Wesleyan ED Fall Admission 2022 Discussion

Colleges and Universities A-Z Wesleyan University
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All the NESCACs require recruited athletes to apply ED to get preference. This means that the recruited athletes have one card to play — they have to pick a single school if they want to use their athletic abilities to gain admission.

The argument is not whether Wesleyan should admit more or fewer athletes at the expense of playwrights. That is Wesleyan’s decision to make. But they should have informed the recruits. These 25 kids could have used their card at another school if Wesleyan was going to change how it does admissions.

So it is more than just the typical “don’t worry you will find another great school”. These kids in essence wasted their best shot at getting in on a school that was at best not transparent with them, at worst lying to them. You don’t want as many athletes? Fine. Don’t pretend that you do.

The athletes know that admission is not guaranteed. But everyone knows how the system works, including Wesleyan admissions officers. They knew they had kids using their card at Wesleyan under a faulty assumption.

It was wrong.

A used car dealer might not give a guarantee that the car works, but it is not right to sell one you know is broken.

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Or, ED2.

That’s not being helpful.

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This is not necessarily true. There are recruited athletes across many conferences that don’t apply in the ED round…some of the recent examples of that have been due to covid and timing, as well as some sports, like TNF, recruiting relatively late. Hopefully some of the 25 de-commited/unaccepted student-athletes can find other schools to catch on with. I would hesitate to recommend they roll their app into the ED2 round at Wesleyan (where that is an option).

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I think it is actually very helpful to next year’s recruiting class.

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If you were advising one of these student-athletes would you recommend this route? If so, do you think Wesleyan should change how they have been communicating with these recruits?

Not trying to be unhelpful, just stating the truth about what some of these student-athletes and parents are feeling.

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Thanks for this clarification, Antelope11. I guess there’s a larger “priorities” question and a more specific “process” one, with the latter being the main issue in this thread. I know little about that and so will subsequently shut up on this forum. For those of us with non-athlete applicants, though, the expectation of quasi-guaranteed admission sounds like another planet, hence my earlier comments. I do hope the situation is clarified and everyone lands at a place they love!

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I am very sorry you are going through this. The entire process is hard enough!!

Is your source for the 25 the coach? If so I would not view it as gospel given his prior “bad read” and portraying it as a large number, blind sided by admissions, talking to admissions, etc makes him look less culpable. He should have spoken to them before he spoke to you.

Not saying he exaggerated but being nice doesn’t make him accurate, honest or infallible and it was his responsibility to communicate effectively. Coaches like to protect their personal reputations.

Again all the best.

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[quote=“Mwfan1921, post:85, topic:3595190”]

I’m no expert, so bear with me, but my understanding is that some applicants have been deferred to the RD round while others have been deferred to ED2. Two different tracks, but, unlike RD, the ED2 applicant would have to proactively notify the adcom of their intention to pursue another college’s ED process. So, the calculus would have to go something like this: In exchange for the near or somewhat higher certainty of admission to Wesleyan under ED2, should the applicant apply to their second-choice school where their odds would be closer to an absolute certainty? Presumably, this is the same calculus they used in picking Wesleyan as their ED1 choice, that the second-choice school was always there as a reasonably certain outcome. Depending on the second-choice school, there may not be a huge differential between ED2 and the odds of admission in RD for a recruited athlete.

Should Wesleyan change the way they communicate to these recruits. Sure, maybe they should adopt the Amherst mantra which is that nothing is written in stone until the adcom makes its decisions. That’s always been the policy, but until this year, it was sort of just understood rather than shouted from the rooftops.

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Exactly! I can assure you that my DD’s grades did not fall off a cliff this semester. Not that you were implying this about her specifically. She has maintained a 4.0 while taking seven classes, including 3 AP’s, and continuing with her rigorous 6 day a week sports training schedule and her volunteer commitments (tutoring and training with special needs and low-income children). We as a family put our faith in the Wes process based on feedback we received from her early read and her recruiting trip. Clearly that was mis-placed. This is not sour grapes from an unsupported recruit that was on the fringe of the potentially admissible pool. She is solidly talented and multi-dimensional, and this whole process has been wildly disillusioning for us all. Live and learn, and perhaps this is a blessing in disguise. She will land elsewhere and I’m certain that she will thrive, but this was an unnecessarily hurtful process that should have been managed much better.

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I am so sorry that your family is going through this. It is every recruited athlete’s and their family’s worst nightmare. It should not have happened. Your DD did everything right. She will find her place and be amazing! Can you reach out to other coaches that she had been in touch with?

When things have calmed down, maybe you could consider adding a thread to the Athletic recruits thread about your experience with Wesleyan for future potential recruits.

Good luck! We will be thinking of you all and hoping for the best!

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Thank you for your very kind reply. She will be reaching out to the other coaches–fortunately it appears that no bridges were burned, but this experience has made me dubious not just about the Wes process, but the broader process overall. I hope with all my heart that my skepticism is misplaced.

Thank you as well for the suggestion to adding to the Athletic Recruits thread. I did not know that there was such a thing but I will seek it out and hopefully spare other families from such a gut-wrenching experience.

All the best!

