New here. Son is a rising Senior (c/o 2026), plays HS Football, 5’11" 170lb cornerback. GPA 3.97 Unweighted (only B was in AP Calc BC, 89%), 4.6 Weighted (9 APs, 13 Honors, 3 Community College courses so far; taking 6 AP and 2 Honors courses his Sr. year). ACT 35 (Math 36, Science 36, Reading 34, Writing 33). Interested in majoring in STEM and/or Economics/Finance.
He’s getting interest from (and has been in touch with) Coaches from top-ranked D3 schools (MIT, U Chicago, CMU, Carleton, Grinnell, Pomona, Claremont, etc.) and position coaches and/or recruiting coordinators from several Ivy league schools following him on twitter. He attended 6 Ivy league football camps last summer (Sophomore) and attended Davidson mega camp few weeks ago, where he met with coaches from some of the schools interested in him. Harvard HC wrote saying he’d be a great academic fit and that it’d be worth his time to come to the camp this summer. MIT HC said something similar and wanted to see him this summer to see his growth from last summer. MIT HC also suggested that he retake his ACT to improve his Reading and Writing scores.
Not sure how offers are made, if any. We’ve been invited to visit some schools by coaches, and we will be visiting a few in the coming weeks.
Welcome any and all suggestions on how to navigate the process, what to expect during campus visits, what questions to ask the coaches, timeline for receiving support letters, etc.
Congratulations on the interest he is getting. He sounds like a good athlete and student, which is what gets the higher academic schools attention.
Others may give a much more detailed insight or plan though from my perspective it sounds like you are doing the right things especially as you had attended a # of Ivy football camps.
Here is some basic input from my end:
-you can get the coaches attention with the film/Twitter and grades, though they like to see you in person to see how you stack up vs film, particularly for football. So going to the camps help.
-it sounds like there is real interest from the coaches.
-If you have time, you can make an unofficial visit to the schools to check the school out in person and get a feel for the fit. Even though it is summer it can still be worthwhile especially if you have not been on campus.
I would do this if possible and your son can let the recruiting coach and/or the HC know that he is very interested and you will be on campus x date, and you would like to say hello if they are around. My experience is that the coaches will take the time to see you. If the coach is away, he may say I am away but I will let coach x know and he can show you around. That was our experience.
-when the coaches meet with you they will typically explain the timeline and give an indication on where you stand on their list, if they would like you to come for an official visit such as when school is in session.
-start narrowing down what your top choices are for the best fit, academically, school size, location, cost (if that’s a factor), etc. This may take some of the list to make it easier to focus, such as perhaps Grinnell is too remote.
Good luck!
Have any coaches asked your S for his transcript and test scores with the intention of doing an academic pre-read?
Your S has to be asking the coaches what their process is and what is their timing for making recruiting decisions. Many Ivy football slots are already spoken for, I expect some of the D3 schools you mentioned also are far down their recruiting path.
For the H coach and his camp (which are revenue generators often with the $ directly going to the coach), your S should ask if there are any slots left and if athletes who go to the camp are competing for said slots. I would not go to any camp at any school this summer unless the coach directly says there are full support slots available and that your S would be competitive for them.
For MIT, their recruiting process is unique and full coach support does not mean likely admission as it does at many other schools. Your S can ask the coach what proportion of athletes with full support are accepted. I don’t know the current football coach, but the range of what I’ve heard from other MIT coaches is 20%-50% odds of acceptance with full coach support. Without improved ACT scores, I would probably encourage dropping MIT.
Thank you for your feedback! Yes, all the schools mentioned above have asked for his transcript, which we took it as that they impressed enough with his film that they want to make sure he’d fit in academically. Agree with your point about asking for #slots available.
From what we can tell from twitter posts and 247sports offers and commits, most schools (ivy league, especially) are handing out offers like candies to top D1-level athletes, just to be in the game with those athletes, knowing full well that these offers are non-binding and that they can always rescind/reject them later using not-good-enough academics-to-get-past-admissions excuse. Looking at the timelines of offers made to athletes, it is quite clear that soon after one Ivy makes an offer, others immediately follow suit within the next few days just to be in the race. Also, looking through twitter timelines of players who eventually ended up getting admitted to these schools from last and prior years, it is quite clear that most of them were offered late in the game (Fall of Senior year), presumably after the players these schools were after committed to other power 5 schools.
I totally agree with your assessment about MIT process. HC does not have as much say as in other schools. One of their Asst Coaches actually told us that they’d like ACT score of 34 or above that my S’s score is fine. It was funny that this coach told us that the reason for HC to ask my S to retake the test was because there is plenty of time left; if this were early Fall, HC wouldn’t have asked us to retake the test.
