D26 in testing purgatory right now. Dedicated SAT prep with a tutor hasn’t yielded much success, so pivoted to the ACT at the beginning of the year. She did report her February scores to the coaches she’s been communicating with, but hasn’t gotten any indication from them either way if it’s a deal breaker or not (hits the 25%ile ACT threshhold for most schools she’s looking at). She’s going to continue working with her tutor and shoot for one last attempt in April. So hoping she’d be done by now…
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Ugh. The thing that really helped my daughter the most was taking practice tests over and over for the weakest areas. It’s pretty quick to do individual sections, so she’d take a couple of practice tests for particular sections (math in particular, since it was the lowest area for her), circle the ones that were wrong, and then meet with her math teacher after school to go over those particular problems. Then she’d take more practice tests, and so on. I’m not going to lie, she did A LOT of practice tests… For the ACT, it’s really about timing. D felt the more practice tests she did, the quicker/better she got at it. We did NOT pay for expensive tutor/tutoring center. For her, the coaches of her top choices told her the score she needed/should aim for, and that was her motivation. Maybe your D could ask the coaches she’s in communication what their recommendation is in is terms of test scores so she knows what to aim for or what their threshold is- it may/may not match what the general school threshold is.
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She’s hoping to get some guidance from the coaches regarding their test score threshold when they get around to reading her email. They’re all gearing up for NCAAs, so she’s not expecting to hear back for a bit. Regardless, she’s refocusing on the April test. Fingers crossed!
I say take the April test and with that in hand you can ask directly if she needs to take it again. If schools are TO and since her grades are strong she will more likely than not still get the nod but be told to apply test optional after the pre-read.
If she decides on one more push after April, I recommend switching tutors. Not that the current one isn’t good but she will have exhausted, if she hasn’t already, what she can learn from them in terms of test taking strategy and all they are doing now is practice accountability. Someone new might offer a different angle that is helpful.
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She managed to hit her target score. So relieved to be done testing.
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Awesome! Congrats to her. Such a relief to not have to worry about that. Is her top choice still the same? Can’t wait to see where she lands.
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Now that she’s had a few visits under her belt, she’s looking at things with a different lens. Schools that were great on paper might have fallen short of expectations and schools that she didn’t initially consider are moving up. We did caution her not to get her heart set on anything and just keep all her options open until fall.
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That is what happens. Different sport for my daughter than yours but schools that I thought were going to be a great fit fell flat and others that I wasn’t sure of rose up. Great approach getting them to be flexible until decision time. Things can and will change over the next few months.
Thanks. This is really interesting.
Are there other schools (like the Colgate example) where coaches can’t/won’t take students who are seeking financial aid? NESCAC? Just from looking at people we know who have committed there, it seems like Middlebury and Colby have that pattern.
I would expect those schools/coaches take kids needing financial aid. They may, however, have a budget they have to work within. So they may need to know how much financial aid each recruit needs, or doesn’t need. I know the Connecticut College coach asked about our family’s financial aid needs at the pre-read stage.
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I confirm that the Trinity coach (helmet sport) asked and wanted to know if a prospective recruits family would be looking for financial aid. I got the impression that was important in the recruiting process.
Other schools/coaches seemed to just promote that they offered or had good financial aid, some noting that they meet 100% of the family needs.
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In our personal experience, the schools D went through recruiting/pre-read process with in the NESCAC did NOT ask about finances/need in the pre-read. Outside of the NESCAC, only Colgate and Skidmore made it clear that financial aid need impacted recruiting. Thankfully, D was not really interested in either school, because it left a bad taste in our mouth.
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None of the schools D26 talked to (UAA, NESCAC, SCIAC) brought up financial aid.
The need-blind/meets full need schools don’t need to ask about financial aid status, but the others do. So no, I wouldn’t expect Williams/Amherst/Bowdoin etc to need that info. Conn and Trinity clearly do. This info was discussed at the offer stage. When you say your daughter talked to these schools, did she get offers from all of them? Or are you referring to earlier discussions?
Every coach my kids talked to asked if we were applying for financial aid, even the single digit acceptance rate need blind schools. When we said no, we aren’t applying for FA, most coaches said that’s great/that makes things easier/something like that.
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I think that this might be the case in some places. Looking back at my D’s recruiting a couple asked. It didn’t feel like it was a major determinant factor in her case (she was a top recruit in her position) but they might have been asking to get an idea of the impact on their “aid budget”.
Yes, that probably was it. The Conn College coach said for every full pay recruit he offered, he could offer two players who needed financial aid.
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Exactly our experience. Our travel ball coaches actually told us to bring this up proactively in coach interactions. Response was, “that makes it easier”.
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Thanks OP for starting the thread. Failed a top academic NESCAC pre read despite the collective advice entering this process being that athlete would pass all easily based on athletics and test score. Not correct!
As for aid- about half asked and half did not. The failed one was one that did not ask about aid.
I agree with the above advice though that aid likely factors in at some places and also it is important for athletes and families to know that kids do in fact fail these reads and have to field tough calls with coaching notifying them they can’t continue to recruit them.
Collective advice from here? As it’s been said many times, an Ivy student athlete is a good student who is an outstanding athlete, while a NESCAC one is an outstanding student who is a good athlete. GPA and rigor do factor in.
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