We have some D3 schools that are very interested in him. I’ll have him work on the D1 list, his coach has made some suggestions but admittedly they aren’t schools I ever would have considered without track.
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D3-wise, athletics can definitely lower the academic-qualification bar, but I’m not sure how much, nor am I sure how much is desirable. I would think that the ideal school would be at his new-and-improved level of academic performance, but not necessarily way above that. He’ll need to feel well-prepared for the academics once there, and be able to hold his own even with the demands of his sport. My kid went to a Claremont and took classes throughout the consortium, and she was kind of continuously shocked by how demanding the classes are (she did well but had to work very hard and didn’t have a varsity sport eating up time)… and CMC Econ is pretty elite - it’s the one program that doesn’t allow cross-registration from the other schools.
To start with an actual academic match and work up, U of Puget Sound could be a good one to have on his list. They have particularly good business programs (and Business Honors if he ups his game), and Pacific Northwest weather is great for running.
Going off a list of the top 50 D3 track programs, Denison jumps out at me as a school that has everything he wants (good track, good business/econ, great data analytics that could be blended with the bus/econ stuff) and would be a reach without sports, but not a high reach. It’s increasingly competitive admissions-wise, and he’d definitely be challenged there, but not way outside the curve in terms of stats.
Gettysburg is another that seems like a reasonable reach where track could make the difference. If he would like a more STEM-oriented college with a business school, WPI could be worth a look.
Trinity (TX), that you already looked at, seems to hit this sweet spot too.
(If Rochester NY lake-effect cold isn’t a non-starter, both URoch (reach) and RIT (match for non-CS) could be possible.)
In the D1 universe… a lot of the mid-sized Catholic U’s have strong business programs, if that vibe appeals. Maybe Santa Clara? (Great Silicon Valley opportunities for a data-oriented business major, and great running weather - and a little on the reachy side academically but not a high reach.) Villanova is more in the “no chance without sports” category but might be possible with recruitment. I don’t know anything about what’s needed athletically for these schools, though.
And of course there are all the big public flagships. You want direct-admit to the business major, though, and some have a competitive secondary process once you’re there, so that’s probably an important filter to apply.
For something more “elite,” (only a hair more competitive than Villanova) how does Wake Forest look in terms of t&f competitiveness? Might be an appropriate big-academic-reach if it were a fit athletically.
(Additional D1 privates: U of Miami is around the same admissions-competitiveness level as Villanova and Wake. Syracuse is similar to Santa Clara. Whether either of these weather extremes works for t&f is another question! 
In between, both competitiveness-wise and weather-wise, is Lehigh, and they have an excellent Finance major. )
A bigger reach than all others above, but a top undergrad finance program, BC would be a a score if it turned out to be possible. The D3 equivalent, reachiness-wise, would be CMU Tepper. (And maybe CMC, as you already mentioned. All of these are probably too reachy, but fwiw.) CMU also doesn’t include 9th grade in the GPA they evaluate, so that would help a bit. Same is also true of Emory, so Goizueta might belong on the high-reach list too. UC’s also don’t consider 9th grade, but I still don’t think direct-admit to UCB-Haas is on the menu… Riverside’s business school might work, though, and maybe Irvine-Merage?
A general question that I haven’t considered before, for the hive-mind:
For an athlete being recruited by an elite but need-aware school, does being full pay move the needle in terms of academic qualification? (I kind of hope it doesn’t, on principle, and I’m not sure pushing this envelope is a good idea anyway, but I’m just curious.)
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The Connecticut College soccer coach has said that he has to keep financial aid in mind when making offers – i.e. he cannot make 10 offers to kids who all need a full ride. I am sure that a kid needing a full ride could get an offer there, but that might have a knock-on effect, making the coach more inclined to take the full pay kid that’s similar to another FA kid.
I don’t think it gets to the AO stage, I think the winnowing (based on everything-- athlete talent, academics, ability to pay) happens in the coach’s office.
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I second the suggestion that the OP’s son take a look at Denison. My recently-graduated son was a sprinter at Denison, and it is an exceptionally good program right now, with a terrific sprints coach - NIck Gray, who broke Jesse Owen’s 100m record while a student at OSU. Denison is a great D3 generally for a student athlete, as they have excellent facilities and support (strength and conditioning, sports medicine, etc.) but the primary focus is always academics, so there’s no D1-type pressure. As @aquapt mentions, Denison also has a very interesting data analytics major that can be combined with all sorts of other majors. There is also a relatively rare for an SLAC major in Health, Exercise and Sports Studies that can also be combined with other fields in interesting ways. (My son did a HESS/Psych double major and is now doing graduate work in sports psychology.) Denison is in the NCAC conference, which includes a lot of somewhat similar schools (Kenyon, Oberlin, Ohio Wes, Wooster, etc.) and is fairly compact geographically.
