Hopefully most of you seniors are starting to feel some pressure to pick a school. Pressure can be a good thing because it means that you have options.
You have taken an official recruiting trip to one of your favorite schools so now what happens?
- As soon as you get home you should send a thank you email to the coaches and your student host. Preferable you will send a hand written thank you card as well.
It takes a lot of work to host a recruit so a heart felt thank you is in order.
- You should sit down with your parents and your coach and go over your notes about the school and swim program.
- The college coach will be talking with their swimmers to get an idea of what they thought of you and if you would fit in on the team.
- They will most likely meet with their assistant coaches to determine how much scholarship they will offer you.
- The coach calls you with a scholarship offer.
Here is what you should do:
- Write down the offer
- Thank the coach for the offer and ask how much it will cost for you to attend their school and let the coach know that you will have to talk it over with your parents.
- Talk with your parents and your coach about the offer.
- Keep in mind that the first offer may not always the best offer so you may be able to negotiate.
Here is what you should NOT do:
- Do NOT ask for a deadline to decide on the offer. It is easy to be flattered by a scholarship offer and right away ask the coach when you must decide. Don’t do it.
Once you have a deadline, then the pressure really begins. A deadline may not allow you to visit other schools and the “take it or leave it by Friday” offer from a coach can cause a lot of extra stress.
Most, but not all coaches will eventually give you a deadline to decide. Rarely do they spend the money on someone else before they let you know that you need to decide. It does happen though.
Sometimes a coach will tell you that they are making the offer to several recruits and the first one who decides will get the money.
If a coach makes you an offer and says you need to decide soon, don’t ask what “soon” means.
There will come a point when you will need to ask when you have to decide by, but hold off on asking that question for as long as possible.
Yes there are horror stories about coaches making an offer to a recruit and then giving it to someone else without letting the first recruit know.
- Don’t accept the offer on the spot. You need to speak with your parents and you might be able to negotiate a better offer.
Give yourself a pat on the back. Deciding on scholarship offers is a nice problem to have.
Courtesy of ACC, a SwimSwam partner.
I was wondering what the average offer from coaches is past the top 20 or so recruits? For the average Jr Nat swimmer that we”ve been reading about here committing to good D1 swimming schools. Can you help with some idea with dollars or percentages? Many thanks!
That’s a tough question because scholarship offers are kept pretty secret. All I can tell you is what happens to the swimmers that we work with at American College Connection.
Not all of the top 20 swimmers are on fulls. We work with all ranges of swimmers from Olympic level to a young lady who is 1:07 in the 100 yard freestyle (yes, she can swim in college and actually has 9 schools actively recruiting her).
Last season 28 of our swimmers were D-I All Americans and their average scholarship in their freshman year was just shy of 95%.
Over the past three years the average scholarship for our swimmers at the Jr. Nat. level is just… Read more »
Rarely does a college coach let a recruit know the pecking order. What usually happens is for the coach to tell the recruit that they are # 1. The problem is they tell a lot of kids they are #1. At this time of year recruiting becomes a business. The coach’s job is to put together the best team for the least amount of money. That’s one of the things they are hired to do.
A large number of coaches start putting together recruiting lists with 9th and 10th graders yet most recruits don’t start thinking about recruiting until the end of their junior year or beginning of their senior year.
Swimmers and parents need to understand that… Read more »
Thanks, Rick. Two other questions:
-How often do college coaches follow up official visits with in-home visits?
-Get that swimmers can take up to five official visits, but is there an upper limit on the total number of official visits schools can host per recruiting season?
That’s a good question. Usually only the big budgeted schools are able to do in home visits and most of them do for their top recruits. I see a lot of coaches do in home visits before they bring a swimmer in for an official visit.
The only two limitations on the number of official visits a school can host are budgetary and the dead period (48 hours prior to and 48 hours after the first day of the singing periods)
Rick has been our recruiter for the past 2 years. He has been VERY HELPFUL with my son’s college search!
Rick has been our recruiter for 2 years now and has been VERY helpful with my son’s college search!
How often do coaches let recruits know where they stand in their pecking order? I get that coaches may value some recruits relatively equally and go “first come/first serve” for that group, but there are also elite recruits who every program would take and they slow up the recruiting process for the schools in contention and plan B recruits until they finally commit.