Thank you recruitparent! You are right that it does seem that they want us to visit the school to show that we are serious and are interested, especially the ones in remote locations. We are going on unofficial visits to some of the top D3 Univs/LACs next week. Hoping to get offers of support from a few. Our hope is that if we get a few offers, that’d generate even more offers from schools, where my S is still under consideration, for the fear of missing out (FOMO).
Good input.
Just adding, I am not sure how close you are to some of these schools, such as Harvard if that is of interest, though if you can visit and reach out to the coach, I would recommend that. You should be able to gage where you are based on their response, and assuming they reply and they will meet with you on campus, you can ask and they should give you a sense as to where your son sits and if he is a candidate for a Likely Letter.
Sounds good, especially visiting the schools, speaking to the coaches one on one. Though just cautioning that an offer at one school does not necessarily mean others will then offer.
I don’t know football as well as I know other sports, but I would find this very surprising (and I know several other sports where this absolutely does not happen). No Ivy League program wants to get the reputation of making offers to students who are not going to be admitted - that sort of thing gets around. I would assume football coaches go through similar processes of academically qualifying students before offering a spot. I think the timelines might be a function of both similar recruiting schedules + announcement behavior.
“Offers” (especially, verbal) made before Fall of the Senior year is generally not committable offers. If you can’t commit, then it is not an offer. They use it to keep you interested in them. For example, a position coach from a top 4 Ivy was on a road trip in Spring visiting HSs in the South, and almost everyday he was reposting an HS athlete’s twitter message saying that they were offered by this coach while visiting their HS. In one week, I counted, 20+ offers for just one skill position this coach coaches. We’ve seen the same with most other coaches who are visible and active on twitter. Just tracking 247 sports for offers and commitments tell the whole story, with most colleges having offered dozen plus QBs, RBs, etc, knowing full well they are a reach for these schools and they just need one to committ.
For football, with so many Colleges recruiting ~25-30 athletes per year, there a lots of moving parts and coaches don’t know for sure who is truly committing until they receive athlete’s application (which they usually insist to be EA/ED, where applicable). Schools with top programs usually fill in their slots way earlier. The rest sometimes scramble well into the Spring to fill their slots because those who thought will agree to come/apply never did.
For D3 and Ivy, it is a little different, with academics to the forefront, but their coaches still try to recruit the best they can to win FB games.
What is your son looking for educationally? Put the football aside for now-- what intellectual experiences, vibe, community is going to meet his non-athletic needs? Even the most talented athlete can be injured-- in which case, he’s stuck with his decision even if he’s out for a semester or a year… what then?
@blossom: Great question! He’s a calm, quiet, and analytical kid. Very STEM-oriented — he enjoys Math, CS, Bio, Chem, and Economics — but he’s not fond of language arts or creative subjects. He tends to thrive when intellectually challenged.
He’s lived his whole life in the suburbs, but did an internship at NYU last summer, where he seemed to enjoy both the research work and the pace of city life. That said, we’re unsure how well he’d adapt to a more isolated, rural college environment. I’ve had several conversations with him to try and better understand both his interests and passions — which, as we know, aren’t always the same thing at that age.
Right now, he doesn’t have a clear favorite subject, but he performs well across both quantitative and life sciences disciplines. His main goal, as he puts it, is to “make a lot of money” — which may suggest a stronger fit with something like CS or Economics over the life sciences. But at 17, it’s perfectly reasonable that he doesn’t yet have it all figured out.
My advice to him has been to prioritize schools where he’d still be happy even if he couldn’t play football — just in case.
Yes, football is a totally different world wrt offers vs. commitable offers. It’s good that you’re aware of that difference. (For those who aren’t: it is true that football coaches will extend far more offers than they have positions, and many recruits won’t visit without an offer in hand; but these are fairly meaningless and what really matters in the end is whether the offer becomes a commitable offer if the recruit wants to commit).
OP, others here know far more than I do about football recruiting so I’ll leave it to them. But you might also check out old posts by @Ohiodad51 who posted quite a bit about his son’s experiences with Ivy football recruiting/playing. That was several years ago so obviously some things have changed, but you might find it interesting even if some of the experiences are a bit dated.
Agree 100%, very good advice. Just in my circle I have seen a # of kids/parents get caught up a bit in the recruitment excitement (it’s easy to do-I found it exciting) and make a decision based primarily on athletic recruiting and end up transferring as it was not a good fit. @westwave had a number of very good but different types of schools (universities vs LAC, city setting vs. very remote, D3 & lower end D1, etc.) on their list. That is not a bad thing and many on here believe in casting a wide net. I don’t disagree with that but would be evaluating & visiting schools to narrow the list down ASAP taking the sports out of the equation. Hopefully you will end up with a short list and can focus on those schools as it is getting close to offers and commitments. Good luck.
