Thanks! I appreciate it!
Good points. Just keep in mind someone may have a crap 200 m time but a top 5 100H time because they are a team player or doing multis or trying to develop another event. But your points are well taken. My student did T and F recruitment trips at NESCAC, UAA, Centennial, SAA, and Liberty League school(s) and it was pretty similar at each in terms of preread, recruting visit, etc. And yes, D3 so none of it paid for by the school.
1 Like
I’ve seen and read this before, and I don’t think this means what we think it means. I see anecdote after anecdote of NESCAC schools posting their recruiting class in a sport and it is always larger than two. It’s six or eight over and over and over again in sports like men’s and women’s soccer, lacrosse, etc. (Another recent post gives another example.) It’s certainly not the case that they aren’t waiting on all of the “we will take you if you get in” and then sorting them out after all the accepts come through. Additionally with 33-40% of students at NESCAC schools being varsity athletes (so 600-800ish?), we’d be talking about >50% being non-recruited athletes. That just doesn’t match up
I don’t know how to reconcile this, but the math doesn’t math.
4 Likes
Couldn’t agree more. The top NESCAC athletes (in track at least) could absolutely score at CAA, Heps and even ACC Conference meets. Especially now with roster limits at the Duke, Stanford and Rices of the world. The top times at NESCAC will only go up, as we saw this weekend.
1 Like
@Franklynn are you associated with Williams, as I think your perspectives are more aligned with how they recruit. Smaller team, but killers. Amherst too, maybe. Tufts has killers but a much bigger team. I’ll also point out that I’m more locked into the girls teams than the boys.
Read the still relevant Amherst athletics report from 2016 I linked above for more clarity, specifically the two groups they call ‘Athletic factors’ (basically the recruiting numbers/limits I cited) and ‘coded athletes.’
There have also been other deep dives into the recruiting process by various NESCAC school newspapers. This Bowdoin Orient article from 2014 still accurately describes the process: Banded together: recruited athletes with sub-average academics can receive preference in admissions — The Bowdoin Orient
You can see athletic team numbers by school at equity in athletics. Equity in Athletics
I think some of the commenters are only considering an athlete recruited if they get a coaches slot, when at NESCAC schools in particular most varsity athletes have the academics to get in on their own.
2 Likes
Just glancing at the Equity and Athletics for the colleges where I currently have students, it is completely off so despite being produced by the Department of Education, I would not place too much stock in it. Provided names are out of date, roster numbers don’t make any sense, etc. ski teams are not accounted for despite being D1 sports (at a D3 school)
I wondered if any NESCAC kids would appear in this NYT article on the dismal job prospects for recent graduates. And there was one. Sort of.
Johnathon McCartney, 23, has felt similarly discouraged. A senior at the University of Florida who transferred from Colby College in Maine after his freshman year, Mr. McCartney studied public relations and wanted to get a job in communications. He focused his search on the Louisville, Ky., area so he could live near his girlfriend, but snubs piled up, including from a local P.R. firm.
“I applied for an internship with them and I interviewed, and I didn’t even get that,” he said. “Who is this state-level firm taking for a P.R. internship if not me?”
Maybe, he should have stayed at Colby?
Graduates Reset Ambitions in Pursuit of First Jobs - The New York Times
1 Like
I just reviewed the Equity in Athletics site for the colleges where I currently have students enrolled and a lot of the data is wrong. Associated names are wrong, rosters don’t make any sense, whole teams are not accounted for. Despite being from DoE I don’t think it’s an accurate source.
The equity in athletics site is like the CDS, reporting is delayed. The current data (roster size, contact names, school size, etc.) displayed is from 2024-25. These data come directly from each school via the EADA survey tool each fall, it’s a federal reporting requirement similar to what ED requires schools to provide for IPEDs.
With that said obviously ED is experiencing issues, so who knows what reporting has been impacted considering the situation happening there. This is the only site I know where one can get unduplicated number of athletes at a given school.
Not sure which school you are looking at, but the Williams page includes skiing, I’m not going to check the other NESCACs with D1 skiing.
