Princeton-football
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Anonymous
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Anyone by chance gone to football Junior Day at Princeton? We are taking my son this weekend and just wondering what to expect?
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Anonymous
They're playing football in March? |
Anonymous
| The coaches and players conduct tours of the athletic department/campus and usually hold a practice. A highlight tape of the previous season and lunch or breakfast is involved. |
Anonymous
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OP here. Thanks.
This is our first junior day so not sure what to expect. Are parents supposed to drop off? Stick around? |
Anonymous
| Parents stick around. Lots of folks there. When we went a couple years ago the food service was horrible and lines over an hour. Coach is impressive, campus is impressive, they will promote their summer camps. You're in for a fun ride if this is your first. |
Anonymous
Thanks. It's overwhelming already. Invites come in every day and I can't tell if they are for real interested in him or its invites sent to everyone on some list. I can tell the unaffiliated camps from the invites from coaches directly but how many invites are the coaches sending out? Who knows. But figured we will just go and see. Can't hurt. |
Anonymous
| Just select the schools where there is interest on your son's part. |
Anonymous
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You'll have a good feel by August. Assuming your son has good grades then pick a couple Ivy camps. Each will be attended by at least 10 smaller D3 academic schools as well as the host school. Right now if you're getting letters that's good but the top schools (FCS and Ivy) have been making offers the past couple weeks to the top candidates. There have been quite a few in this area.
Pick some places that you like at D1, D2 and D3. Understand that the only D3 schools that really recruit in fall of senior year are the highly academic ones. Think Hopkins, Chicago, WashU, NESCACs. The rest are happy to talk to you and use the D1 camps as a source of candidates, but they don't kick in full time until the weekend after signing day in February. Enjoy the tour. Get some good food, meet some coaches at different levels. If you don't have any D1 offer by the time camp starts in August you should probably think another level. Not much goes on in the fall season, then the FCS teams fill their walk-on spots and the lower levels will be very busy in December and January. Also try to get someone at some college to honestly evaluate your player. This is tough. Ask your coach. 100 kids or more show up for a camp day and the host school really works 10-20 at most. The summer is for figuring out your player's level. Once you realize that the decision making is much easier. Too many parents try to evaluate their player and overrate their candidate. This really takes you out of productive discussions with the level schools who are likely to be the most interested. Talk to everyone you can to try to get that information as early as possible. There are a lot of great schools out there with fun football programs. |
Anonymous
Thank you! He hated Princeton so that's that... His coach is being great so that's nice. I think where we are is that he is just barely D1 material (he needs to gain weight, but it's doable in the time he has). So he's trying to decide D1 or D2 where he'd have lots more playing time. There are so many schools, it's pretty overwhelming! But knowing he does not want the heat and prefers the cold is helping a bit (rules out southern schools). His coach suggests going out to 1 days so we are going to do that. I am happy he has options! Not so happy he's playing football (never have been). Sigh. |
Anonymous
| What's your definition of "good grades" or test scores? |
Anonymous
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Good grades and test scores really depends on where you are talking. At the Ivy League teams there is the Academic Index which mandates the number of players they can accept that must be within 1, 2, 3 or 4 standard deviations from the mean Academic Index of their students. This calculation is weighted toward test scores. Also each school is calculated differently so Harvard's numbers will be higher than Cornell typically. You could spend a lot of time calculating this but the reality is if an Ivy program is interested in your player they will do the calculation.
