FauxNom

OldDoc - Although there are not likely letters, at least some of the NESCAC colleges seem to be pretty good at giving ED applicants strong assurances of admission. There's a giant google-docs spreadsheet that tracks womens' soccer recruits, and I just saw a Williams recruit's "verbal commitment" listed there. I was surprised that anyone would go on record in that way before ED results came out, so it must be a fairly sure thing.

OldbatesieDoc

Thanks FauxNom-that helps. We were feeling pretty confident that the coach was as good as her word, and then some other parents told us horror stories-not about Williams or Midd-and made us nervous about if we were being delusional or naive.

keylyme

I know the prep schools are great about getting solid early commitments for their athletes from Ivies and NESCAC's. My son tells me every year of the seniors who have "commited" to NESCAC's from his team (there are usually at least three). He usually tells me this before the end of his season (November) and the kids always do end up going an playing. A junior just verballed to Brown....I know it seems very early, but all the Ivy verbals always end up going as well.

riverrunner

key, I'd be careful with that statement. A team member at an Ivy told me about a top recruit who had been courted throughout the summer and fall. The coach thought a likely letter would be completely possible, and said so to the athlete. Current team members were told this recruit would be joining them the following year. However, admissions felt differently, the athlete was denied the letter and had to move on. This happened within the last two years. There was no deception on the part of the coach, but this underlines the point that coaches don't always correctly anticipate the admissions decision. There may be more to the story: maybe the athlete wasn't completely truthful with the coach about scores or GPA or had some other weakness made clear in the application. Athletes must always keep some options open until the admissions cycle is complete.

keylyme

^^Absolutely. However, this school is a bit different because it is a top prep. It is common for these kids to be recruited into the Ivies and NESCAC's and all info on grades and test scores is confirmed through college counseling and coaches (my son's coach, for instance, is also his college counselor) who work closely with the colleges and recruiting coaches. The school makes these announcements and in 7 years of having students there, I have never seen one not come to fruition. I was only using it as an example to point out that you don't really have to have the "likely letter" in the fall; many exceptions are made and the letter ends up just being a formality.

riverrunner

Thanks for clarifying, key. I just think much of the confusion about likely letters comes when athletes/parents hear what they want to hear, and don't fully understand how things work. There is a range of interactions and relationships between high schools, coaches and college admissions officers, that goes from never having sent an athlete to an Ivy, to doing it every year. I strongly caution athletes figuring this out without a savvy high school coach and guidance counselor. You can do it, but ask a lot of questions, and don't assume anything.

OldbatesieDoc

Well, our coaches don't know anything.And our guidance counselors are clueless incompetents.They just send generic e-mails with smiley faces. If students don't have an imaginative or experienced parent, it's SUNY or the local community college. The only reason my son was recruited to the LACs in the NE and Midwest was because he filled out the recruiting forms, and luckily, he has skills in his sport that are valuable to quite a few colleges. His stats are in our state data base, so the savvy coaches had him all looked up at first contact.
The question here is these 2 competitive school has told him if he commits ED, he's in. He meets the mean for grades, SATs, and has great courses and EC. Are they likely telling the truth? I think Williams would be a stretch otherwise, because he is just another non ethnically interesting middle class 3rd generation boy from the NE, and if he "wastes"his ED on that school, he's lost the "coach sponsorship" at Midd, where I think he is more likely to get in with his "package" without an athletic hook. He has some safeties where his athletic talents aren't even necessary to get in, but really wants one of these 2 schools.
I know I'm pouring my heart out here, but what have others experienced in the past?

Runners2

Oldbatesie - our S didn't have experience with Williams or Midd, but did go on visits to other NESCAC schools. In his case, the coach took all his application materials to admissions and got a thorough read from them. Once the coach got those results and told S he would be accepted if he applied ED, we trusted him. However, S ended up going another direction, so we never tested the situation out.

Has your S's application material been read by admissions? Although certainly not a guarantee, it made us feel a little more confident. Maybe your S can explain his worries to the coach, e.g. "Williams is my top choice (if that's true), but I'm nervous that if anything falls through re: admissions, that I will be stuck. Would it be possible for me to speak to the Admissions officer to get some informal assurance of the likelihood of admission? " Perhaps talking to Admissions as well as to the coach would make you feel more confident?

TheGFG

OldbatesieDoc, your high school sounds like ours. I laughed so hard this week when I received an e-mail flyer from D's coach about an NCAA Clearinghouse workshop for seniors to be held in mid-November. How did they think she managed to go on all those official visits if she hadn't yet figured out how to obtain a Clearinghouse number? We had looked for an announcement of a school meeting regarding athletic recruiting both last year and the year before, but none was offered. Consequently, we did everything completely by ourselves and likely made mistakes along the way. At other schools, apparently coaches do a lot of legwork for their athletes. For example, they contact college coaches for them, supply game videos, etc. That never happened here either, though that's quite alright. Their imagination would have been limited to the nearby state schools anyway, and D had her sights set on the Ivies and top tier universities. D would have had paltry options had it not been for her own initiative, and I feel bad for D's friends who were recruitable but aren't going to be playing next year. This is another case of the haves vs. the have nots.

FauxNom

I'm not sure, GFG. I think it might be a case of the doers vs. the waiters. If a kid has the talent, taking the initiative can make it happen - maybe not at the D-I scholarship school, but probably somewhere else.

MaineLonghorn

^^^ FauxNom has a good point. We've been surprised at the positive response DS has gotten from some big schools. I think they're just impressed that he's even trying! Whereas I read a newspaper article about another (more talented) athlete in our state who even last month was THINKING about several schools, but had obviously not contacted any of them! He won't get too far unless he gets really lucky.

OldbatesieDoc

What I find is sad is the kids with great potential but no vision or good advise who end up at Community College with the stoners...I know that some people with drive and some luck can get ahead no matter what, but why wouldn't you take that full ride to an LAC or an IVY? Our coaches are thrilled if SUNY Fredonia shows up...
BTW, the Williams coach just asked for another copy of his transcript-4.0 IB unweighted grades. We don't have weighted grades or class rank...wouldn't want those underachievers to FEEL bad...

fauve

The school profile and your son's rigorous curriculum will differentiate him from the underachievers. No reason to worry that he might be slighted somehow.

Some schools refuse to weight AP/IB classes to avoid a huge increase in the number of students taking the class just for the extra point.

keylyme

I don't think there is any weighting at most of the preps and I often wondered why.

TheGFG

Fauxmom, in some cases you're right about the kids just not being doers. But I think there's also a lack of understanding of how the recruiting process works for the non-cash sports. Most kids thinks that if they're good enough, coaches will be interested and contact them. When they don't get contacted, they assume, wrongly, that they're not good enough to play in college. I mentioned this story before, but I'll mention it again because it's instructive. The father of the best female high school distance runner in last year's senior class commented that they were very surprised at how few phone calls she received. He made it sound like a handful of calls came in on July 1 and not many more afterward. Everyone thought their phone would be ringing off the hook and it wasn't like that at all, he said. In D's case, even certain coaches just assumed she would have gotten called by this school or that and were shocked to hear she hadn't been. This is not a process that is crystal clear. It can vary so much by sport, gender, school, and league.

D benefitted from having someone in her family to encourage her and prove to her that she was good enough to be recruited by the top schools. Without that encourgement, she was afraid of looking like a fool telling Stanford and other competitive schools she wanted to run for them. She assumed that if they hadn't called her, they weren't interested. Not true at all.