<p>My son verbally committed to an ivy school earlier this year. He was a top recruit but his grades have dipped slightly from last year and we're worried that he'll be rejected or the coach will now tell him he can no longer support his application. His SAT scores are very good and it's still a reasonable overall GPA. Any thoughts on what we should do?</p>
<p>I’m guessing your son will be a senior in the fall and the verbal commitment was to the coach not admissions?..so call the coach and level with the coach on the GPA/Test scores at the end of junior year and ask his opinion. Best to know now so the student can come up with a good list of options if this particular college has a high probability of not working out.</p>
<p>Should’nt you be asking the coach this question? If your son had a drop in GPA his jr year (I am assumming since it was a verbal commitment) you should be asking yourself how he will manage as an athlete at an Ivy school when his sport is going to take up so much of his time.</p>
<p>What would you have done anyway? Your son’s verbal commitment to the coach at an Ivy League school means something – I was going to say it is worth the paper it’s written on, but that would be unfair and misleading – but it doesn’t mean that he was guaranteed admission, or even necessarily the coach’s highest possible level of support. So even if his grades had stayed up, you should have been working on a Plan B to cover the possibility that he would never cross the line between his verbal commitment and an actual offer of admission from the school with appropriate aid. Ideally, since you have been working on that Plan B for at least 6 months now, you just keep on keeping on with it while you try to ascertain what the GPA drop will mean at his first choice.</p>
<p>If by some chance you HAVEN’T been working on a Plan B (and C, and D . . .) for the past few months, then now sure seems life a good time to start, no?</p>
<p>Meanwhile, talk to the Ivy coach about getting a likely letter. If he says he’ll get one for you, and it comes, then great, problem pretty much solved. If he says he’ll get it, but it doesn’t come, or he says he can’t deliver one or he won’t ask . . . work on Plans B-F. He may still get in at Ivy U., but you need to be pursuing alternatives.</p>
<p>Not all Ivy coaches in all sports will give a likely letter, but many will. I would try to get one. In the meantime, work on other options, especially if your school is Yale, since I know MANY stories of athletes being “promised” admission by coaches and then not getting in.</p>
<p>Suggest you go to “athletic recruits” forum (in the College Admissions section). There is a lot of information there.</p>
<p>10D had several friends who were promised a place by a coach, and then deferred or rejected on their ED application. Do not end up trying build a college list and madly filling out applications in December. Have a back up plan and execute on it out the box. Even with a likely letter, it is not over until the fat envelope (or fat email) arrives at your door.</p>
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<p>This is really important to remember. I would definitely talk with coach to see how a drop in GPA will affect his support of your S’s application and to try to get an honest assessment of how much pull the coach has in making an acceptance happen. </p>
<p>And get a Plan B going right now.</p>
<p>I think that athletes are in a tough spot unless the admissions committee can “promise” that they’ll accept you (through a likely letter). Even then, as 1012mom says, nothing is certain until you get that acceptance in hand.</p>
<p>Even if you get a likely letter, read it very carefully- the ones I have seen are extremely promising and suggest the deal is closed- but the deal is not closed until, as others wrote, you get an official, final admit letter from admissions.</p>
<p>Thanks for all your advice. Some of you said to have plan B ready, even if the coach says he can get a likely letter. How would you do that when all the other coaches already know he is “committed”? Should my son now attend more camps and tell the coaches there that it’s not a done deal? Should he go back to some of the coaches that were interested in him and tell them he’s changed his mind? July 1 is tomorrow!</p>
<p>Last fall, there was a good thread about an athlete with a couple of options. Someone brought up the point about injuries. Part of Plan B is to find schools he likes, even if he can’t play. Or, if an injury drops him below Div 1.</p>
<p>I have never heard of a student-athlete with a likely letter NOT getting admitted unless there was a huge change in circumstances (i.e. failure to complete senior year, a serious arrest etc.) If you have a likely letter, I think you can feel assured of admission.</p>
<p>The coach will request transcripts, test scores etc. to take to admissions, which will then give the go ahead, so your son can go on an official visit once school resumes in September. if he’s a top recruit, he will be asked to come to their first weekend.
