That was always my understanding too.
Based on what we read and experienced, it seems MOST high academic schools follow the following process to various degree:
- Any Kids can fill the recruiting profile. Easily thousand for each sport at each school
- From #1, coaches narrow down to a couple of hundreds to communicate and follow and observe
- From 2, coaches further narrow down to a list of say a few dozens ( somewhat proportional to the specific sport roster size) and ask for re-read.
- From pre read results, coaches will further narrow down to a smaller list to make offers to apply (early decision, ED preferred) to a few dozen of students in staggering phases. Positive pretend does not automatically ensure offers. That’s when kids on this list is called Recruited Athletes. Stanford’s Pink Envelope kicks in in this step to all Recruited Athletes. For other schools, maybe just an email from coach inviting to apply. In this dozen kids, some will be supported with slots, if school has it(MIT and CIT do not have this) and the rest will get soft tip support. Good to find out where you are, but not all coaches will communicate clearly and directly for their consideration.
- Kids with slot support ( 2-6varying by school, by sports) will get those significant assurance (LL, early writes, NLI) before the decision date. The rest with soft support will have to wait until decision date to find out whether they are the lucky 3-5 out of say 20 in the soft support category.
- In some school there might be tryout once school starts and might pick up one or two here and there. But these are not called recruited athletes.
Just my best guesstimate.
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Sorry, typing on the phone too fast. #4 above, “ positive pre-read”, not “ positive pretend”.
Also #3 above, pre-read happens mostly the summer before senior year, June- Nov.
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The above is more of a D3 recruiting schedule. Coaches do get recruiting questionnaires from the high school kids, but also build their lists from referrals from other coaches, from showcases, tournaments, camps. I doubt LeBron’s son will be filling out many questionnaires. Even my daughter got a lot of recruiting calls after tournaments from schools she had never expressed any interest in (never even heard of) and never filled out a questionnaire, and she was a good but not spectacular player. The coach at her college liked the coach of D’s club team and started recruiting heavily from that club.
NLI can be signed before the student has even applied to the school. It is not an indication of acceptance or even probably acceptance, it’s just an agreement that IF the student is admitted, the financial agreement is $X, and the athlete is agreeing to play for that school if admitted. If the student doesn’t want to go to that school after signing, that’s fine but cannot play for another “NLI school” for a year. Student is free to go to another school such as an Ivy, a service academy, or a D3 school. No penalty.
D1 and D2 recruiting is different than outlined above, even at Duke and Stanford. Admissions has the power to admit and turn down some athletes, but I doubt Coach K is having to plead the case for many of his recruits or that they are sweating getting a ‘likely letter’.
@Mwfan1921 and @shuttlebus , my guess is that communications about positive prereads are being confused with likely letters. For sure, NESCAC coaches often communicate the results of prereads orally or via email, often with the qualifier that “this is not a guarantee of admission.” Those communications also may come with a footnote from a coach that “we have never had anyone not admitted in your situation.” By contrast, the likely letter comes from admissions, and we never had that happen with a NESCAC. The Williams website contains the following article, which though somewhat dated, refers to the preread process.
But, as you suggest, times change, so anything is possible.
Likely letters and early notification are two different things but kind of make you feel good either way. Competitive schools that don’t offer LL have started notifying early I believe. People are confusing the two calling everything a LL. Just semantics I guess.
It’s not semantics and it’s important that applicants understand the difference.
An early write is a formal offer of admission.
A likely letter is just that…it says the applicant is ‘likely’ to be admitted when formal offers of admission are released. Some schools also make use of different qualifiers in likely letters…including terms such as ‘likely’, ‘probably’, and ‘possibly’. Every year there are applicants who received a likely letter who are in fact not admitted.
Examples?
@Mwfan1921 you are confusing me! Now, based on your most recent post I’ve got to go back to my original – the Emory communication was a likely letter, it was definitely not a formal offer of admission. It did say something like “you are a very strong candidate and are very likely to be offered admission”. My son applied RD, and the email came a few weeks before admissions decisions were announced. We checked with two different Deans of College Advising to make sure we hadn’t misunderstood, and they confirmed that short of getting arrested (etc) the email meant my son was in. And he was.
