<p>My take on this is, with a high AI and the coach more interested now than he was before, he doesn’t want to “waste” a LL on a very highly-qualified candidate. There should be a plan B and C in place for the OP’s son just in case, but with that high stats, I think the coach is being smart if he has a limited number of LL and doesn’t want to “waste one” on a player who doesn’t need it. In my son’s sport, the LL is reserved for national caliber players who would never get in without a coach’s interest, think 4th tier.</p>
<p>I believe some schools offer academic LLs, but am not sure if they are offered in ED. I would depend on the pre-read results and have applications for other schools done/ready when December 15 rolls around.</p>
<p>As for announcing a commitment - leave it up to your son to announce if he is verbally committed, and don’t announce it unless he wants you to. I think it’s only fair that way.</p>
<p>Hopefully this rough time will be a distant memory as of January 1…</p>
<p>There has always been a debate about whether an Ivy coach will risk letting a high academic top recruit try to get in on their own in order to preserve a LL slot:</p>
<p>Copied this from another post that lifted it from a Yale Daily News article:</p>
<p>“Barbara Reinalda, head coach of softball, said the number of recruiting spots allotted to her team has also dropped over the last few years, from five to six slots per year to about four, depending on the number of players that graduate each year. **** She added that she does ask recruits with competitive grades to apply on their own so that she does not have to use one of her recruiting spots.”****</p>
<p>However, Varska followed up and posted this;</p>
<p>"I took the liberty of contacting Coach Reinalda and asking her to clarify her statement in the article. She graciously replied,</p>
<p>“Actually what I said was “if they were not one of my slots. Like if they were number 5 on our list then we ask them to apply on their own. . If they are top on our list they get one of my slots
Hope this clears things up for you””</p>
<p>I continue to think that if a coach has 5 LL slots and you are in the top 5 recruits, the coach will not risk throwing you into the general pool.</p>
<p>If you are number 6 on his list, that is a different matter. That is the concern people are expressing for OP.</p>
<p>Hi everyone–thanks so much for the continued feedback! I don’t know if my S would have applied early without full support. I think he might have if he didn’t have other options for recruitment. But the truth is he does have other, better bets for admission at schools where the academics are fantastic. He doesn’t need to gamble in order to do his sport at a great school. So an application to an HYP school without support makes no sense for him and I wouldn’t advise it.</p>
<p>So the question is whether this coach has actually put my S on the recruit list, or whether he is somehow sliding him into that special adcom meeting without making the actual sacrifice of a slot. As mentioned earlier, wouldn’t that be cheating? Seems like the other Ivies would be furious at schools that did that. I am hoping I understand this procedure properly. It seems to differ by sport and by school.</p>
<p>First, please come back and tell us how it works out. Sometimes, we only get part of the story, and never the ending.</p>
<p>Second, your language here is confusing for me…
“whether he is somehow sliding him into that special adcom meeting without making the actual sacrifice of a slot.”
I am under the impression the meetings are for likely letters, and deciding who gets one.</p>
<p>Third, I am wondering if it is getting late this process? Aren’t applications for ED due soon, like next week?
I think you need to know if you are getting the LL, otherwise it’s a bit of a gamble.
Your son needs to decide if he wants to gamble on a spot for an IVY<br>
or go to a top D3 where a coach will use a slot on him.</p>
<p>It is getting late, and most Ivys have an ED date of November 1, so the end of next week is the witching hour if ED is a requirement. At least at Princeton, where my son is currently waiting on his letter, the process as explained to us in late September is that each application being supported by the coaching staff is reviewed by an admissions officer (apparently on a sport by sport basis) and then recommendations are made to the director of admissions, who has the final say. I do not know for sure, but I got the distinct impression that each coach gets to send one pack of completed applications in for consideration in October. I believe most of the other Ivys operate similarly. I do know at Princeton at least, certain sports are given priority through that process, apparently based on whether they are November NLI sports (pretty much everyone except football, soccer and track I think). Those dates this year are November 12 through the 19th. As others have said, it is a maddeningly tense time right now. Especially when the director of admissions is not even at the college for a week in the middle of October (not naming any names, of course).</p>
<p>As far as support short of a likely letter, I believe that is violative of the spirit if not the actual wording of the rules within the Ivy Common Agreement. If a coach could give a “nudge” to a kid with median or better stats for the institution without using a likely letter slot on him or her, then the whole likely letter process would be a sham, especially in sports with very few allotted letters. The fact is that in a lot of the smaller sports most of the athletes are recruited at or above the median stats for the class, and if there was a level of legitimate support different than a likely letter there would be little chance of monitoring the athletic admits in the League, which is the primary purpose of the AI. In my son’s specific circumstance, although his grades and test scores are above the median at each school (230 AI) no school recruiting him seriously (at the end of the day 6 of the 8) ever mentioned supporting his application by any means other than requesting a likely letter. In fact, when his pre read came back from Princeton this summer, his coach reported that the admissions officer reviewing the application put a note on his form that he was a good candidate for admission even without a letter. The coach told my son he would have to be crazy to send him through admissions “unprotected”. All this is just a way of saying I would not trust a promise of support that was anything other than a request by the coach to seek a likely letter from admissions. </p>
