My daughter is a recruited athlete at a dozen or so schools. All of them want her to apply ED for athletic support except for one. One school, an elite academic school, said she will only get application support from the coach if she applies RD. Has anyone ever heard of something like this?
Yes, some schools have done this/experimented with this over the last five years or so (and of course some recruited athletes go thru RD for any number of reasons.)
I can’t speak for these schools but my understanding is they want to open up ED slots for non-athletes. That can put the recruit in a risky position should things go sideways though.
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I agree about how things could go sideways. That is my concern. It seems to me that if you have to do RD, even if you have coach’s support and it is supposedly 99%, you would still have to apply to a bunch of other schools just to be safe. This takes away one of the advantages of being a recruited athlete.
Agreed. Has your D talked with the coach about these concerns? If not, she should.
FWIW when I was working with recruited athletes I always had them submit at least one additional app (and ideally more) even if they applied ED. S**t happens. (but yes, an RD recruited athlete app would basically require a full set of apps.)
Yes, she talked to the coach. He understands but said he can’t do anything about it. I also don’t see how this is good for the school. Since she would just RD, she could change her mind any time. If a bunch of kids do that the team could be screwed.
Sounds like the school is just playing games with their numbers. If they wanted to open up more slots for non athletes to ED, they could just accept more EDs total. There must be some optical reason they don’t want to do that.
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True. Has she asked the coach if that’s happened, and more importantly has she asked if any recruit with a slot/the coach’s full support had not been accepted in the RD round in past years? Regardless, if she does receive a verbal offer she can decline and move on.
Some do see an optics problem with schools that are filling 50%-60% of their classes in ED. IMO that is an unfounded criticism because these schools are seeing all the types of diverse applicants that they want/are targeting coming through in the ED round…that hadn’t always been true before.
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Is this Georgetown? That is the only place we ran into that. The coaches seem to still encourage an EA application because if the athlete gets in, the coach gets to support someone else. I’m guessing this probably depends if the coach thinks the athlete holds their own academically, but Georgetown does not deny in EA so there is no harm.
I have not heard stories of support going haywire at Georgetown so if it’s her top choice, there should not be an issue. (I’d probably apply to a few EA schools for piece of mind)
I’d rather not say the school name but it’s not Georgetown. I’ll just say it is an Ivy League school.
Now THAT is surprising! Is this the case for all sports at the school? Is it a niche sport? Will they issue her a LL upon submission of application (say, in October?)
ETA - IME at Ivies it doesn’t matter so much when you apply as long as you have coach support, but schools can have a very strict number of LL/support allowed. At other top academic schools (mostly D3) several coaches expressed they “can’t make any promises” outside of ED, even with support.
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This could be a good work around…submit the RD app ASAP and get an LL relatively soon. OP’s D should talk with the coach about it.
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I do know of an Ivy that does this with some recruiting slots. No first hand experience going through the process. I’d ask about likely letter timing as others suggest. An Ivy LL in hand has the same practical value as a letter of admission.
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This seems very unusual. I would have the coach explain “application support”. Ask coach if it is the same as a supported slot that would lead to a likely letter.
So no they will not do a LL before January.
Ugh. Does your D have an offer of full support/a slot from this coach?
Yeah unfortunately that’s a no go. I find the whole thing bizarre. They have an athlete they want, she has great academics, and is willing to do ED, but they won’t support unless it is RD. And she won’t find out until February. I find many things about college admissions puzzling and frustrating, but this is right up there.
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Yes correct. Full support. Slot reserved.
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I find this situation bizarre. Does sho love this school so much more? I’d move on.
To me it smells of the coach hoping they will get someone they are not sure will make the cut and hedging with an RD fall back. Has the coach been around long? Is she in touch with other athletes on the team and can ask about their recruiting experience?
I get not wanting to take the risk. Hopefully she has other offers she likes as much or even better.
FWIW, I do understand the pressure some ED schools feel to switch out athletic recruits for other institutional priority students, especially now that many schools are getting good diversity in ED pools.
I hear what you are saying. But logically if they accept say 2000 ED students without these athletes, they could just take say 2200 ED students with the athletes and get the exact same students. They are taking the athletes either way. So it must be they have a hard cap on ED students, but I’m not sure why. It hurts them with athletes to what gain?
We don’t actually know if they have the same number of slots as always, and/or are deprioritizing recruiting (either in toto, or for certain teams). The current and future NCAA changes are certainly going to impact recruiting at the Ivies, and perhaps moving some or all recruits to RD is one of the consequences of those changes.
Some school admin/boards might be thinking they would rather lock up URM/FGLIs in ED rather than the athletes. That’s certainly better optics for them.
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