My daughter scored a 35 ACT, 4.0 weighted, 6 APs (scored 4s & 5s) and a bunch of extracurriculars. She is interested in attending schools such as Michigan, Penn State, UCLA, Penn, Rochester, Cornell, Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon. She plays softball but is probably more a club level player that a D1. Is it too late to contact these schools to see if they would be interested in her? She would start in the fall 2018. We know a couple of players who were accepted to solid schools, are receiving money and were and told that they were on the roster because of their high scores and that they would not be playing virtually at all. My daughter would be fine to be a bench player at any of these schools. We will not qualify for aid but it would be nice to receive some financial assistance.
Michigan, Penn State, UCLA are top D1s and probably already finished their 2019 class recruiting. Rochester, Hopkins, CMU are D3, so not too late, but there’s no athletic money. Cornell is Ivy D1, so no athletic money either.
Which school give scholarship to bench players? I’m interested in that information as well.
Brown gave money to a close family friend. Told her they needed her scores and that she would never play. Not sure if they called it athletic money or not but nothing otherwise would have made her merit material. She was in the mid-50%
The family friend was eligible for financial aid and told you an alternative story.
Perhaps. I know the family makes over $1M annually (the father’s salary is public record in excess of $500K) but they may have expenses that offset that. Can aid be possible with those numbers? Too be clear, it was not offered as athletic money, it was offered as “we will see what we can do for aid”.
The schools in the Ivy League (such as Brown) sometimes recruit a player mainly for his or her GPA and test scores. That is because they have a requirement that each of their sports teams have an Academic Index (AI), which is based on GPA and test scores, that is within one standard deviation of the average AI of the entire student body. So one recruit with a high AI can balance out another recruit with a lower AI. You won’t find this situation outside of the Ivy League.
All Ivies are need based FA. Level of support varies from school to school with HYP being the most generous. I don’t think your friend’s daughter got any FA at 500k a year income level. Not sure why they would fib about it but it’s highly unlikely…
@mdphd92, that situation does exist outside the Ivies, but only in certain schools/conferences and sports. It is definitely not as well-defined as the Ivies, but I have heard of Patriot League and a few other schools recruiting athletes more for their grades than their skills. It is more of a spot situation kind of thing and the gap between skills and grades is probably not at large as for an Ivy.
@BobcatPhoenix Interesting. I don’t doubt you, but I’m curious to understand why. What would be the reason for a non-Ivy coach to recruit someone for his or her academic credentials? Is there some informal horse-trading going on between the coach and the admissions department?
That is my understanding, especially in equivalency sports. Some schools have an official or unofficial GPA standard and the equivalency sports can be used to prop up the head count sports. If necessary, of course. I don’t mean to call out any sport for needing GPA support.
It’s not informal ‘trading’ at all. The coach needs to have a team that has a certain gpa overall. A coach might give a tip or nod to a player who could get in on her own but might be lost in the pool of qualified applicants. On the list above, Penn and Cornell might care about the overall team gpa, the other schools won’t care. They are recruiting players, not gpa’s, but if it is between two equal players, the spot will go to the one with the higher gpa. Coaches do want good gpa’s.
To the OP, it is not too late to be recruited, but it may be too late to pick out the school especially if the softball team at that school is ranked. Club level players don’t get recruited and don’t get money. A coach could tell a student that playing on the club team is likely, but it isn’t going to get her anything with admissions.
Sitting on the bench for 4 years is pretty unattractive to most people. I assume you are interested in the ‘recruit’ getting admission help and not money. Even at a school that gives athletic scholarships, the bench players don’t get much.
@BobcatPhoenix @twoinanddone Other than the Ivy League, do you know of any official system or requirement where an athletic team must have a certain high school GPA upon admission?
Well, all NCAAs have a minimum gpa of 2.5 for D1. Some schools require more. Wisconsin 's football coach left two years ago because Wisconsin admissions was turning down his recruits (some from junior colleges). I think Stanford and Duke require more for certain sports. I don’t think any other schools have a ‘pool gpa’ agreement in their conferences like the Ivies. Patriot league? NESCAC? There have been some issues in hockey recruiting to get a minimum because of the difference in Canadian grading and US grading. The merit aid at D3 schools for athletes has to be equivalent to the general student population or the NCAA will look to see if the ‘merit’ award is really an athletic award.
@mdphd92, “must have” or “what, are you kidding, you have to do something about this?” I do believe that most D3 schools track team GPAs. There are threats of team study halls and the like if GPAs are less than respectful. Then there is the in-between, "look, I admitted recruit no.1 for you, you have to do something about the team GPS . . . or I might not be able to admit your next recruit no. 1. That said, I am not sure that someone makes a team solely for the purpose of their anticipated GPA, particularly when they aren’t even a college student yet.