<p>agree with Ohiodad51 - though my son is maybe not a top D1 athlete [unlike Ohiodad51’s son], but because of academic excellence; the IVYs are stating the same thing that he could get in on his own merit; and not considering him for a LL. But good D3’s want to support his application. And actually we are good with that; since anyways did not want to do ED to keep his options open. He is doing EA though. S is clear [and I am proud of him]; academic excellence is number 1 priority. BTW, we also feel that D1/Ivy time commitment to a sport is way higher than a smaller and still more academic oriented school.</p>
<p>I don’t know about the “top D1 athlete” stuff. If he was all that and a bag of donuts someone from the SEC would be trying to bribe him (or more importantly, me). He is just a smart kid who likes to run around and hit people. Thankfully, that combination is rare enough that he has been afforded some wonderful options on where he will spend his next four years. </p>
<p>Cbw123, sorry to be confusing! See ohiodad’s post #83, that is exactly what I meant about a coach not sacrificing a likely letter slot but otherwise attempting to “recruit” a kid with good stats. It wouldn’t be fair. I think the way it works is that if your application goes to the adcom meeting for athletes, the coach is using a slot/LL. Otherwise your app goes the regular way with all the other applicants, and you take your chances, even if the coach says he will write a letter or otherwise try to recommend you.</p>
<p>I will definitely share the end of the journey, good or bad! </p>
<p>Hi everyone, thanks for all of your input and support, the LL did in fact arrive! Phew! That was pretty stressful! But everything did transpire just as the coach described it, right down to the notification (by phone) after the meeting. My S was pretty freaked out when he got that call! The letter arrived several days later. I can’t believe this is over.</p>
<p>Hobbiton, first of all - huge congratulations on the arrival of the LL, so great to be able to put the stress behind you. Second, what transpired between your first post in this thread where the coach was offering support but downplaying the LL, and now? </p>
<p>Congrats to your S and the family! All those years of hard, hard work - as a family - have reached fuitition.</p>
<p>In reading back through the thread, I think we all learned a magic phrase in Ivy recruiting: “full support.” “Full support” is the term of art the coach uses to describe his/her input to admissions in requesting a LL. There continues to be no evidence that there is any sure way to admissions EXCEPT the LL. (No evidence isn’t proof that there are no back doors through the process apart from full support backed by a LL; just we haven’t seen that invisible back door.)</p>
<p>Agree with stemit that as far as we know for sure, Ivy recruiting means either coach is supporting you for a LL or you are taking your chances in the general pool. I strongly resist the notion, as some have suggested, that LL’s are only for “nervous recruits” or NLI-tempted recruits. </p>
<p>Hi everyone, thanks! I am very relieved, S is very relieved. Now that he has the LL in hand, I feel like I can be helpful to the next group of athletes who are perhaps hearing “coach speak.”</p>
<p>I think stemit is correct, the magic phrase was “full support.” This particular coach did not see recruiting from the recruit’s point of view. The recruit is looking for the LL, and asks, How many LLs does this coach have? Am I getting a LL? or something else? When a coach understands the athlete’s POV (i.e. how difficult it is to get into HYP, how there are a zillion students in the world with great GPAs and scores, how there is always an athlete better than you, etc.) I think she or he will use the same terms as the athlete, such as LL or slot, because then the athlete understands that it is okay to turn away other offers–a LL feels safe. This coach did describe the entire process carefully and in detail to my S. But he did not seem to see the LL as something he could offer; he referred to it as something admissions sends. He also wasn’t really clued into the amount of risk and anxiety involved for the athlete, I suspect. He was giving all the support he had available, and whether admissions sent a letter or made a phone call or just waited until December, wasn’t something he knew much about.</p>
<p>Varska, in between the phone call and the LL, my S clarified the procedure with the coach, asked some follow up questions, and sent a resume that would be used to write a supporting letter for the meeting. It seemed clear to us that the coach knew his end of the process well, and since he was saying things like, “When you are accepted, admissions will contact you,” it seemed okay to start hoping that this would really work out. We were all very anxious because there was never a preread by admissions, unlike at other schools. We were made doubly anxious when one of his top choices dropped him like a hot potato when he told them he had decided to apply early to this school. So he was down one backup school, and it was a place he really liked.</p>
<p>Moral of the story, I guess, is that a commitment is really a commitment. It’s hard to not get emotionally invested, and it’s hard to deal with the risk and possible rejection. So glad it’s over! (Of course now I keep thinking maybe I shouldn’t assume anything until the “real” acceptance arrives…)</p>