<p>The coaches at two ivies offered to use one of their limited number of tags to guarantee my son’s admission for next fall. One coach had 4 tags, and the other 3. They really needed to know early if he was committed to applying, as they could tag so few. He was assured that he would receive a ‘likely letter’ from the school with no early admission program and admission to the early decision school. He was also told that the coaches would ‘support’ his application if he was undecided and applied regular decision, but that their influence with the admissions office diminished in the regular application round. He made ‘official visits’ to both schools, and also submitted an early read application to another school. Upon being admitted to the early read school, he phoned both ivy coaches to let them know he was not going to apply. Prior to the official visits, my son was honest with both coaches about the schools he was considering and visiting. He also understood the coaches need to carefully use their small number of tags on students who were absolutely serious about attending their schools.They didn’t play games with him at any point in the recruiting process. He was aware of how fortunate he was to be able to consider such fabulous choices and wanted to be similarly straightforward with the coaches so that they did not squander their opportunities with admissions to build strong athletic teams for next year.</p>