The issue of the reliability of early commitments in the Ivy never seems to die, and there are a lot of posters, me included, with pretty strong opinions on the topic. I want to throw a couple things out there for people currently going though the process of Ivy recruiting with their kids to ruminate on. The first, and most important, is that no coach in any Ivy sport can know what their actual team AI target is in a given recruiting cycle until May/June before a recruit’s senior year. This is one obvious reason why Ivys are prohibited by conference rule from conducting formal pre reads until July 1 before a recruit’s senior year. So any target standardized test/gpa level given out prior to that time must of necessity be a preliminary target. For that reason, if my child was given a target ACT of 30 as a freshman, and was not able to appreciably better that score by junior summer, I would not feel 100% confident that he or she would qualify to be a supported recruit. Second, in the context of recruiting, the fact that most kids who list themselves as committed as sophomores or freshmen to an Ivy end up getting in is really immaterial. The important point is how many do not. A kid who is good enough in any sport to garner legit D1 interest as a freshman or sophomore is going to have options. How many of you would really advise your kid to take an 70, 80 or even 90% shot at being admitted to Princeton or Harvard over a sure thing admit to Duke or Notre Dame? Especially if taking that shot at H or P means giving up on Duke or ND? That is the real question facing recruits and parents. Third, my son was the third commit in his class at Princeton. He committed in mid July before his senior year. The two kids who committed a week or so earlier did not get admitted. It happens. Fourth, and this is really a matter of opinion, but I seriously doubt that any Ivy coach, particularly those at HYP and especially those in more economically restrictive sports, is harmed at all by a kid who says she is committed as a freshman or sophomore ultimately going somewhere else. I think the draw of those schools is too great and I think most parents are willing to believe that whatever happened with said freshman or sophomore happened outside of the coach’s control.