@MrsJayBird Ok, I did not know where you where were traveling from. If a restricted state you would have to follow the states rules for quarantine or as an alternative have a recent 72 hr. neg. COVID test if you flew, or drove in from your current restricted states to the NESCAC (MA?) and HYP states.
As I mentioned, I did not know where you were traveling from but was thinking that although the campus buildings are closed, you may still be able to drive thru or walk, wearing a mask of course, around the edge of campus and perhaps some open green areas, which will give you at least a sense, and the town(s) are not closed.
My D now only has a week left to give her NESCAC a decision. She hasnât heard anything new from the HYP coaches this week. What do you guys think is the likelihood that the HYP coaches could come back with a clear YES or NO by next week? We feel bad asking them to expedite their process, but they understand the situation she is in.
@MrsJayBird - it may be different for your daughterâs sport, as mentioned in other posts my daughter was told by the two Ivyâs that took her records to admission for pre-reads that it will take a minimum of 2-3 weeks and most likely it will be longer.
She can check in with the coach since you have a deadline, but I am not sure if they can/will speed up the process.
The coaches from all the different teams are bringing candidates at the same time to admissions for pre-reads. These schools had put athlete pre-reads on hold up until 2 weeks ago. (according to what the 2 coaches told my daughter), as admissions had other priorities. Remember likely letters are not until Oct 1 or later and Princeton got rid of their early option for this academic year too.
For her sport and most others, they usually offer official visits after a successful pre- read and now that is not possible. So it is a new process in the time of Covid without those important visits. Coaches originally told my daughter they would do fly-ins this year and home visits with no officials and now those wonât happen due to Covid quarantine rules.
Lastly, bear in mind that several of these schools are bringing back their current athletes over the next few weeks and figuring out how to provide safe practices, so I think some recruiting may continue to be slow.
Your daughter is in a tough place, but I keep coming back to you saying how much she loves the D3 school and she needs to decide if it is worth it to wait it out.
I wish you luck and maybe your daughter and candidates for her sport are the exception to the rule and get through the process faster.
The coach may not be able to expedite an official pre-read process, but they certainly can calculate her AI and they know what their team and individual AI minimums are. The question your D should ask the coaches directly is where she stacks athletically and how many spots the coach has. If she is at the top of the list (within the allocated spots), and she prefers the Ivy(s), you can self assess her AI and/or ask the coach for an unofficial coach academic preread â they usually are accurate except for the real borderline cases . If she is well down in the list, time to move on. The tougher call is if she is not quite within the top X of allocated spots. Then it becomes a real question of how much she prefers the Ivy(s) to take a sure thing at a school she likes off the table.
Hi, my son runs track and xc at UChicago. While it is great, my question is more Why LAC DIII? All of the UAA schools, (UChicago, NYU, WashU, CWU, Emory, Rochester, Brandies) are DIII. All are great schools, many on peer with most of the Ivy and one on peer with all of the Ivy.
For comparison: SAT 1540, GPA unweighted 4.0, National Merit Scholarship winner and Athletics: 3 time state medalist in PA in the middle distance relays, 12 time letter winner, PA indoor at time was #36 in the nation in the 800. He was also recruited by some of the lower DI schools (Colgate, Navy, etc.)
My sonâs recruiting experience was very straight forward at UChicago. He asked the coach if heâd support him, the coach said he would if he applied ED1 or ED2. My son did, and received a likely letter a couple months before acceptances went out. If he would not have received the Likely Letter, his fall back plan was to continue the application process at Navy or apply ED to Washington and Lee (which he was confident in getting in).
He has no regrets at UChicago. Academically he is around people who are very smart, on the track team he is around people who are very smart and are serious (but not too serious) about their sport. It was in the top 10 athletic programs last year in DIII. It was the perfect fit for him. Athletically, WashU is also very, very good and they have a great academic reputation for Pre-med. NYU is NYU as is Emory.
The point is that the NE LACs are not the only DIII option. And academically, they arenât the best DIII athletic option.
^^^^IMO the top NESCAC LACs are the academic equivalent of UChicago. Itâs a matter of personal preference. Anyway the OP is between two choices at this point.
Also from past experience, silence or delayed response usually means something. If you are a top recruit, your calls and emails tend to get answered pretty quickly.
@MrsJayBird I am not sure which NESCAC but if it was say âWâ or âAâ or another top NESCAC, I would think that your daughter would have a high enough AI (you can calculate that as well) and should pass a coach requested pre-read.