@FirstTimeThrough, I think it is going to be a tough go at JHU because they don’t have a softball team (club, though). I think it is fairly likely that most of those teams you mentioned have settled on their recruits. Certainly, that is just a guess, and you by all means should contact the coaches. You never know what may happen by asking.
Money, I suspect, however, is even a longer shot. Several years ago one D1 baseball coach explained that baseball was not a money sport, and that he had only $60,000 in scholarship dollars for the whole team. He explained that it meant that he could either shoot for the moon and give fulls to a couple of pitchers or spread the wealth around to 40 players at a couple grand per kid. I suspect softball would be in the exact same boat (unless you are talking LSU or the like). As noted, the Ivies do not give athletic scholarships. I just don’t think an Ivy would be willing to risk sanctions for giving a disguised athletic scholarship when the athlete is not a super high profile player, but that’s just me. I could be wrong.
As far as bragging rights for that Ivy athletic scholarship go, I just have a tough time believing it – so very risky for the school. It is very well known that the Ivies don’t offer athletic scholarships. Don’t you think it would get out (in a really, really bad way) if an Ivy did give an athletic scholarship? My best explanation is a misunderstanding. The parents think they are getting athletic money under the table while the school has offered either generous needs based aid or a endowed scholarship unrelated to athletics or need. I highly doubt that academic scholarships exist at the Ivies, as I can’t imagine how you would distinguish between all of the amazing applicants with 5.0 GPAs and 36 ACTs.
Ivies are need-only and they have to report their scholarship $ publicly, so unless they are lying on the reports (I think this is not true, but you can draw your own conclusions), there are no athletic or academic scholarships given by any Ivy school. So to the OP, the story you are hearing regarding Brown is almost certainly not true in some aspect.
Both the Patriot and the NESCAC have a band system similar to the Ivy football/basketball/hockey model used for admission. These systems aren’t per se “pool gpa” systems, but instead are a blend of a recruit’s gpa and test scores to reach something called the academic index. I don’t think the Ivy cares at all about team gpa per se.
The process of admitting high stats recruits who are not likely to play to balance out lower stat but more athletically gifted recruits is called dumb-belling, and is a thing in all three conferences in one form or the other. In fact, the band system in the Ivy was designed in large part to discourage some of the excesses of this practice. As an example, Harvard once admitted a basketball recruit who was a jv high school player whose only affiliation with the basketball team was the announcement of that year’s recruiting class, by the time his freshman season rolled around, he wasn’t rostered. This is much harder to do now in the sports covered by the band system, but I assume it can still work in sports subject to the general AI system. Not sure how much it is necessary in the Patriot or NESCAC where I believe all sports are covered by the band system.
No one would take her in those schools without seeing her play. A few of the high academic D3s have “fall clinics” to evaluate recruits they haven’t seen yet, to fill in those slots that haven’t been committed yet.
I suggest making a 3-4 minute video of your D hitting, fielding and running, and e-mail to the coaches at the schools she is interested in. I’m not sure U of R has any spots left, but for example, I think Franklin and Marshall does. The high academic schools recruit heavily over the summer between Junior and Senior year, and generally have got verbal commitments by the end of this month, but the real “drop dead date” is the ED deadline November first.
You never know til you ask. However, a 35 ACT and grades alone won’t do it, IMHO. The schools only need 3-4 recruits a year, and there is a lot of competition unless you are a pitcher or catcher. I also think that they aren’t happier with a 35 than a 31, if the player has better skills.
I also disbelieve the “bench player” story for the ivies, nescacs, and other selective schools.The rosters aren’t that big , and there is NO athletic money.
My son was very interested in one of the schools you mentioned but the coach (who responded to his emails last year) had not responded this year. Son is a runner and his times are very much in line with the school’s team so we were surprised by this. He resubmitted his recruiting form with his spring times and then called (not emailed) the coach. Coach answered the phone, pulled up his stats, and invited him to a recruiting weekend. If your daughter is interested in a school, try calling instead of emailing.
For softball, I agree with @OldbatesieDoc that video is critical this late in the stage. It is a “skill” sport where fielding, throwing and hitting technique is critical, and video can give the coach a pretty good idea of the level of the applicant. Forget about the D1 programs you listed, their rosters have long been filled, and even if there were an opening because an existing recruit dropped out, they are not looking for “club” players. As far as the D3’s are concerned, I don’t know about the ones you listed specifically, but I do know many D3’s do hold fall camps. Before you spend the money (camp fees, travel, lodging, food), you should contact the coach first to see if they have filled their rosters and if not, if they have any interest in your daughter based on her HS softball stat’s, academic stats and video.
Well I for one believe the “bench player” story.
You have nothing to lose by filling out the recruiting questionnaire on the college athletic website and then sending a polite email a day or two later with a brief introduction about your daughter’s school career accomplishments, GPA and test scores along with a link to her YouTube video (made private so only those with the link can view).