So, it wasn’t issued in the fall, as I understand Ivy Likely Letters are, but did let my son know he was accepted before others.
Likely letters can be issued in any round of admission, for both athletic recruits and academic applicants.
And yes, that Emory communication was a likely letter (although some schools have cute little names for them).
I can’t speak to all these different schools but an Ivy Likely Letter is a notification that a student WILL be admitted when formal admission letters are sent. There’s no likely about it in the cases I’ve seen. They really should call them early notifications of admission or something more accurate. Even Ivy rules state that such a letter shall have the same effect as a letter of admission. The caveats are the same as letters of admission: continued academic performance, don’t rob a bank, etc.
I am sure that others will disagree, but my understanding was:
Likely Letters: Although colleges certainly have spins and variations, it is usually “promised” by coaches after pre-read but sent by admissions, often after application submitted, but in time to switch from ED/to RD or vice versa if the letter doesn’t materialize or when it does. Letter tells certain applicants (typically athletes) that in all likelihood they will be admitted.
Prereads: Information comes from admissions, but is relayed by coaches. Tells recruit that their transcript and test scores are good enough to be admitted, often without a guarantee of admission. Usually is relayed to athlete before they apply ED to give them some degree of confidence that they will be admitted to the school and that they are not wasting an ED application.
Early writes: A college’s way of “showing the love early.” The idea is, for example, that if LAC1 is the first to tell certain coveted applicants that they are admitted, the applicants will have more time to fall in love with LAC1 and choose to matriculate. This occurs typically in the RD round, because the applicants in the ED round have already committed to matriculate should they be admitted. I never thought early writes had any special use for athletic recruits, who usually commit and apply ED or early anyway. Of course, if there was an athlete that didn’t apply ED, a college might try to encourage the athlete’s attendance through an early write.
^ helpful distinctions, thanks for the summary. My only quibble would be that the Ivy LLs I’ve seen are pretty unequivocal, with no “in all likelihood” qualifiers. More along the lines of: when we send formal letters of admission, you will receive one; or, you can expect to receive a formal letter of admission when we send them. Not something one could mistake for the school leaving wiggle room. And regardless of the language used, it’s widely understood by all parties that an Ivy LL is as solid as an offer of admission. I don’t think it necessarily means the same outside of Ivies even though the terminology might be similar. Obviously, athletes should confirm the meaning with coaches and the admissions office if there’s doubt.
Agreeing with at @politeperson that an Ivy LL is for all intent and purposes as solid as an offer of admission. It has been a few years since I have seen an Ivy LL, and did not have CC to draw on then, but I was surprised in that I do not believe it contained the words “likely”. I have heard that the wording in an Ivy LL can vary by school.
As most know, the Ivy coaches only get so many LLs, which vary by sport, so they only award those to the top recruits on their list that admissions will admit and I believe only after the athlete/student has applied.
One possible area of distinction from an Ivy LL and other LL semantics that others are talking about is that Ivy’s are D1, lower end D1 for some sports but still D1s, that can not give Athletic Scholarships like other D1s. So the LL is very important recruiting tool for the coaches; similar in some aspects to a coach awarding athletic scholarships at a D1.
Correct. UChicago calls them Likely Letters but as you noted they are really early an offer of admissions - noting that the true offer will come in December - provided your academics etc stay st the same level. This provisional language is also on any normal admissions offer too!
A few clarifications on the 6-point funnel I described above:
- As stated, it’s for High Academics schools, 1st hand experience with top ivies and top D3 schools.
- There are a lot of overlaps in recruiting skills between D1 and D3. Take baseball for example, D3 champion Chapman recruits RHP in the range of 89-91, the same range as Harvard which ranked like 100ish in the 300-member strong D1.
- Many competitive D3 schools give offers to their top recruits early, like late June or early July the summer before senior year. So it’s not necessarily they wait until D1s settle by end of summer.