College Counseling

• Grades: Historically the best single metric for predicting success in college.
• SAT and ACT scores: The second best metric for predicting college success.
• Donations: Colleges do not advertise this, but the children their large donors are on a list for preferential treatment in their college application process.
• Dean’s List: list of students with preferential college admission treatment (again, not advertised, but board members can submit students for preferential admissions).
• Athletic recruitment: The better the athlete (and/or the more a college coach needs a player for a certain position), the lower a student’s grades and scores can be to get recruited and gain admittance. A team’s average SAT and ACT score typically needs to be within one standard deviation of the school’s average, so the team still needs recruited athletes with top scores to bring the team’s average up.
• Ability to pay: Parents paying the full tuition price helps because most colleges, contrary to popular belief, are not “need-blind.” But, even those that are still consider how much they value a given applicant when determining how much financial aid (and whether it will be grants or loans) to extend to an applicant.
• Course Rigor: It’s not just high school GPA; it’s also the difficulty of the courses.
• Early decision: Colleges can increase their yield rate (number of students who accept an admission offer divided by the number of offers made) and therefore increase their ranking by admitting students through early decision (since students are contractually obligated to then accept if given an offer letter). Some colleges fill over 50% of their freshman class from early decision.
• Legacy status: Not all schools provide the same preferential treatment for legacy students, but some do (1/3 of students at Harvard are legacies).
• Children of faculty: Typically the children of a college’s faculty members also have an advantage in admission to that college.
• Disadvantaged demographics: Colleges value what is rare, so they extend preferential treatment to top students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
• Demonstrated interest: Yield rate affects rankings, so colleges only want to give you an offer letter if they think you will accept that offer letter. How can they help their yield rate and rankings? By trying to figure out from your demonstrated interest how much you want to attend their school.
• Gender: It surprises most people to learn this, but men are typically given preferential treatment in college admissions because more women apply to college, so college admission officers apply a higher standard to women who apply.
• Letters of recommendation: These can confirm the narrative that an applicant has told about themselves.
• Essays: These give applicants the opportunity to make admission officers fall in love with them and their story.
• Extracurricular activities: Will you contribute to the school’s community? Your activities help gauge whether you will, if you will be a leader, what you care about, and if you care about others.
• AP exam scores: Historically, these have not been used much. But, without the additional standardized scores from SAT subject tests, top colleges are likely going to start looking at these more.

It varies. A lot. Some sports start giving offers early (typically near the end of sophomore year); others give offers later (at the end of junior year). Women’s sports tend to recruit earlier than men’s. Division 1 colleges can give athletes more support through the admissions process, so their top recruits can have lower SAT and ACT scores (for example, every year we have at least a few recruited athletes who only need a 27 on their ACTs to get into Princeton). Division 3 schools can give athletes support, but typically the student needs to still be a viable applicant without recruitment (so having recruitment still helps because it generally guarantees admittance, but a student still needs to score about at the college’s average SAT or ACT score).

Additionally, college athletes who are hoping to get recruited should typically reach out to college coaches (or ask their own coach to reach out to college coaches on their behalf) so that college coaches can gain more awareness of an athlete even before the official recruitment period begins (before that time college coaches are not allowed to initiate communication with potential recruits, but they can respond if the athlete or their coach initiates communication). If a college coach is interested, then the athlete should keep up consistent (but not annoying) communication with the coach: congratulating the coach when his or her team has a big win, updating the coach on the athlete’s own accomplishments, etc.

If you have questions about your athlete’s specific circumstances, we’re always happy to help.