Others may have more insight but my thinking is that the Ivys/HYP will not change their timelines to accommodate you as it is not just up to the coach, plus HYP typically do not have any problems generating interest.
So I would agree with @BKSquared that you/your daughter should try to find out more as to what the coach thinks about her AI, AND where she is on his recruiting list and if she moves forward how he thinks she looks for a LL.
I do not envy you or your daughter as these are difficult decisions (commit now or take a little more time), particularly being a HYP, which in my opinion offer a very different experience than a NESCAC, plus with these COVID times you have not seen the schools yet.
When we first went thru this we did not have CC for advice but were fortunate in that I did not want to be pressured by coaches and commit to early as it was a big family decision, including the cost.
Just curious, during the earlier discussions with the NESCACs, did they indicate that they would want or require a decision in July as to whether or not you would apply ED?
Note: regarding my earlier post, I did not know where you were traveling from and I had thought that it could be to MA, in which travel from non-restricted states as well as restricted states is allowed following the state COVID requirements. So if to MA, it could be possible to see the towns and surrounding campus areas. I mention it only if it was feasible and would help.
MrsJayBirdâs D is described as a top recruit for D3 in track and field with a 35 ACT in hand and other academic stats to match. That should put MJBâs D at the 75th percentile or higher in the admissions profile at all of the NESCAC colleges, without any athletic support.
Questions for the group â Is the NESCACâ coachâs two week deadline based only on MJBâs D revoking her prior commitment? What does everyone mean when discussing whether there might be a âspotâ for MJBâs D? (i.e., on the team, on the admissions support list, or at the top of the list) If HYP does not work out, would this coach really prefer MJBâs D go to her second choice NESCAC and kick his athletesâ butts for four years, rather than come around to supporting her application in 90 days when ED applications are due? Does validating a two week deadline like this establish a bad power dynamic with the coach and even the college that wants $300K from the parents over the next four years?
I donât ask these questions for MJB or her Dâs benefit, because they are in a tough position â I empathize. Instead, I have a child with similar data, who is planning to roll the dice with MIT admissions. Since MIT recruits receive no promises, understanding recruiting at the other elite D3s and Ivies is still important.
^I think the NESCAC coach is telling OPâs D that he/she is holding Dâs spot for 2 weeks.
After that, the spot may be offered to the next recruit down his/her list. It doesnât mean D may not still have a spot at the NESCAC at the end of the day (others being offered may not take it), but her assured spot is at risk. The coach has limited spots, so in 90 days, he/she may not be able to support D.
As far as MIT is concerned, I assume your child will be applying ED. You will at least know by mid December if you need to move to Plan B. I would still stay in touch with the other coaches on the off chance they still have capacity to support your child in ED2 or RD.
Answering your question hypothetically, I believe in a worst case scenario, MJBâs daughter would not get admitted to the Ivy and at that time the NESCAC coach would have used all their spots with admissions already. Coaches only get so many spots where they can influence admissions, so if the coach has used them up, they are gone. That said it certainly sounds like there would be a spot on the team.
The issue isnât the spot on the team, itâs whether the athlete can make it through admissions without coach support. The Williams/Amhersts of the world routinely reject kids with great stats all the time, so itâs taking a risk to go this route.
@KaiserS Very good questions!
I also empathize with you, @MrsJayBird and others.
I have wondered about the 2-week deadline this soon before EDs apps are submitted. I believe in T/F NESCAC only have a couple of slots so that plus COVID may be what is driving it but it still seems early to me.
If she did wait and HYP fell thru, and she got into the NESCAC ED or RD without support, I am sure that she would still be welcomed on the team.
I told my D/S, that if it helped, to put it on me and tell the coaches my parents want me to not commit yet.
I am not in agreement with all here as well. My nature is to try and keep my options open and not be forced into an early decision. It was a big decision for us as a family as cost was also a factor and my general thinking is that only the Very Top academic schools are worth the cost, so we wrestled with that.
I told my D/S, that if it helped, to put it on me and tell the coaches my parents want me to not commit yet.
For what it is worth, I think that that if MIT looks like it would be a good fit as a school for your D/S, then rolling the dice for an MIT is certainly worth it. Good luck!!
@recruitparent - the two week deadline was probably imposed because she already verbally accepted the offer.
She got the feeling from all the D3 coaches that she was a top recruit. In fact, they all told her that. And they all said that she very easily passed her prereads. So as soon as the prereads came back and they wanted her to make a decision, she was already very sure of her first choice. I think the only question she had was MIT versus NESCAC and of course HYP (which we thought was off the table, and still might be).
