D1 Unofficial Visits as a Junior

riverrunner
Tue, 06 Apr 2010 11:01:58 +0000

beawinner, good strategy. Recruited athletes tend to focus on the school that made some promises, and have trouble imagining what would happen if that school doesn’t work out.

For the most part, schools are using the Common App with supplements, some of them simple, and some with extensive extra essays. If you can convince your child to do this, completing the Common App in the summer and working on the primary and supplemental essays (gag) is time well spent. All of us who have been through this keep singing this same song, but it’s really true.

Especially if your child is in a fall sport, plans to make official visits, and is taking AP classes. Suddenly the time to daydream about “why Dartmouth” goes right out the window. D2, now a senior, and NOT a recruited athlete, sent out about 12 applications. We took a look at the supplemental essays during the summer. Some of them were the “why Dartmouth” variety, and had to be specific to that school, but many optional essays had common themes: who’s the most influential person in your life and why? tell us something about yourself not included in your common app essay? what is your home town like? what unique qualities do you bring to college X? Writing on some of these topics and saving those essays made the supplements a bit less painful, since the essays could be retrofitted to match some of the optional essay topics.

I’m bringing this up here, because, as you say, in the best case, your child will write one application and supplement and be done. But in the plan B case, suddenly you may have to send out a lot of applications, and it would be unfortunate not to apply to some schools because the supplemental essays just didn’t get written.