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The athletic recruit forum has a wealth of information in past threads and experienced contributors. You will also receive many shocked comments about your experience with Wesleyan ED.

You also might find some piece of mind from families with experience at colleges that your DD is talking to for ED2 or RD. Many people are happy to PM if you don’t want to share where she is looking. I am so glad that coaches are interested in her!

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Firstly, I say again that my heart goes out to each of you whose children were bumped to ED2 or RD, or whatever happened other than admission. Right now, the only thing I would take as established is that Wes underestimated its yield last year and admitted a bigger class than anyone expected or wanted. It’s therefore no surprise it’s a little or a lot tighter overall this year.

But the thread is adding conclusions of fact that are really still only speculation. Some of that speculation is informed, and some of it is guessing.

I’m an admitted Wes homer, and even I said and stand by the assertion that the coach owes you an explanation. That doesn’t mean we know for certain that:

  • The Wes coach lied;
  • The Wes coach didn’t have his act together;
  • Wes admissions didn’t plan or communicate with their coaches appropriately; or
  • Wes has an honestly problem in their Athletic Dep’t.

Feelings are not facts. We are all free to do what we wish, but besmirching the rep of the entire enterprise based on the limited facts in this one thread seems overboard to me. The other piece that is missing here is that we don’t know what the stats were of the slotted kids who were admitted. You have to know that to round out the picture.

Having said all of that, it certainly seems plausible to me that there was a disconnect between the coach and admissions in terms of how many slots he/she had to offer. That would be very unfortunate, although it wouldn’t be the first time it has happened.

Slotted kids get bounced every year at every school in the conference. That’s not new nor is it peculiar to Wes.

What is peculiar is that kids with these stats and a slot were not admitted. What makes me think this is numbers driven is that they were all kicked down the road of the process rather than rejected.

If it were me, I would be on the phone with the coach and my questions would be very pointed:

Were you told by admissions earlier that you were not going to get the same amount of slots as you have in the past?

Were the admitted slotted athletes admitted because they had a better application? Better stats?

Was there anything in my application that gave admissions pause?

What has admissions told you about the likelihood of my admission in ED 2/RD? I still have my ED option for other schools and need to know whether to use it.

In my travels, coaches are all over the place at all of these schools. My soccer D was heavily recruited. Name a school and we probably interacted with them. There are some great people and there are some of what my friend calls “the other people.” Every school has both, so blackballing or recommending an entire school or athletic department is inherently inaccurate advice. Which sport? Which coach? Which year? It all matters.

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Thank you for your perspective and candor. Please allow me to clarify that I NEVER said that our Wes coach lied or that he didn’t have his act together. Please do not mis-quote me. We have enormous respect for this coach or else we would not have endorsed our daughter’s ED application. The issues that we have are not with the Coach but with the lack of transparency on the part of Admissions. If their yield for the class of 2025 was higher than expected and they consequently had fewer slots to offer to the class of 2026, then this information should have been clearly communicated months ago, not days ago. Thank you again for your thoughts.

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No, you did not, and if my post implies that I was questioning anything you or @Chadt have said, let me clear that up here: I’m not. That list wasn’t meant to be attributed to any one poster, and certainly not to those of you who are suffering through this. The last thing on my mind this morning is any sense of you guys needing tough love. You have all my empathy.

And I agree with what you say here 100%. If I have any skepticism on Wes’ part in all this it is squarely on that point: ok, you have a big class and you need to do some balancing this year. Why didn’t you know this last May?

Completely agree and that’s why it’s first on my list of questions I would be asking the coach. Did you, in fact, know you had fewer slots? If not, why?

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I share that view 100%. Although it worked out smoothly for us, the process left me with a feeling of having gone through some kind of secret society initiation, where you’re trying to get in somewhere and the rules and other things you need to know are purposefully made enigmatic.

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Thank you for the explanation of ‘soft support’, it makes sense. In fact, related to the topic discussed by recent posters, this summer when we took the recruiting visit to another very selective D3 school, the coach notified at last minute (before early submission) that they could not offer full support because of the number limitation, rather they will let AO they were in contact (so called soft support?) They seemed to imply the numbers are smaller this year, I wonder if this is the new phenomenon across the board instead of just W.

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:smile: Thanks for the clarity! Our list of questions is long and since we got very little in the way enlightenment from Admissions, our next point of contact is the Coach. Our DD has been communicating with him since yesterday but it’s time for Mom and Dad to step in. By the way, the one solid point of info that we got from our call with Admissions was that ED1 applications were up 20% this year. We specifically asked how many students were admitted in the ED1 round this year vs. last but we were told that he could not divulge this info, even thought we all know it will eventually be public. Go figure.

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@Mwfan1921

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Yes, of course Wesleyan does pre-reads. They were one of the NESCAC schools that built the conference’s current agreed-upon recruiting process.

What you’re describing Wesleyan did with your daughter is actually an example of how to do it right. They were honest in May that your kid was in the top 3, then said, we got our 1 or 2. I fail to see the connection between that and ED deferral. Yours is an example of the coach telling you where your D ranked with them in terms of priority. Unless you meant to say something different.