As mentioned above, we know of a student who signed a NLI to a top ACC school for next to nothing.
Strong student, full pay, parents are alums and donors. The athlete’s stats are very different than the typical recruit (think National Championship caliber team).
I don’t know what next to nothing means, but an NLI is only valid if the student is getting financial aid from the athletics department.
My understanding is, the coach can divide the available athletic scholarship $ however they want. If they want to give $1k to one NLI signee so they can give max to another, more desirable recruit…that’s their prerogative.
That seems to be the case for the student we know, as well as other athletes in other sports for this school. You can tell just by looking at the rosters, the individual’s high school accomplishments (vs the others on roster), and simply search if they signed NLI or not.
If it’s an equivalency sport, not head count. A lot of athletes sign “celebratory” letters. We know an athlete whose first year money was all in merit form. From the outside he was the same as every other recruit but technically he was a preferred walk-on.
No. There are rules, for example, minimum D1 baseball scholarship is 25% of tuition. Again, you can look up the rest. I am not sure there are mins in all equivalency sports.
Note that during the last 4 years due to the pandemic, many rules were altered…but those are getting back to normal for 2024-25 school year.
Interesting - I have never heard of minimum scholarship amounts for other equivalency sports in order to sign a NLI.
It would be helpful to know what the mins are for each sport (if applicable).
If the college has regular admission standards higher than its athletic admission standards, and the student athlete is likely to be admitted in the regular process without needing the recruited athlete hook, it is possible that a coach may see that favorably in that the coach may not have to use up one of the limited number of hooks available.
A specific example is UCB, where recruited athletes are run through the regular admission process, and those who do not get through the regular admission process then go to the athletic admission process (number of admits capped, with standards higher than the NCAA minimum). But note that UCB is test blind for admissions, so admission would depend on high school record, essays, and extracurriculars (with the sport being an “ordinary” extracurricular taken to a high level in the regular admission process).
Those days are long gone. Acceptances are too unpredictable at selective colleges. I just had a conversation with a coach who found that out the hard way. I’m talking about a 1580/4.0. This year he had some other potential walkons. All but one were rejected.
did not know Cal athletes go through reg admissions first - very helpful
I think you’re getting the gist of this from the varied sets of answers - you’re asking a specific question with a lot of detail about a large swath of schools, and in reality, the rules and processes at these “level” of school differ from school to school. As your student (I’m guessing) gets deeper in the process, if they don’t get clarity on their admissibility and how their test scores etc. impact that, it may be worthwhile to dig into the admissions process with the coaches.
To that end, for athletes that coaches want to recruit, they want the admissions process to go smoothly - i.e. coaches, athletes, and families are all aligned to get to a yes - and so you may learn what the “real” requirements are through the process. Maybe this coach actually cares about test scores above the athletic norm for one position, or needs a couple athletes to raise the team average (in which case, like the Princeton example above, a 35 has genuine value); maybe this coach knows that their AO is going to want to see high rigor in sciences in the senior year class list, or gets persnickety when they don’t know the exact electives that have been chosen (even if the school generally doesn’t release those until August); etc. The key there is to ask open-ended questions (at the appropriate time) and then listen to and follow the answers, even if they don’t seem rational to you.
I 100% agree with this…especially if it doesn’t seem rational to you. For example, a recruit being told they are applying TO with a 34. Just do what the coach says.
Not in my experience. I know kids at 4 of the schools in your list and all were good/very good students so being able to succeed at school wasn’t an issue but none are academic heavy hitters. One of the students had an Ivy as their first choice, failed the pre-read at which time she quickly had offers from one of the schools mentioned and interest from another one.
Ivy League and Patriot League are the only D1 conferences where I have seen academics have a significant influence. Some others, like Stanford have a higher bar but crossing the bar is all that matters in my experience.
Princeton is Ivy League where there are specific academic requirements which teams and the athletic program overall have to meet. In this case high academic kids are often recruited to balance out the academically weaker recruits.
The AI is definitely back in play in the Ivy League. Brown delayed likely letters for at least one sport this year because the team was struggling with academics with some of the prospective recruits. The coach was asking kids to re-take the SAT because if the numbers didn’t improve they were going to have to drop a couple of desired recruits and sub in others with stronger academics.
Same here and the individual is now committed to one of the schools listed in the OPs post.
Right. But there was a period there where the TO situation allowed for some manipulation of the AI. It looks like you saw similar evidence that the party is over.
UCB’s athletic admission policy is given at https://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/student_athelete_admissions_policy_2020-2021_approved.pdf . Note the steps listed on page 5.
This does not mean that the process is the same as at other schools.
You’ve received good responses so far. I think the way I’d put it is that it might neutralize one potential area of initial concern for some coaches.
For example, if a Stanford recruit is expressing interest in engineering, a 35 ACT might be reassuring to a coach at first glance. But I think most coaches are doing a deep dive eventually to alleviate any of those concerns.
There’s also the fact that some coaches just like to spend their time around bright people. Others don’t though.