Does swimming help admissions to a child's reach schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am the head swimming coach at Harvard and I only recommend swimmers to admissions if they have exceptionally strong IMX performances.

I’m the head coach at Penn and same here. As a matter of fact we look at nothing else. It’s IMX or bust.

My husband is an assistant head trainer for the Latvian national swim & dive program, and he says they start scouting at IMR meets these days. IMX may be too late.

I also heard IMX times are important. My kids never swam, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am the head swimming coach at Harvard and I only recommend swimmers to admissions if they have exceptionally strong IMX performances.

I’m the head coach at Penn and same here. As a matter of fact we look at nothing else. It’s IMX or bust.

My husband is an assistant head trainer for the Latvian national swim & dive program, and he says they start scouting at IMR meets these days. IMX may be too late.

I also heard IMX times are important. My kids never swam, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

I was watching a national geographic documentary about the ancient Olympics and they were saying that Astylos of Croton was not able to win an olive wreath for swimming events because the IMX had not been established yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am the head swimming coach at Harvard and I only recommend swimmers to admissions if they have exceptionally strong IMX performances.

I’m the head coach at Penn and same here. As a matter of fact we look at nothing else. It’s IMX or bust.

My husband is an assistant head trainer for the Latvian national swim & dive program, and he says they start scouting at IMR meets these days. IMX may be too late.

🤌🏻

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am the head swimming coach at Harvard and I only recommend swimmers to admissions if they have exceptionally strong IMX performances.

I’m the head coach at Penn and same here. As a matter of fact we look at nothing else. It’s IMX or bust.

My husband is an assistant head trainer for the Latvian national swim & dive program, and he says they start scouting at IMR meets these days. IMX may be too late.

Penn coach here this is a very astute point. I will take this back to the rest of the coaching staff to discuss. Thank you, PP, you may have just saved our program.

[Anonymous]

So, I'm confused.

Are we talking about reach schools for academics or reach schools for swim teams? They're two different animals for the most part.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So, I'm confused.

Are we talking about reach schools for academics or reach schools for swim teams? They're two different animals for the most part.

Presumably reach schools for academics. Not to sound snarky, but I think it’s implicit that swimming helps with admissions to reach swimming programs, so the OP likely meant academics. Does potentially being a competitive member of its swim team increase odds of acceptance into a reach academic school relative to general pool of applicants? Please correct me, OP, if I’m mistaken.

[Anonymous]

Stanford. Why compromise on either

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So, I'm confused.

Are we talking about reach schools for academics or reach schools for swim teams? They're two different animals for the most part.

Reach schools academically. If a kid is close but might not otherwise be admitted, will being an asset to swim team help?
(I'm not talking about being the 4th best breaststroker - I mean if they really can help them win championship meets or at least finish top 16 which I'm told it the important criteria for many swim programs)

[Anonymous]

I will just say that my kid wouldn’t have a shot at the majority of the D3 schools for which DC is talking with coaches without sports. The schools say you have to be in the range to be admitted. It’s a big range. Read Jeff Selingos book “Who Gets in and Why”. Also if you kid is like mine, my kid is training 20+ hours/week. My kid would have better grades if DC spent that time studying. So far no school has said no in informal discussions. We’ll see how pre-reads go. Definitely more wiggle room at D1 than D3. And kid isn’t anywhere close to 4.0. At rigorous independent school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, I'm confused.

Are we talking about reach schools for academics or reach schools for swim teams? They're two different animals for the most part.

Reach schools academically. If a kid is close but might not otherwise be admitted, will being an asset to swim team help?
(I'm not talking about being the 4th best breaststroker - I mean if they really can help them win championship meets or at least finish top 16 which I'm told it the important criteria for many swim programs)

Yes, if your kid will score in conference the coach should be able to talk with admissions, especially with a power 5 school. Exception being MIT and the like.