ATHLETICS AND THE COLLEGE PROCESS (continued) Coaches’ promises should almost always be taken with a heavy dose of skepticism. Coaches who guarantee you admission are probably overstepping their bounds. The admission committee makes the final admission decisions, not the coaches. A coach may lead you to believe that you will make the list, but there are no guarantees. You could be bumped from a list at the last minute if the coach finds a better athlete or an equivalent or even a somewhat less-talented athlete with stronger academic credentials who is more likely to make it through the admission process. We have seen cases where a student is courted regularly, with weekly phone calls of good will, only to be bumped from the coach’s list in the final hours of the admission process. Sometimes a college or university will send an applicant of special institutional interest (for instance, a student who has achieved particularly high distinction in the arts, athletics, or sciences) a letter, called the Likely Letter, stating that the student can expect a letter of acceptance at the time admission decisions are officially announced if there has been no slip in performance and conduct. While not technically an official letter of acceptance, the Likely Letter is nonetheless pretty much iron-clad. The timing of Likely Letters does not, as a rule, follow the usual timetable for deadlines and decisions. Likely Letters occur at the discretion of the college or university making the offer. Likely Letters cannot be requested or demanded; in a don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you dynamic, the college or university will make it known to an applicant when interest has reached a point where a Likely Letter seems appropriate. (Note that Likely Letters are a D1 or 1AA phenomenon, not a part of the D3 process.) It is not unusual for a coach to ask you to state which college is your first choice. After all, in choosing which athletes to support in the admission process, a coach does not want to waste energy on a candidate who is not likely to enroll. We do not want you to lie to coaches. Nor do we want your honesty to put you at a disadvantage in the admission process. If coaches start asking you to commit, it is of critical importance that you discuss this with one of the college counselors before responding. Indeed, it is important that you keep us posted throughout the process about all communications with college coaches. Our work as your advocate is strengthened if we know which college coaches seem most interested in you. If coaches make unfounded promises to you or ask you to commit when you are not ready to do so, we can often intervene to your advantage by contacting admission officers. Also, remember that your counselors have worked with similar cases and know how to discuss concerns with college coaches. With the wealth of experience on our staff, as well as that in the athletic department, there is no need to seek outside help in pursuing this process. In the rare case that an athletic scholarship is involved, we will be happy to work with you on how this varies from the financial need situation.
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