This document is the guidance that colleges should be following when reporting data:
1 Like
Some schools have two distinct D1 ski teams Alpine and Nordic and that’s not accounted for by roster size.
I expect there are mistakes in the EADA data, same as there are in the CDS and IPEDs.
With that said, the instructions for reporting roster size are to include ‘participants as of the first day of the first scheduled contest.’ Obviously that leaves things open to interpretation. So, some schools might include only the roster that was fielded to compete that first contest day…perhaps both nordic and alpine weren’t happening that day, and/or only a subset of athletes were invited to compete.
I don’t want to further derail this thread, you can PM me if you want. But again, I am just providing well known, legit resources. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of what a given school includes on their EADA report or what’s happening at ED, same as I can’t vouch for the accuracy of a CDS.
If you really want to get in the weeds, contact the college’s institutional reporting and ask your question. I do that all the time.
1 Like
This is a result of a unique situation as the coach was hired late in the recruiting season and this year’s group of first year students was the first class he brought in, and it will definitely be interesting to see how the team develops as this class gains more experience
4 Likes
Ah, makes sense! Several years ago, a similar thing happened there with men’s soccer. That was the team that won the NESCAC tournament and went on to the NCAA tournament.
1 Like
FYI the Amherst Student recently published this article A Look into Amherst’s Athletic Admissions Process.
3 Likes
I think you’re getting at it but this statement might benefit from some digging into that Amherst report.
I believe the very limited numbers @Mwfan1921 was citing were for “athletic factor” (using Amherst’s vernacular) recruits. My understanding is that those “slots” are quite limited and represent the “most pull” a coach can have in the admissions process. In soccer, this was determined to be “THE impact player”. You don’t get a lot of them and the coaches are very picky about how to use them. My D was an “athletic factor” soccer recruit.
But then you have the cohort of “coded athletes”. These kids tend to have substantial academic qualifications and stand a good chance of getting in w/o any coaching influence. My D was likely a coded recruit at Wesleyan. But the key here is that they do receive support in admissions. I asked the Wes coach at the time, “Why does she have to apply ED with her qualifications?” His response was illuminating (to me) about the importance of it. He said, “Kids like [name] get in here all the time but are also rejected all the time. Putting her on my list makes it a lot less likely [he would never promise anything] that she’ll be rejected.” Now, that clearly applies to an athletic factor recruit as well, but with my D’s academic qualifications, she would have been a virtual 100% recruit if he’d used one of his limited athletic factor slots. Note she was recruited pretty heavily at Williams too. What I think coaches do is evaluate the kids athletically and academically and make an educated judgment about which type of recruit to make them. The less help they need, the more likely it is the coach will use a coded, rather than factor, slot, which is what I think was the case with my Wes kid. The Williams coach alluded to this a bit more than the Wes coach did.
So, unless I am greatly mistaken, the kids who want the benefit of having “coded recruit” support also are at least asked to apply ED. I believe if you don’t apply ED, your name will not appear on any communication between the coach and admissions, though it’s worth noting that the Amherst report indicates that there is no limit to a coach’s ability to bring coded athletes to the attention of admissions. So, it’s not 100% clear, but I don’t think coaches are going to bother adding a kid to a list if he/she isn’t going to commit to the program. My D was told to apply ED, that’s all I really know.
If I’m right, then there is much more ED due to athletic recruiting than the limited “athletic factor” slots would indicate.
From the Amherst report:
7 Likes
Proud of this dude. I was a sprinter, so this is my jam.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DXzJ1gxEuRB/
10.5 in the 100 and 21.2 in the 200 are damn impressive times. That’s flying. Another Wes kid ran 21.6 in the 200 for third. That’s top 3 NESCAC sprinters each under 22 seconds in the 200. These performances really drive home the silliness of the whole D3 athletics narrative.
9 Likes
Congrats to him. Always nice to see those types of performances.
What is the narrative around D3 athletics you reference? (Apologies if I should know this; I don’t typically follow this thread).
I also wonder what he means.