Investment Banks pay a lot and they tend to like athletes due to their work ethic. He should check it out, learn some excel, and see if DCF models are interesting enough for him to get paid six figures to do them. Check out skimaskbro and rareliquid on YT
My ds is also a 2026 football recruit, but at a different position. His position recruits later than the others , so he doesn’t have any offers yet. Most kids with offers at his position are FBS level players. We are only focusing on Ivy, Patriot, NESCAC, and other high academic schools where there has been genuine interest from coaches. My son attends a private school where there are a lot of football recruits at all levels, so I can share some of what I’ve gleaned through the process.
I can confirm that MIT does have a unique recruiting process and that as of 3 years ago the test score requirement was a 1520 SAT (which I think is equivalent to a 34). My son’s teammate had an older brother who was recruited by MIT. He had the test score, but didn’t like the process so he moved on and is now playing football at an Ivy.
We’ve been told by most of the D1 schools that they want to see my son play in person at their camp to be considered for an offer. He has generated most of his interest from his X profile and also by a showcase that his school held last spring. That being said, we’ve chosen D1 camps where he’s had the most contact with either his recruiter for our area, position coach, or head coach, or can hit a lot of the D3 schools (i.e. Davidson). A lot of the high academic D3 schools will attend the Ivy camps-- the coaches usually post on X where they will be. Perhaps at the Harvard camp there will be some of the D3 coaches there (i.e. MIT)?. I checked and the last Harvard camp is 7/13. Perhaps your son can vet that camp invite a little more to make sure you’re not wasting any time or $$. My guess is after that last camp the coaches will reconvene and decide who they will offer. Other Ivies also have camps ongoing through that 3rd week of July. You’d want to try and hit as many as makes sense given the level of interest by coaches. Even though he went last summer, I think coaches will want to see him again. Again, staying in contact with the coaches can help determine interest.
You mention in your initial post about coaches following him on X. Hopefully they also reached out to your son. One thing I learned through this process is that following him on X doesn’t mean much, it only means something if they also reach out to your son. He’s also been invited to camps where they aren’t even recruiting for his position this year! Like someone said above, it’s a money maker for coaches. You definitely want to make sure they are still actively recruiting for his position and ask how many of his position they will take in this class.
We’ve also learned that everyone’s process is different. One of the D1 schools he is actively talking to only make offers during official visits, not before. The nescac schools also operate very differently (except that they can’t make offers before 7/1) - my son has had multiple pre read requests from the Nescacs, even one school where he hasn’t had any direct contact with a coach. A Nescac coach we spoke with on a visit told us some Nescacs will offer immediately on 7/1 and expect a prompt commitment. Not sure how that works out when are still considering D1 schools.
Feel free to DM me if you have any other questions. Your post has helped me with some questions I had and I will probably have more if my son gets any offers.
Agree a coach follow on X is less than meaningful. Recruits should be reaching out directly to coaches via email, at least initially (recruiting coach, head coach, position coach). Do not wait to hear from coaches…that is a sure way to be left without a slot come application time.
Not all NESCAC offers will happen quickly, expect the process to go well into October, at least for some recruits.
The timing of offers can be quite difficult to manage because coaches/schools are on their own time tables. If a recruit receives an offer, tells other coaches he has an offer, that may or may not spur action from another coach. Just depends.
Usually offers have a set time that they are open…make sure the recruit asks how long the offer is good for. A week or two is common, a month less common. It’s the age old dilemma…take the offer in hand at a school that’s not the top choice, or wait for the top choice offer…which may never come.
Just wanted to update everyone: went on few visits to top 10 LACs and got a few offers (D3 of course). We are expecting a few offers from top 20 D3 Universities. After my S posted some of these offers, many more HCs starting getting in touch for transcript/ect and some D3 colleges also sent us offers without visits. We have another set of visits scheduled in the coming days. Fingers crossed.
Congrats to your son on the offers!! My son went through the process a few years ago for football and was looking at high academic schools at the D3 level as well and once the first offer came in, it definitely increased interest from other schools at the same level.
In his experience, the schools that made offers were good about allowing him some time to make a decision before they would “move on” and this seems to track with his teammates experience with D3.
D1 can be entirely different where kids were given “offers” but when they were ready to commit, the program was not ready for them to commit yet, even though they had been offered. Another student was given a window of only a few hours to commit before the offer would be revoked. I am not sure how often things like this happen with other sports, but we have seen it with P4 football. Super stressful for everyone.
As others upthread have mentioned, he should definitely choose a school based on academics, football and the “ACL Test” to make sure that he would like the school even if he were to be unable to play due to injury.
Best of luck with the process as it can be complicated, but it is fun, exciting and definitely interesting as he and your family figure out what the best situation is for his college years.
Please feel free to PM if you or he have any questions
to improve his Reading and Writing scores.