I am interested in the Harvard Wrestling program, and would love to try and be recruited. When do you think the best time to contact the coach would be? How elite do I need to be in order to be recruited? What level are the kids at that get recruited to wrestler there? I am very smart academically. I am a sophomore in high school with a 4.0, with already taking college now classes. I got a 27 on the ACT after freshman year. I go to a public high school and would not consider myself Harvard smart. But I would absolutely love the chance at wrestling there! When do you think I should try to start contacting the coach? Or do I even have a shot academically?
Your ACT score, as is, would disqualify you from being recruited. Get the score up to at least 30 (but that’s still low even for an athletic recruit). Also, do you really think you’ll want to attend Harvard for four years if you yourself don’t think you’re “Harvard smart?” I wouldn’t go to Harvard just because you think you’d be able to get in through wrestling… go to a school that you can honestly say you’d enjoy and fit in at.
You can contact the wresting coaches at any time.
http://www.gocrimson.com/sports/wrest/coaches/weiss_jay?view=bio
http://gocrimson.com/sports/wrest/coaches/Sean_Harrington?view=bio
http://www.gocrimson.com/sports/wrest/coaches/abdurakhmanov_muzaffar?view=bio
Not with a 27 ACT, but please contact a Harvard Wresting Coach to hear it directly from them. IMHO, the coaches will love your GPA, but probably tell you your ACT needs to be over 30 (and closer to 32) to be a competitive recruit. See: http://www.gocrimson.com/sports/wrest/2015-16/releases/20160510_GPA.
To be fair, he got a 27 as a freshman. Yes, a 27 won’t cut it, but most students improve their scores by junior year.
However, as mentioned, your best bet is to contact the coach directly.
This was kind of what I was wondering too, if I started with a 27 after freshman year do I have a good outlook on being accepted someday? And does anybody know anything about the program that can let me know how elite it is? I find it hard to do research on.
^^ http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/wrestling/d1. Harvard’s wrestling team is NOT ranked in the top 25 of the nation – although Stanford and Cornell’s teams are. So, it’s not the most prestigious wrestling team in the country, but according to the Crimson article in post #2, you won’t find a smarter wrestling team anywhere else.
FWIW: The ACT is thought by many to be more of a curriculum based test. If you are taking the most rigorous course load at your high school, you may have a sufficient knowledge base to take the test at the end of your sophomore year and do well. For example, the content breakdown for ACT math is Pre-Algebra (20-25%), Elementary Algebra (15-20%), Intermediate Algebra (15-20%), Coordinate Geometry (15-20%), Plane Geometry (20-25%), and Trigonometry (5-10%) – concepts many students have down by the end of their sophomore year. My son took the ACT at the end of his sophomore year in HS and scored a 36, so it depends on your knowledge-base and your ability to problem solve at a rapid pace.
Here is the link to the Harvard Wrestling Team website roster page. http://gocrimson.com/sports/wrest/2016-17/roster If you click on each member’s name, it will go to a bio page that will list that person’s wrestling accomplishments. That should give you an idea of the level of the athletes on the team. Just glancing through some of the bio’s, we are talking All State, state champion/top placing caliber wrestlers. There are 27 wrestlers on the roster. Assuming 0 walk-ons, the coach has at max 7 recruiting slots per class.
There are set rules on coach/recruit contacts set by the NCAA. Here is a link to the NCAA webpage http://www.ncaa.org/student-athletes/future. If you are serious about getting recruited, you need to understand the process. You will also need to register with the NCAA. My kids were not wrestlers, but they did go through the athletic recruiting process for Ivy League schools. At some point, besides a listing of accomplishments, coaches want to see video. You should be filming all your matches and have highlights ready to share. The coaches of all sports go through a pretty systematic culling process with specifics that vary with each sport, but I guarantee that reviewing video is a big part of it these days for almost any sport.
One way to get in front of coaches that is a bit of a loophole in NCAA rules is to go to a “camp”, which are nice income earners for the coaches. It means spending money, but it guarantees access (but of course not results). Harvard does run a wrestling camp. http://www.gocrimson.com/information/camps/index
Thank you so much for all of the information!