My kiddo is in the process now. We’ve visited 5 schools, met with 2 coaching staffs, there’s interest (stay in touch, here’s my cell #). They are only a junior, so there’s time, but I want to get a better grasp of the process. Most of the literature out there is on D1.
Let me know if you have any advice. Or things to look out for. I know the broad strokes about D3. But they are throwing terms at us like ED1, pre-reads, etc. I’ve caught up on the terminology quickly but how it all fits together is foggy.
Is it as simple as: pick the school you like, apply ED, if the money part is a good fit—accept? Feels naive to think it’s that simple. What am I missing?
ED is binding and in most cases you won’t know your package when you apply. You can only ED if you know you will be able to afford it. You may be able to ask for a financial aid preread of it is a concern.
Yes, the basic steps are the coach is interested enough to use an academic preread slot on you, and if it comes back green they can officially recruit you. If you accept you then likely apply ED1 if they have it. And then unless there are bad surprises in your full application, you are very likely accepted and you withdraw all other applications and enroll.
As another poster pointed out, this could be a problem if you need to hit a certain budget, so you can ask for a financial preread before applying ED. Unlike with the academic preread, though, you may need to initiate that process.
Big picture kid is in charge and should be the one communicating with coaches. Parents shouldn’t be in discussions until late in the process, unless included by the coach.
Timing of the process can be tricky. D3 schools/coaches do not all align in terms of when they start seriously reciting athletes, e.g., when they can start pre-reads, when they can make verbal offers (you want to hear you have full coach support thru the admissions process, some schools, not all, call that a slot), or for how long a coach will leave an offer open. So to be clear, a student can be offered by a UAA coach in April of junior year, and have a month to decide. But NESCAC schools won’t do academic pre-reads until July 1, nor make an offer until a positive academic pre-read result. So, if kid wants a particular school, they may be faced with declining an offer without knowing if another offer is coming. It is not good form to break a verbal commitment, I begrudgingly say football is an exception here. Generally, recruiting should stop after a student verbally commits. In D3, everything is verbal only. Coaches can’t admit recruits, students have to apply and wait until decision day. (Again, generally. There are a few D3 schools that send likely letters to recruited athletes after they apply.)
Not all schools require an ED app, there is a mini trend for schools including D1, to have at least some recruited athletes apply RD (or EA if the school offers that.)
Your kid should cast a wide net and initiate contact via email with coaches at schools they are interested in. Do not wait for a coach to make contact. Kid should follow up with important updates, where they will playing in a tournament, updated test scores, etc. Kid should always be asking questions about the process, its timing, and where they stand. Some coaches will communicate a lot, some will go cold, some will come back after going cold. Be persistent until you hear no.
The vast majority of schools will do financial aid pre-reads for athletic recruits. Your kid should ask the coach. Some schools won’t do financial aid pre-reads until after a positive academic pre-read. Others won’t do it unless the coach makes a verbal offer. Meanwhile run NPCs. IMO, being full pay is an advantage, as many coaches typically ask this early in the process.
You will want to get an offer from a coach before deciding to apply ED.
I would strongly recommend getting the book “The Athletic Scholarship Playbook” as it sets out the recruiting process clearly and concisely, even if you are not aiming for a scholarship. And go back and read old threads, especially those discussing your child’s sport. (If you let us know what sport we might be able to be more helpful).
Keep in mind that some posters without first hand experience with recruiting nevertheless offer advice.
Is your athlete dead set on D3 or are they open to other divisions?
D26 only wanted D3, and we found that to be a bit challenging since she wanted a large to mid size university. Judging by your username, if you’re focusing in SLACs, they should have more options.
D26 found a lot of variability even within D3 recruitment, and from what I’ve read, between sports as well. Some had budgets for overnight visits, some did just junior days, some had no substantive recruiting budget, so unofficial visits were the only option.
In the end, D26 reached out to 12 programs, talked to 10, visited 6, from the spring of sophomore year till summer before senior year when she committed. She submitted materials for pre reads for 4 programs, got offers from 2 of those programs. The offer she wound up accepting was from a program that didn’t do formal admissions pre reads for her sport. It was a real nail biter. All offers were contingent on applying ED1 in order for the coach to provide admissions support.
This was D26’s experience. UAA offers in April, though she was given until early July to decide.
Consistent with what other poster’s have written about NESCAC, D26’s pre read materials were submitted to admissions on July 1 and received her later that day. I read about A/B/C banding and the green/yellow/red pre read results, but the offer letter did not mention anything about either, so we never explored that aspect any further.
She did get a wave of interest emails and texts from D3 coaches right before the start of senior year into the fall.
Know that if your athlete is looking at highly rejective schools, standardized test scores may be required. The Common Data Set will give you an idea of what score range might be needed. I have a theory that test optional schools with prestigious fine art programs tend to skew things in the CDS as many of those applicants submit portfolios and audition materials in lieu of test scores, so the whole “only 47% of admitted students submitted scores, so test optional should be fine” thinking may not be entirely accurate.
You are missing the part about getting an offer for a roster spot. As stated above, all of the offers D26 received were contingent on applying ED1. At several visits, some coaches shared that they only have so many supported spots in the ED1 and ED2 rounds, so may not be able to offer support with the RD rounds. Walk on spots for someone who got in on their own was a possibility at a few programs.
I’m not sure how recruiting for your athlete’s sport has been affected by the House settlement, but D3 recruiting in D26’s sport has gotten more competitive, especially on the men’s side. Just something to be aware of.
Great comments so far. I don’t have much direct experience with D3 but all I’d add is to discuss with each coach what their recruiting process and timeline looks like, and make notes from that for each program. There are some differences in how coaches and programs approach this, and it’s easy to forget those differences as the process unfolds.