So she accepted one and declined the others right away (except MIT because they donât ask for a decision) because she didnât want to hold up slots. It sounded like they would have only given her two weeks anyway since it sounds like they have a list that they go down. She asked the schools that she declined whether she could get support in RD if the ED doesnât work out, and they all said no.
Worst case, if she loses the NESCAC, she might still have a chance at U Chicago, MIT, JHU. It seems like the LACâs are a little more stringent with their slot offers.
But, she loves this NESCACâs team and school. The only two things she doesnât like about the school is that no one knows of the school. It bothers her every time people ask her where this school is. And number two, itâs very remote. She mapped out the nearest Starbucks and it was further than she wanted. Obviously, these reasons werenât enough to choose the bigger D3âs over this school. But thatâs why the HYP has such an allure to her.
For our family, it would be âbird in the handâ and my kid would stay with the NESCAC.
It sounds like OPâs daughter loves the school she chose and was excited, until the prospect of âmaybeâ being able to tell people sheâs going to HPY arose. For us, this would be the time to celebrate having a âsure thingâ at a school she loves. How heart breaking and difficult would it be to get by-passed by the HPY, have lost the spot at NESCAC, and be thrown back into the uncertainty of RD and not knowing anything until the end of March?
As an aside, as much as I love Starbucks, my own kidâs schools had local coffee speciality shops, no Starbucks, and in fact, no national stores at all. That became part of the charm of the experience.
My 2 cents: I would advise my child to run with the Nescac offer in hand. HYP would be great, but from what I glean, there are a few hurdles (no punning) to cross that would be tough to get through. At the end of the day, she loves the team and school, and that should be weighted heavily. HYP will be there for graduate school, if thatâs in the cards at some point. (Digression: probably more important to have HPY on top of resume for grad school vs less âstellarâ grad school and HPY for undergrad.)
Coffee is very important. However, meantime to Starbucks - not so much :). Very remote Nescac eliminates Tufts, and Trinity. Maybe Wesleyan and Amherst. So of the rest, Iâm pretty sure there are independent coffee shops much better than Starbucks.
And for the lack of name recognition where youâre coming from: your daughter, it sounds like, would put the school on the map for your local friends and neighbors. Thumbs up to that.
@MrsJayBird based on very remote and no Starbucks, I have ruled out a few NESCACs but can only guess. Even some of the âremoteâ NESCACs are more remote than others. For example, Amherst may be a couple of hours from Boston but it is a college town due to UMass Amherst.
Since your D was the coaches top choice and they all said she easily passed their pre-reads, which Iâm assuming included The Amherst/Williamâs, And since you mentioned MIT & JHU were in consideration, I would think your daughter would have a lot of very good options.
I understand the name recognition issue and agree with others on that.
Most of us have our own perspectives and perhaps biases so certainly keep that in mind, especially with me. I do not feel quite as strongly others on the bird in the hand thinking, unless it was the very top NESCACs.
Given her credentials, the question to me especially as she has not been to the school that she is planning to apply ED to, is to be sure that she would like to go to and would enjoy being at a very small, remote school, including in the winter. If this is the case then great!
But if not, then you may want to keep options open a little bit longer and see if you can find out where she is on the HYP board and if she is a strong candidate for a LL.
Hey @MrsJayBird - two things to consider. Does your D want the extra commitment of going D1 (even at HYP) vs the more balanced approach of DIII? And how important is it to her to be an impact addition to the team (ie top performer scoring points for her teammates, etc.). Iâm guessing WC is your daughters LAC of choice and Iâm told the brand carries pretty meaningful weight where it matters!
You and your D have handled this in a positive, classy manner. Here are a couple of comments if she does not hear from HYP by the deadline:
â I would impress on your D that anyone who âmattersâ (anyone in education, anyone who hires for jobs, any grad school) will know and have a ton of respect for the top NESCAC schools.
âI also would not sweat the Starbucks. At my Dâs LAC there were some local coffee shops that she said were even better (and cheaper) than Starbucks. I imagine there will be one or more of them very close to the LAC she is looking at. Given the population of coffee hungry students that just makes sense. If you google âcoffee shops near college nameâ Iâd bet that you can find at least one or two coffee shops that have great reviews.
Chiming in to say that if WC is your daughterâs college of choice, the coffee and ambiance at Tunnel City Coffee beats any Starbucks. Tunnel City was lively and bustling with college students, residents, and people from the Williamstown Theatre Festival when D and I visited a couple of summers ago. It felt like the heart of the town. Also, the WC brand is meaningful to people who matter (employers, grad schools, etc).