Upper end D3 programs seem to have a number of slots and a minimum calculation of GPA and board scores. Somewhere around 3.9 weighted and 34 or 1550 would put you top Academic Index for all Ivy and "acceptable" at every D3 including Williams, Chicago, Amherst or MIT. The sense we got from some of the players who went other NESCAC or upper end Centennial was somewhere around 3.4 and 30 would work. Centennial has Johns Hopkins as most selective but they are also typically the best team athletically as well. Franklin & Marshall, Gettysburg, Dickinson in that conference as well. Each will make "adjustments" to typical admission criteria. If your talent level is really FBS or FCS then there seems to be even more flexibility in admission. But you better be really good. If you're a current junior you probably know if this is you by now. The number of kids who are top end Ivy academic and top end FBS athletic are very very few. You also get into different calculations for D2 schools which are scholarship schools but can give academic scholarships as well. So to give a rough answer good grades and scores begins somewhere around the top 20% of your graduating class and moves upward. The schools really just want to make sure you're not likely to fail. they make a significant investment in the players even if it's non-scholarship and really don't want academic problems once admitted. It ends up being a very personalized process particularly at the truly top level D3 schools. You will get plenty of feedback along the way to help. Sift through it carefully. |
Anonymous
| What would be a good D2 or D3 football program for a very social, bright African American kid from a good private school with a B+ unweighted average and 29 ACT as a sophomore (I hope the score will go up a little next year with some prep). He is quite smart, a good student but does not always put 100 percent effort into studying. He is a social leader in a private school which is not very diverse, and wants a college with a real campus feel not in a rural area. Not interested in Greek life, but wants diversity and a fun group of kids. He is not into alcohol or drugs, but likes to date a variety of girls. Any location. Public or private. Ideas? |
Anonymous
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You haven't gone into the 2 most critical areas of selection. How good a player is he, meaning is he good enough to be a scholarship recruit at a D2? And, financial ability to pay. D3 has no athletic scholarships. If the student is full pay ability then you have lots of choices at D3, the minority factor won't hurt and even if he is not the strongest athlete the full pay is helpful. The other side of the coin is need based financial aid. If the student needs financial aid to pay the bills then you are going to have to get through the admissions office with the grades and the football coach. So here the better athlete he is the more likely the coach will really push. Not all schools are full need as well, so you would need to keep that in mind.
Assuming you figure out the above the next question would be geography. Locally not too many D2 schools. Shepherd, Alderson-Broaddus both in West Virginia, UVA Wise in VA, Catawba and Lenoir Rhyne in NC are some sort of close. More choice in NE and midwest. This is very good quality football and they offer athletic scholarships. Mainly recruited athletes at these schools. Some of these players have D1 talent but not D1 grades. The students grades would be between fine and excellent at all of those. There are also some D2s in midwest that are private schools like Findlay, Tiffin, Hillsdale. They are moving to an all private conference next fall. This might be more of the campus feel you are looking for. D3 depending on preference for geography you have ODAC schools (Shenandoah, Catholic, Hampden-Sydney, W&L, Bridgewater) but most are small towns. Catholic is in DC. Centennial conference schools a little bigger towns with Gettysburg, Dickinson, Franklin&Marshall. These schools have average grades and boards a little above but certainly worth talking to. Gettysburg has a marching band--unusual for a D3. Then you've got tons of Ohio and Pennsylvania D3s which those grades would be fine. Denison, Ohio Wesleyan, Hiram. If he could buckle down and get into Case Western Reserve in Cleveland that's an urban setting with D3 football. Tons of smart kids there and a very nice stadium. The other place I would look in D3 is the SAA schools including WashU and Chicago. Not sure those grades would get you into WashU or Chicago but worth a discussion and Rhodes, Centre, Sewanee, Berry, Hendrix, Birmingham Southern all have good campus settings. These are not inexpensive places though but coming from private there may not be sticker shock. This is kind of a southern/midwest version of the Centennial conference. The thing with all of these D3 schools is the football team is similar academically to the student body. This is much more so than at Michigan or Florida. The kids on the team will give a good reference to the kids in the school because they can only bend so much at admission, so pay attention to the prospective teammates both athletically and socially. You don't have the "football bubble" like the big D1 schools. Try to encourage to get the grades up as best they can. At these levels grades are very important and once the coach likes you even a little bit athletically the next question will be about grades. But also, across the traditional football recruiting board those grades are really pretty good. If he's a solid player and a good citizen I would expect you would find some matches that are appealing. Also coming from a private you should have access to college placement services that are better than most. I would lean on them a little bit for any pipelines they would have available. In 10th grade you have plenty of time. A year from now you should have another ACT score, and updated GPA, and a pretty good plan of attack. |
Anonymous
| Thanks. Your post is very helpful. Older brother got a full pay merit scholarship ( he is not into sports), so I don't think we will qualify for any money based on need. So we are willing to pay full freight. We are open to all areas of the country. As to his ability, his coach says D2 material. Played varsity this year as 10th grader which is unusual at his school, but he is not going to be big enough or fast enough for D1. Coach will help with highlight fils, etc. Like the idea of a school where football players are integrated into general community to some degree. He is used to Catholic schools. Would not want him to go to a school where they only black kids are football players, because we hope college will inspire him toward academic goals since he is bright, and would like him to have some black academic role models. He will prep for SAT or ACT. He is a very good citizen, well liked by teachers and coaches and also is a pretty good pitcher, although he had to choose in 10th grade so he chose football. |
Anonymous
| Trinity College. Have your coach call the recruiting coach for this area. Trust me. |