I also wanted to second the comments made by @politeperson about finding a school with a good climate for track. We started out looking at warm-weather schools like Trinity TX, Occidental, the Claremont schools, etc., but my son realized that there really is no indoor season for most of those schools so he shifted his focus to schools with indoor tracks and indoor seasons. There were a few chilly meets in the spring, but the school did also send the team south every year, and he could run meets from December through May.
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I would definitely have him take the ACT. It is a different type of test than the SAT and some students just have skills that cause them to better on ACT than SATs. Both of my daughters had low 1400 SAT, took the ACT’s and got a 35 one time sitting.
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Denison is on our radar. Do you know if the track team typically takes a spring break trip?
Thanks for all these suggestions and I have looked at a lot of these so we are on the same page. Unfortunately many of these schools are distance focused, don’t have a men’s T&F team at all, or the team is so weak that my son is already running faster than their fastest guy as a HS sophomore. Emory would be awesome but we’d have to see about the athletic/ academic admissions balance, definitely a high reach as you point out.
That depends on which D3 schools you are hoping for. Not all are as academically competitive as others.
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Unfortunately, Covid interfered with some of these plans during my son’s time at Denison. One year there was going to be an optional spring training camp on the Outer Banks that was cancelled, but more typically there has been a long-weekend type meet at the end of spring break. (So kids who want to go home can.) Last year, they went to Emory and then Centre College the following week, the year before it was High Point. It looks like this year might be Lynchburg, but the coaches would be able to tell you the most current plan. In the meantime, the meet schedules for various years are still up on the website, so that might help give you an idea. I hope your son will have the chance to meet Nick Gray somewhere along the way.
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I’ll chime in. My child was a recruited track athlete who competed in college. Recruiting occurs after the junior year, in the summer before senior year. So junior year and any non high school summer meet times are all that matters.
To screen candidates the schools look at the conference scoring times on tffrs. The coaches will recruit if your son is in those times to score. That’s all that matters really. Only so many recruiting slots so they go to those athletes that can score no matter the event.
Every school should have an online indication of interest form. Have your son fill it out for those he is interested in. Coaches will also respond.
Most California schools etc don’t have an indoor season but the outdoor season is longer.
D3 schools have a pre read by admissions and then coaches support. There are nuances to this. Schools like the NESCAC conference are different than say Claremont mentioned earlier and some coaches don’t even have clout. D1 are different. Coaches will cast a wide net so you have to know how serious they are.
Regional qualifier in Texas doesn’t sound like a D1 recruit level. My child placed in regional meets in California, as an example, and wasn’t at D1 standards until senior year but by then recruiting was over. Not in sprints either, was talent is identified far earlier than technical or strength events. Very happy at an elite D3 school and track program though so don’t downplay that.
He would score points with his high school sophomore times at the NESCAC conference meet. I’m not sure people understand how fast Texas sprinting is. You can have 6A guys running 10.7 in the 100m who don’t advance to region. In any case, this will for sure be the make or break season for him. We are 100% open to D3 programs with strong sprint programs and D1 programs with good academics and a chance for him to compete.
Also wanted to add — I disagree that sprinters are recruited early. Male sprinters are still developing well into their 20s. Very few high school sophomores and basically zero freshmen make it to the championship meets, supporting the fact that a lot of boys advance significantly between sophomore and junior/senior year.
I disagree with what you are saying here. I’m not sure how long ago your child was in college, but recruiting starts way before summer of senior year. D1 schools can start contacting recruits in July after sophomore year so you’d want to be on their radar before then. D2 and D3 can contact even earlier. Some schools offer official visits in spring of junior year. The summer before senior year is when recruiting gets serious as coaches are deciding who on their recruit board they want to ask for pre-reads and make offers to. So yes, junior year times are very important but initial contact ideally needs to happen before that.
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I assume you are only referencing track and field,as all sports have their own time frame? Track and field is very time and distance based measurement.
I agree contact can occur earlier obviously (some as early as 9th grade from what I’ve seen!), but for track the recruiting times that matter for almost all are before senior year season. And the process is finalized at the end of that summer except for the inevitable musical chairs where for example an athlete on the margin is waiting to hear whether they will get an offer from HYP for example before accepting the slot from Williams/Amherst etc., whose coach is making other students wait before they decide.
I’ve gone through this with my children, two current athletes as well as innumerable friend’s children.
There’s lots of info on this process including on this forum, but asking the coach specific questions is best.
