unofficial school visits, tours, demonstrated interest

dadof4kids
Wed, 11 Apr 2018 23:47:43 +0000

S and I were in a constant battle about how many schools should be on the list. He wanted it smaller, I wanted it bigger. We settled on about 15 or so high academic schools that he initiated contact with, probably half of which were in enthusiastic contact back with us. As his junior season went on several high athletic schools sought him out and ended up on the list so it did get a bit out of hand for a while. I was talking to the head coach from the school that was probably #1 on S’s list and he told me that S really should narrow it down a bit. I told the coach that I was afraid to tell anyone no until S had a firm offer. At that point, he told me that S had a spot on his team if he wanted it. Once that happened, we started being pretty ruthless in paring down the list. His top few immediately gave offers when they found out that their competition did. Once we had that, he started telling any newcomers that he was pretty far along with X, but that if anything changed he would let them know.

My situation was different though because this coach has enough pull that as long as S meets certain thresholds the coach can get him in, and fortunately it was S’s #1 choice. If this was a 50/50 situation, I would still be afraid to cross anyone off the list until I knew that we had a firm commitment from a coach at a school that he would be comfortable attending. I probably would be opposed to S applying ED to a school that even gave him an 80% chance of being admitted since he had other good options on the table. Of course, I don’t know your situation or why that program is more appealing than the #2 or #3 on the list.