Some coaches are given a budget they have to hit. So they can’t give offers to 5 kids all needing full financial aid for example. I would think this is a conversation to have with the coach if the athlete receives an offer.
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I know it doesn’t make sense to you, but there may be some requirement at the " less selective school" that isn’t at the other, and there may have been concern around that. I have posted here about a kid who did not pass the pre-read at a school that had both a calculus requirement for all students as well as distribution requirement that would have meant 2 sciences on top of that. We posited that this kid looked too weak in math to admissions. To a school without those requirements, no problem. Don’t sweat this - sounds like your kid is going to have a good option – you just are going to have to endure this a bit longer!
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Returning to follow up. D25’s offer is indeed with full coach support to admissions for her application. He confirmed that no one to whom he’s given support has ever not been admitted.
I actually asked him myself, via an email regarding a parent event for recruiting weekend next month. He was gracious and wrote specifically about the nature of her offer. Thank you all for giving me the items I should ask about.
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Congrats, I’m sure that’s a relief! Now D needs to give 110% effort to her application!
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My 2025 S was invited to an OV in the Sep/Oct timeframe for baseball. My impression was that an OV that the school pays for would almost always result in an offer. Is this not the case?
It varies, but there are certainly athletes on OVs that dont get offers. The coaches really dont want to be in a situation where they can’t use their slots, so paying for a few extra OVs can be money well spent. They usually know about how many OVs they need to get their class, but will want to go a little bigger than that to be safe.
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NESCACs do not pay for OV’s in our experience. They will cover local transportation (to from airport/train station), house the recruit usually with a member of the team and cover meals. Same was true for other academic D3’s not NESCAC.
OV’s do not mean auto-offer.
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In our indirect D3 experience (not our family members, but others we know), Fall OVs were often a means to woo the student-athlete. They seemed to be less “auto-admit” situations at the Ivy level. We have seen D3 OVs not result in offers, and we have also seen kids who were definitely going to receive an offer ultimately not (team members didn’t vibe with the recruit/recruit acted poorly on campus/recruit drank excessively). Our kids had earlier unofficial visits, and they were a combo of wooing and/or getting to know the school/team, and vice versa.
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That is not the case . Definitely do not always result in an offer, and the schools do not always pay for everything.
From the student athletes perspective, OVs can be a great opportunity for the kid to get a better feel for the school particularly helpful if they are deciding between more than one school or offer. Not NESCAC but the OVs were important in our kids school decision.
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Echoing others- OVs do not always result in offers, and NESCACs often don’t even offer an OV. My D had an early OV at a D1 (Patriot League) school and didn’t have any NESCAC OV despite receiving offers from multiple NESCACs (and ultimately committing to one). She also had offers from other high D3s and no OV at those schools either.
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Further, some D3 schools wait and use the OV for their committed recruits to all come to campus at the same time during Fall of Senior year.
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Yes, it would eliminate the chance of any misunderstandings.
In other people’s experience, are schools that “asked for financials,” need aware, or need blind/meet all need, or something else?
The schools that gave S25 offers and the one he accepted never mentioned it. I assumed that’s because they’re among the highly selective need blind/meet all need schools that don’t give athletic money. If the NPC is close to how aid ends up, we’re fine. We didn’t request a financial aid pre-read, because we think numbers are coming out similarly at all of his top choices.
I have wondered if need blind / meet all need schools are entirely need blind for athletes, though.
All truly “need blind/meets need” schools are for athletes too – why wouldn’t they be?
But the large majority of schools that fully meet need are not need blind. They can’t be! They have a financial aid budget they absolutely must stick to, and the only way to do that is to consider an applicant’s need at some stage.
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My D went through the recruiting process with multiple schools including NESCACs, and high academic D1 and D3. In our experience only two schools (NOT NESCACs) out of them all asked about financials before offers were extended. One high academic D1 made it clear part of passing the pre-read was contingent on the athlete not needing financial aid. A high academic D3 asked it almost from the get go- literally one of the first questions the coach asked her.
The school she ultimately committed to (NESCAC) is need blind and never asked, and she does get financial aid. Never felt it was any kind of issue or impacted her recruiting there at all. We ran the NPC and confirmed amount would be pretty close with financial aid, and it was.
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Few if any athletes are going to turndown Williams in general. No women’s lacrosse player or Ice Hockey player is going to turn down Middlebury
My daughter turned down both Middlebury and Williams, so it definitely happens. Top recruits usually have more than one school interested and can obviously only attend one which is good for those recruit that are further down on the coach’s list.
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Curious what sport your daughter played. Did she go to another D3 program?
I’m betting lacrosse b/c of her handle. 
Hello, she plays ice hockey and chose a different school/D3.
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My senior son just heard from a coach that they had a decommit and wanted to know his ED status. Has anyone had this kind of situation this late in the process?
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