What do coaches expect a recruit to do while waiting for the Likely Letter?

<p>Squidge brings up an interesting point. Do coaches talk to each other about who’s recruiting who and who’s commited where? Probably, but they’re surely playing games with each other as they talk. I doubt there’s some sort of “honor code” among them where they respect each other’s recruiting efforts. They’re all after the same limited talent.</p>

<p>No doubt outright lying is bad, but playing one’s cards close to the vest is part of the game. The coaches do it and the prospects need to do it to.</p>

<p>HI sherpa & c’smom – great info, thanks!!</p>

<p>One quick question: You said “Sept 1 = submit RD App.”</p>

<p>Of course I am prepared and will submit MY parts there of (the Common App, supplements, scores officially sent from College Board in summer, transcript thru junior year, essays, etc) however, how did you get your Guidance Counselor to comply with getting their reco there before the EA/ED deadline they can seemingly barely deal with timingwise in my view (Nov/Dec)?? This is where I forsee my roadblock. thank you.</p>

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<p>myluckydog,</p>

<p>Your statement assumes you have leverage. Most recruits can’t command that degree of leverage in these situations. It has been said that 50% of Ivy (baseball) recruits actually work out. So, the coach is rolling the dice constantly. It is very difficult to have leverage in a situation that is getting results 50% of the time.</p>

<p>sherpa’s (above) timeline makes a lot of sense to me. If my son were to do this Ivy process all over again, we would do exactly as sherpa describes. We got exposed to Ivy baseball recruiting late in the recruiting cycle, and we went ED as the coach suggested. The school was his #1 choice, and it has worked out very well for him and the coach. He has been a starter his freshmen and sophomore years.</p>

<p>I submit to you that it is even more difficult to wait for ED results (mid December-ish) than it is for LL (mid-October-ish). We had a handful of interested schools contact us during the waiting period, and they were fine with us reaching out if #1 choice ED did not work out. We had a few contingencies plans to fall back on including another Ivy and some high end D3 schools.</p>

<p>Our lesson learned was to start Ivy recruiting earlier, and use the timeline sherpa suggests assuming he would have been offered a LL if we started earlier.</p>

<p>Sherpa - your advice to “apply regular decision very early in the cycle and ask for an early LL with a promise to convert the application to ED when the LL comes” seems to cover all of the bases.</p>

<p>What do you consider “very early” for a RD app - by the ED app deadline (Nov 1 +/-) or even earlier than that?</p>

<p>Also can you just convert a RD app to an ED/EA app? And if so, it seems that the conversion would need to be done before the ED/EA deadline in early November, which means that you still need the LL some time in October before the ED/EA deadline, right?</p>

<p>Myluckydog…
in this hypothetical scenario you have created,
yes–the OVs, LL and EA apps will all be done long before Nov 1
…sometime between the first day of school for your senior and Nov 1…</p>

<p>Myluckydog - the earlier the better. LLs can go out starting 10/1, and I’d want to be in position to be in the first batch. So apply in September, early September if possible.</p>

<p>Tallgirl - You bring up a valid concern. Ideally, you’d prepare your GC for the process late junior year. DS decided during the summer to go the early LL route, so couldn’t talk to the GC until early senior year. He met with her the first day he could, with a brief but well laid out presentation of Ivy LLs and his game plan for getting one, and the need to move quickly to keep backup plans open.</p>

<p>She understood and got on board. Keep in mind, it’s a feather in a GC’s cap to have kids attain elite admissions. Good luck.</p>

<p>All of the posts above have to do wih the juggling of just admissions. How do you all see FA impacting the recruiting process as outlined above?</p>

<p>Sherpa, I think that’s great advice to go very early RD and convert it to EA/ED if the LL materializes. Just wondering if you can change the status of the Common Ap once it’s been submitted, or if you need to follow up with an email to admissions requesting EA consideration?</p>

<p>Varska, important question and I don’t know the answer. Hopefully someone going through the process this year will learn the procedure and post it here.</p>

<p>Xwords, FA adds another important dimension. I’d ask for a FA preread at the same time as the admissions preread. The good news is that the schools we’re discussing are very generous with need based aid, much better than most.</p>

<p>One more question: when a coach asks your S for the academic info for a pre read, which documents do you use? Do you PDF your transcript and your scores off the college board website? Or is there something else that I am missing?</p>

<p>I think we sent a PDF of his HS transcript and a PDF of either the paper score report or a printout from the Collegeboard website. The coach will be able to tell you.</p>

<p>The prereads can happen very quickly.</p>

<p>2 years ago you could not change a rd to ed via the common app website. don’t know if this has changed. D’s GC had an ED form that she signed and sent in to amend the rd application.</p>

<p>You can and should ask for a FA preread. If you can get a preread from 2 or 3 ivies you can use them to your advantage when negotiating FA.</p>

<p>^ the financial preread for k1 was offerred at the time of the OV. Which we did do.
The coach -through an athletic coordinator - had to request it of the fin aid office.
It was not available without passing through them.
For the fin aid pre read you will need to provide the previous years return, and complete a form similar to a fafsa (and css profile- if the school uses that as well)
The numbers at the pre read will give you an idea yet are not binding.</p>

<p>In our experience…the app HAD to go SCEA through the electronic system…there was no RD/convert option, although k1 asked about it.
My guess is this is school/coach dependent.</p>