Does anyone who has a solid basis for their estimate know how many students a coach in NESCAC - or similar LACs - in a given sport gets to offer full support to and separately offer a “tip” to?
I am assuming it varies by sport. Possibly by LAC. I think it would help people - certainly it would me - to get a list going. It’s hard for a NARP (non-athletic, regular person) to approximate how many slots in ED are up for grabs vs likely taken by an athlete. (Not making any judgments at all - just trying to get an estimate.)
Deciding whether or not to ED, and where, can be very tricky. Would be great to have some reliable info on this point.
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I would guess – and it is a guess – that there isn’t too much variation among the NESCACs and similar schools. Now, if you are looking at bigger D3 schools (UAA etc) the answer might be different. And I guess Tufts could be an outlier.
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Are you trying to figure out who gives most ED to athletes so you can avoid those schools in regards to applying ED?
I’m trying to get as educated on this point as possible.
I don’t think parsing out the number of ED slots taken by athletes is a particularly useful data point to determine where you should apply ED. What about other hooked applicants like legacies, faculty children, and those deemed to be institutional priorities? You have no idea, from year to year, how many of those there will be. Looking only at the athletes is only looking at part of the overall picture.
But, to answer your question, I can tell you that the Ivy League number is around 180-225 ED athletes per cycle. Perhaps the NESCAC numbers are similar. I don’t really know if there is a correlation there.
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For the 2025-2026 admissions cycle, it varies by sport.
For the 2026-2027 admissions cycle, it will again vary by sport, and may be different than 2025-2026
The AD divvies up the total number each year based on need.
For your specific sport, ask the coach
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It’s true there are other pieces of the puzzle, but this is a very significant piece. More significant than legacy and faculty children.
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Is the overall figure for all the sports combined relatively consistent?
I edited my post to provide more info. Don’t know if it helps answer your question or not.
Great! Do you know what that is?
Much, much lower for NESCAC. Well below 100, although their teams are supplemented by non-recruited athletes. And varies by school. Conn College is probably on the lower end since it has no football, which takes up a good percentage of the recruits.
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The baseline in NESCAC is 14 for football and 2 for every other sport. Trades happen between coaches. Some schools limit the numbers further for athletic factor recruits. Tips and soft support vary.
This 2016 Amherst report is still representative of the process. https://www.amherst.edu/system/files/media/PlaceOfAthleticsAtAmherst_Secure_1.pdf
Over the years some of the NESCAC student newspapers have also done deep dives into the process…I know the Bowdoin Orient and Williams Record have, so you could search for those articles/analyses.
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Super helpful - thank you
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And by how good the team is in their sport. If you look at the number of freshman on a team, that might give you a better idea of how many spots the coach gets. If a lacrosse team is really good year after year, the coach may get 10 spots (tips or full support) because that teams needs that many to field a team of 30 (figuring some attrition each year, so 10 freshmen, 8 sophomores, 7 juniors and the rest seniors. Will there be walk ons? Unlikely if the team is nationally ranked. Now every single player is academically qualified, but the coach can’t take the chance that all 10 would get in without the slots/tips.
If you are an athlete, ask. But look at the rosters too.
The Amherst Student recently published this article on athletic recruitment that’s worth a read:
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From your post, it looks like you are trying to establish how many ED spots are available for unhooked students (rather than your odds as an athlete.) Is that right? The exercise you are doing is a critical piece of this.
Also look at programs like Questbridge and and special groups (i.e., WoW at Williams) that are pre-screened and fill am institutional need.
At some schools – not so sure about each of the NESCACs, legacies whose parents are major donors need to apply in the ED round to exercise any preference they have.
This is all to say that if you aren’t filling any of those buckets, those are ED seats that aren’t available to you. At the same time, not every student who is eligible for those seats will be admitted.
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Agree with this. Soccer gets ~6 spots a year. Most NESCACs are nationally competitive and as @twoinanddone said, those teams almost never have walk ons.
Good catch, I didn’t process that initially. Some of those numbers do get large compared to the class size…30 Posse students in ED at Middlebury, 42 QB at Tufts, very high proportion of WOW students accepted at Williams, etc. I agree the ED bump is significantly lower than it looks like on paper. Some might say there is no admissions advantage to applying ED vs RD at these schools. IMO, there still is an advantage, but it’s smaller than many think.
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