Ivy League Recruiting

[Ohiodad51]

Unsurprisingly, I agree with @varska and @fenwaypark (ok, maybe that part is surprising).

There is no girls lacrosse team (or hockey, or basketball) that is so important to an Ivy League school that they’re going to blatantly violate the Ivy agreement. There may be a rogue coach out there playing games, but there is no way in hell administration is going to be complicit with it.

Yep. Very well said, as usual. And if there is a rogue coach out there, he or she isn’t going to be around for very long.

I can attest to athletes with 35 ACT scores and 2350 SAT getting LLs. If the coach wants the athlete, there is no way he’s going to roll the dice and let them take their chances in a sub-10% general admission pool.

I happen to know a kid like that (well, a 34 ACT and a 23something SAT). In that case, the kid was told that his pre read came back with a note that he was a “good candidate for admissions without the likely letter”. The coach told the kid he would “have to be crazy” to send him through admissions “unprotected.”

And a soft copy of a likely letter in sophomore year? If this is a draft, not addressed to anyone in particular, just so the recruit can see what a likely letter says, that’s no problem. But if “soft copy of a likely letter” means a likely letter addressed to the recruit and transmitted electronically (that’s what “soft” means) I’m not buying it.

Agreed.

I will say that at least two years ago, Yale sent out letters to certain recruits prior to pre reads being done that were quite probably designed to look like a “soft likely”. The letter came on Yale letterhead, talked about how unique the kid was, how hard it was to get in to Yale, and if I remember accurately the tag line was “you are in a select group of exceptional student athletes that we have precleared for support to the admissions office.” It was signed by the football coach. Full disclosure, my son did not receive one of those letters, but I saw a couple (both live and as posted on twitter/recruiting boards). They went out to juniors in the January/February time frame, before the junior day circuit. Honestly, I thought it was kind of shady, because unless you had looked closely through the Ivy common agreement, or had some other knowledge of the process (like from here) it looked a whole lot like a regular offer. Maybe that is the type of thing that @wearingred is referencing?

Either way, that points out the problem with a board like this. When our kids go through this process, we spend a fair amount of effort trying to fill in gaps in a system that is in many ways opaque. Several of us have not only gone through this with our kids, but have been around others over the years who have had similar experiences, and we try to share what small knowledge we have gained. Sometimes though, inferences we make are not borne out by other’s direct experiences, or by the written rules that are available in the public domain. For my part, until Phil Estes or Tony Reno starts posting on this board, I recommend assuming that things will operate in accordance with what written rules exist, and try and take the experiences and advice of all of the posters here (including me) as simply data points.