you verbally commit it is game over. Good luck!</p>

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<p>Gol: or earlier, my d had her “pre” offers will before ov’s. Ov’s were for kicks and we limited them to 3</p>