Hasn’t your son been in contact with the coach lately? During the July 1 call, your son (and perhaps you) will also go over a timeline. If he’s a top recruit, the coach will ask him to send in his application as soon as it becomes available online. Also, it’s important to get the letters of recommendation as soon as possible because applications will be processed still in September with likely letters going out October 1. (And yes, a likely letter is just as good as an early admission letter.)</p>
<p>The application my son was asked to submit was stamped “TRACK RECRUIT”.</p>
<p>This is all interesting, but if I were the OP I would be tearing my hair out right now, because I would be in a pickle and have no idea what to do. I’m not anything like an expert on this, so I can’t really offer advice, except to say that maybe in the next life the OP’s son should withhold that verbal commitment and keep playing the field a bit until the coach puts a ring on it. (A likely letter qualifies in my book.) </p>
<p>But for now the OP and son are stuck in this life. Does anyone have a good idea?</p>
<p>I think it starts (as people have said many times above) with going back to the coach and having a frank conversation. Along the lines of “Can you get me a likely letter with these grades? Are you prepared to support me? How big? Soooo big!?” The recruit makes it clear that Ivy U. is still his first choice, but unless his parents calm down he is going to have to pursue some other options, too, and fast.</p>
<p>I don’t think Ivy coaches lie much, although I think some of them may permit false impressions to go uncorrected if they are not nailed down. If you insist, the coach will be honest about where the son stands, and probably honest about what he thinks the son should do if the coach can’t 100% promise the likely letter. At the very least, then, the coach can’t get too ticked off when the son goes out and dates other coaches under the open-relationship rules he has worked out with the coach.</p>
<p>If you can’t have a frank conversation with the coach about this situation, it’s not a coach with whom your kid wants to spend the next 4 years. As one Ivy coach told us, “I’m the adult your kid is going to spend the most time with on this campus. I want you to get to know me.”</p>
<p>He needs to talk to the coach. NOW. Or at least tomorrow, the infamous July 1.</p>
<p>He will probably need to get an unofficial transcript from the high school, plus unofficial score reports and get them off to the coach who can run them by admissions. At least that’s how it would have worked for my son’s situation. </p>
<p>And it depends on what “grades have dropped” means in quantitative terms … it may not be as bad as you think. Good luck.</p>
<p>super: so he’s a rising senior right? verbally committed eraly his junior year, good! slight dip in grades no big deal, he’ll get his LL in the fall of his senior year. My advice: do a very good app, very good essay. I do know athletes that have been rejected for slacking on their app…thought they were in!</p>
<p>big slip in grades all bets are off, ivy’s and Stanford have gotten tough on that</p>
<p>I think that athletes are in a tough spot unless the admissions committee can “promise” that they’ll accept you (through a likely letter).</p>
<p>Well, I think there are tougher spots - such as trying to get in without being an athlete, where you don’t even get that “promise.”</p>
<p>Let’s try to keep things in perspective. </p>
<p>Just saying.</p>
<p>MrK you probably have not tried to parent a child through the admissions process for whom attending college means being a student athlete. </p>
<p>We talk about fit as being all-important --and for some of our kids (and I speak from experience) it’s not a fit unless they are on the team. Recruited and on the team.</p>
<p>It’s a difficult tightrope – find the right school, with the right academics and the right sport at the right level recruiting your child for a spot at the right position. And while my child was Ivy-admissible (and now an Ivy student athlete graduate), getting him to apply, be accepted, attend and succeed at a school where his sport was not part of his life would have been a nightmare.</p>
<p>Plan Bs are not so easy. Our plan B was a PG year but that’s not for everyone.</p>