In addition to analyzing the financial aspects of the offers, your daughter also need to have candid conversations with the coaches at each school. Have they all told her she’d have a roster spot if admitted? Some schools do carry large track rosters, but some do not. For example, if your daughter is a specialist in something like pole vault, a team may only carry a small number of pole vaulters. She needs to understand the roster limitations if any.
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I think it might be informative for OP (and me) if you said more about this. Particularly how you’re defining athletic recruit. Are you saying that applicants get coaches support after the ED round? This would have positive implications for OP. What is confusing to me is that possibility in the context of limited coach chits.
One scenario is that coaches save chits because kids who they are interested in, willing to provide support for and encourage to apply, don’t; leaving them opportunities to encourage and support kids later (saw this last year with Dartmouth and Amherst specifically in the case of a friend’s daughter). In that case, there’s the risk of having the kid commit to other places in the ED round. And again, there’s no hook for the kid to realize the chit if they’re in the non-binding pool in that case, which may have implications for the Coach’s credibilty with admissions.
Please say more.
Yes, some recruits with full coach support have always gone thru rounds beyond ED1. I’m not saying it’s the norm but certainly not uncommon especially in some spring sports. Perhaps @politeperson can comment on their track and field experience.
One of my students two years ago had a blow out basketball season in senior year and received full coach support at an Ivy in RD.
Like I said above too, some selective schools are experimenting with pushing some recruits out of ED and into other rounds, for a variety of reasons.
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OP has specifically mentioned that the four schools all have a November 15 EA deadline. So likely not even schools that offer ED. There are plenty of athletes that are supported without ED. OP never shared about her daughter’s level of Coach support through admissions so we’re all just guessing at this point. Hopefully, they’ll come back to shed some light on the subject.
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Its really important to remember that the notion of admission support for student athletes can mean a wide range of things, depending on the school/league. In the Ivy league, support is carefully defined by league rules. Each coach has a fixed number of slots and a required AI average that must be met across the years recruits. The AI number is different from school to school and then from sport to sport within each school. If a coach uses a slot and the student athlete doesn’t get in or goes somewhere else, the coach just wasted the slot. Other places are fuzzier with the admissions help–both in terms of number of recruits helped and the amount of help. I know a coach at a fairly large state U who won’t use any admissions help at all to get a recruit in–he’s come to the conclusion that students who need help getting in will be too much work to get through their degree. At the school I teach at the coach can help with admissions to the U as a whole, but not into the selective colleges/majors.
A general rule of thumb is that the highly-rejective schools tend to have the mechanisms for admissions help more carefully defined, but there tends to be more opportunities for walk on recruits who get themselves admitted. Schools that have higher admission rates usually have “fuzzier” mechanisms for admission help, but are also often more limited by roster slots so getting yourself in doesn’t mean there is a roster slot for you.
Its important to talk to specific coaches to see how they will handle things for you. Just because they are flexible with another recruit doesn’t mean they will be flexible for you, and vice versa.
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I agree that while less common, coach support can extend beyond the ED round. I know of at least one school that divides slots into ED and RD. And of course there are schools that don’t have ED at all where coach support still exists. Coaches probably would prefer every recruit be ED but that doesn’t (or can’t) always happen.
I know of several track recruits who were supported through RD at Ivies, or offered that option. This can happen because the coach is willing to wait, or because the coach still has slots available later in the process. I haven’t been involved with many D3 recruits but just from discussions with those athletes I’ve heard a number of cases where the hope was for D1 or highly selective D3 support but when that didn’t materialize there were RD support offers at various D3 schools.
For OP I think I’d try to clarify with the coaches if they will support the app in EA and if they want a commitment in order to do so. Or perhaps these are schools where admissions isn’t a huge hurdle and/or the coaches can “put a word in” without using up scarce recruiting slots. The vast majority of schools don’t have the sort of recruiting architecture that exist at Ivies, Nescac, and other super-selective schools often discussed here.
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Op, I looked at your other thread for context. Is this a current junior? I think most assumed it was a current senior. I know I did.
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I would just add that track may be a more forgiving sport than many others in terms of needing to secure a specific place on the team - say, as compared to the goalkeeper on a soccer team. It might vary from school to school and coach to coach, but overall, there’s more flexibility with track because it is largely an individual sport. My son was able to run for four years for a strong D3 team as a walk-on, and I suspect most coaches would find a way to include an athlete who adds something to the team’s capabilities.
This is not unusual – and really important to many applicants – but the OP is likely concerned about coach support in admissions, not just being on the roster.