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Yes, I’m speaking about track & field specifically. The point I’m disagreeing on is what you said about recruiting taking place after junior year exclusively. That just isn’t the case.
My point was merely that top sprinters are known early relatively as you can refine speed but it either exists or not. Clearly times improve for the best as they get older.
If he’s able to score in the NESCAC conference with his sophomore time then the coaches will definitely want him. Congrats! That’s awesome!
NESCAC schools have self imposed rules that to get support the athlete has to be in the range of the average student academically by gpa and test score. (I forgot the actually calculation). (Unless they use a slot which is typically only used for helmet sports.). Or if diversity. This is determined through the pre read process by the admissions department. We went through this.
You probably know this, but D1 schools have scholarships for the certainty of admission, but that doesn’t mean they are funded. It may only be “book” money. My sport wasn’t funded so the scholarship was only $500 or so.
Incidentally, many D1 and some others publish their recruiting standards. Since USC was mentioned, to be considered for a scholarship position according to some postings, the 100 meter time is 10.39. To be eligible to be a walk on (and probably a preferred walk on there) it’s 10.68. To even get a try out when already enrolled it’s 11.05. USC is obviously an amazing sprinters school. But the times for the Ivy’s are lower but above the NESCACs! There are so many great D3’s too to consider.
It’s a blessing that he’s fast and loves to compete. Fill out all the surveys and email coaches ! It’s quite a ride!
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Sure. I believe we are in complete agreement but I perhaps used recruiting in a stricter sense as to when it gets past the less formal sharing of interest into the we are very serious and want you to do an official overnight to the we would love to offer you if will submit an ED app here phase, which is the latter part of the junior senior summer into the start of the senior year. The likely letter, early write or scholarship phase. My first one never did his sport until his junior year and following that reached out and got the phone interviews, pre reads, overnights etc. The process basically started and finished that summer. For the truly elite national caliber athletes though, the D1 coaches will follow the high school national results and reach out. For the D3’s, to my belief, you have to outreach to them, and they are serious the summer before your senior year.
We clearly are in strong agreement to reach out now, send the coach an email with times, gpa, SAT or ACT score if available.
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Emory is in the UAA conference with many top academic schools like UChicago, Case Western, Carnegie Mellon, Washington U St Louis. All recruit for track and field and have strong programs with amazing academics, much like the NESCAC. Others include Pomona and Claremont. Washington and Lee. Denison was mentioned. Some of the strongest D3 programs are the smaller Wisconsin campuses. So many great programs in the D3. And even within a conference like the NESCAC the admissions standards (and recruiting times) vary. Look at the great facilities Colby in the NESCAC has for example, and the students I know that competed there love it.
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This is sometimes true for women but less so for men in my experience.
Sure, it’s possible to identify those who are highly unlikely to be good college sprinters by the 9th or 10th grade. That’s the majority of kids.
But among the rest, ranging from decent to exceptional young sprinters, it’s very hard to predict how they’ll develop.
The magnitude of YOY change for boys/men at that age can be dramatic for some but not for others. And the difference between a .1 or a .5 improvement when you’re starting at 11 flat is pretty significant in terms of college fit.
OP has the right understanding of this IMO, recognizing that their son is pretty fast for his age right now but that there’s a wide range of potential outcomes. Good D3 programs are already a realistic possibility with minimal improvement. Top D1 programs are not out of the question with significant, but realistically possible, improvement.
Probably the most likely outcome statistically is somewhere in between, which does make planning a challenge.
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Nope. Generally, all the NESCAC coaches have slots each year, defining slot=full coach support
Lot’s of great advice in this thread, one thing that might be helpful is to look at poets & quants list for undergraduate business schools. There’s a list that shows acceptance rates along with average SAT and % of students in the top 10% of their class.
There you can get a sub list of schools that are a match academically and then look at the track program to see which ones are a fit. Then you can balance out a good list of schools Some reach where T&F might give you a boost, and some matches where you might be a good fit.
My sons not a T&F athlete but went down a similar road as you and started to look at programs that might be a good fit from an athletic standpoint. As we got toward senior year it was apparent that we were going about it backwards the Academic fit was more important, the Athletic fit was the icing on cake.
One thing you want to think about is looking at the time commitment for a D1-3 athlete. You might want to also look at schools that compete in the NIRCA. Depending on the school club sports can give you the best of both worlds. A chance to continue to compete and represent your school without the added commitment of being a D1-3 athlete. Just know that club teams vary by school, one might have 10 people that just to some local races and others might have a school budget and travel around. You can usually find a website or other social media page for the club that might give you a sense of how serious they are (rosters, schedules results, etc)
Good luck
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