I think each family needs to make their own decision on this. My daughter was 16 when going through the process and painfully shy around adults. For us, if the coach didn’t include me in the discussion, we didn’t pursue the school, mostly because my daughter was overwhelmed. My daughter didn’t understand the finances and at one point (after I’d followed the CC advice to let the kids lead the process and she was getting more and more confused) she looked at me and said “Can you just handle the money?” This was one thing she could hand off as she was also a hs kid playing her sport and taking exams, doing applications and just living her life. She always took the lead on the athletic issues (playing/coaching styles, team make up, even the very important question of whether she could wear her favorite number) but I did the money issues, helped her with academic comparisons, and we talked about other issues before and after visits. Athletes are still applying to college, so need parental involvement.
I think recruiting is a little different if you have one school (or a few) that you are looking at as you are trying to get the coach to give a spot to your child and you sort of have to do the recruiting like the coach wants to do it (parents asking questions, only dealing with the child). My daughter was open to many schools so in some ways I think we had more control over recruitment. If the coach didn’t want to talk to me or have me involved, we could just move on and did for several schools. Other schools really included the whole family in the recruitment process
You do what’s best for your child and your family.
Lots of good advice so far! My S27 is a senior who is a bit further along in the process. What you describe with your son is what mine experienced at the D3 schools that he looked at starting the summer before and into junior year. Mine is being recruited for a sport that tends to run late with recruiting, but even in that case I’d have him try to update junior year at least once a semester and more often if he is in season and making notable improvements. Mine didn’t initially have a good way of keeping track of those communications, so I’d definitely recommend helping him coming up with a system (to track last contact, next steps, and how the relationship is progressing), particularly if he is in communication with a number of coaches.
In the late fall of junior year, S27 had update calls with the most of the coaches he had met over the summer. As mine got into the spring of junior year, he got more phone calls and texts with coaches. Positive feedback from updates is good reason to keep sending those updates if he is still interested in the school as the year progesses. Lack of feedback/response from a coach was a reason for a school to drop down the list-but if you have improvements, feel free to try again-that worked in several cases for my son! By summertime (beginning in mid May) he was getting requests for prereads at most of the schools he was still getting good feedback from. Some of the less selective schools on his list never asked for pre-reads though. The amount of time between asking for the pre-reads and getting the result back varied A LOT (some came back in less than a week and some took more than 2 months). Some, particularly from some of the midwestern SLACs came along with a merit preread (and/or requested financial information or to do NPC before doing the pre-read). Generally after a positive pre-read was when discussions started to happen about doing overnight visits with the team (but again, S27 is in a late-recruiting sport that generally has fall overnight visits).
Depending on the sport and the competitiveness of both the athletics and the academics, I would encourage him to make sure the conversations are continuing throughout the junior year, particularly in the spring. My son did have several high academic D3 who reached out to him directly (without him contacting them) based on his online profile, but most of those have ultimately fallen away in favor of the ones he reached out to as he has narrowed his list in the last few months.
There are definitely high academic D3 schools that would require ED for a slot on the team. There may be others where your son is such a good fit/high level recruit, that a school would be willing to wait for him in EA or RD if you want to be able to compare offers. Both of these situations are happening with my son currently.
Good luck! I got lots of good advice on this forum! Feel free to DM me if you have particular questions.
I meant to put this reply here but accidentally posted it in response to another recruiting question so am copying it here –
There’s lots of collective wisdom on CC about athletic recruiting, especially at D3 schools, so reading through earlier threads is useful.
A few big picture thoughts –
Consider whether the goal is to use athletic recruiting to get admitted to a highly rejective school, like a Williams, Amherst etc.. or whether the student wants to continue competing somewhere and is not focused on schools where admission is unpredictable.
Consider finances – if you are a full pay family but need merit-based aid to afford it, there are D3 schools which give merit aid but they may be more, or less, competitive for recruiting in your sport. If your student needs merit money (as D3 doesn’t do athletic scholarships), then you need to figure out how competitive for recruiting purposes a school might be, plus the profile required for merit money. For ex., Messiah and Ohio Wesleyan Men’s Soccer are historically strong programs with easier overall acceptance rates – it is much harder to get a roster spot as a recruit at those schools than to be admitted. So a student might be a sure thing for admission and merit money, but a long shot for a roster spot. That requires building a wide list of initial schools, balancing recruitment, admission, and merit money.
Generally, for D3 recruits, ED applications are expected in exchange for an offer of a roster spot because the student’s ED commitment is how the coach knows they can stop recruiting for that need, though there are always exceptions. Some highly rejective schools may not have enough “spots” to offer through ED so may encourage students to apply RD. Schools which are less competitive in both recruiting and admissions may also be comfortable with RD application.
Also, learn to decipher “coach speak” – “we’d love you to apply,” “we think you have terrific potential,” “we think you’re a great fit” are not offers of a roster spot. You want to hear the words, “you have a roster spot on the team” and understand what is required of the applicant. It’s also helpful to know what getting a roster spot means at that school – some schools make cuts before the season even begins so recruits are competing to keep their spot while other schools may guarantee a roster spot for a year or two. Know what the expectations are.
Also, don’t fall in love with a coach – as they move and might be gone before the student starts college.
My son (with me) at a school visit was literally told “we’d love to have you on our team” and I literally said to the coach “that’s not an offer, is it?” And he agreed – it was not an offer.
I think you need to hear both 1. “You have a spot on the team” AND 2. “I will support your application with admissions” for it to be an offer.
Mom of two D3 athletes here. Create a list of schools for academic fit (and maybe other criteria). Then among those look at your sport of interest and talk to coaches.