One of the many areas I have continued to handle for William & Mary until the new coaches get settled in has been the area of recruiting. I have been fielding various e-mails from perspective students who are trying to decide where to go to college next year. I am also getting e-mails from high school coaches inquiring about the program, or about my advice in general for helping their athletes select a college. There has also been the usual traffic on the newsgroup on the same issue, mostly coming from inquisitive parents.
This general issue of where to go to college crops up every year. It is amazing just how many people who ask behave as if the issue has never been discussed before. Mostly, it is because they have not themselves seen the discussion before. At times, though, I am amazed that there is any discussion at all. This is one topic which to me appears open-and-shut.
For the benefit of my foreign readers, let me briefly explain the college application process in the United States. We have an enormous number of colleges, and all are essentially different. Some are better than others in different areas - not always academic. Students apply to a selection. They will often consider and even visit more than they actually apply to. The trick is to find the right match. Of course, just because students decide which college they think is best for them does not mean that the college agrees - and students do not always get into their first choices. It is at times a bit of a lottery - the most exclusive colleges receive thousands upon thousands of qualified applicants, and whom they decide to accept may end up being determined by what mood the first reader of the application happens to be in the day the application first gets examined - getting good comments from the preliminary reader is crucial, because it sets the tone for all future readings. The components of a complete application differ from college to college, but include some or all of: high school grades, lists of extra-curricular activities, essays about the applicant or the applicant’s perception of some issue, recommendations from teachers, and an interview.
It is worth noting that many applicants submit additional materials such as portfolios, publications, or videos of themselves doing a sport. I have never worked in an admissions office, but I will say that I have been told by numerous sources that these materials end up in a storeroom somewhere in the back of the admissions office and never get looked at in connection with the proper application. Sometimes admissions officers will go into the store room and pull out a few things for amusement. But generally they do not have the time. Any additional materials should be brief, to-the-point, and include a note explaining what they are. And they should not involve needing machines to play them back. So for applicants who think admissions officers really want to see footage of them rowing or hear tapes of them coxing, forget it. I am a coach and I don’t even want to see the stuff.
Some evil colleges give out athletics scholarships. That means that athletes may get preferential treatment in the admissions process there. This sounds nice, but it really just distorts students’ decisions and may make them choose a college which is otherwise not right for them. In some sports this does not matter, because the college (within the NCAA) is all about exploiting its athletes. Rowing has resisted this, for the most part, even among colleges which grant rowing scholarships. However, there is a fear, shared by me, that the recent NCAA takeover of women’s rowing will lead to exploitation of women rowers akin to what happens in men’s football. The scandals cannot be too far off.
So, with that said, how should a student determine which college is best?
The crucial thing to do is to consider exactly that: which college is best. Most of the people ask: where should I/my child/my athlete go to row? That is the wrong question. The right question is to ask: which college is best for me/my child/my athlete?
Students should pick a college which meets their overall needs. They should, of course, include rowing as one of those needs. But they should be aware that good rowing programs - and rewarding rowing experiences - exist in a whole lot of colleges. And even if the college program may not be great when they arrive, that does not necessarily mean that they cannot contribute to making it great once they are there. There are a number of fine developing programs right now in many parts of the country, and there are a number of other programs on the verge of developing. It depends what sort of experience they want.
So students should decide what they are looking for in a college experience. Academic subjects are obviously the top consideration. But they should also ask: What part of the country? Urban or rural? What's the feel on campus socially and intellectually and does it match what you like? What other activities and opportunities are available? And, of course, what are the prospects for having a rewarding rowing experience?
When recruits contact me about coming to William & Mary, I tell the truth. I try to explain why William & Mary is an exciting place to row. I cannot offer them scholarships (although financial aid is available through the normal channels), a boathouse, or a lot of tradition, but I can promise them a fine academic experience and an upwardly-mobile team with a great sense of itself which is the defining activity of most of the athletes’ lives. William & Mary is certainly not right for everyone. But I hope to - and do - convince people that it is indeed someplace they should make their first choice if it is right for them. I have been good at this, but unfortunately very few of the applicants who decide they would attend William & Mary actually make it through the admissions office - the academic bar is very high. It is frustrating at times to actively recruit people and then find that they do not get in, but I would rather have it that way than to have a bunch of unqualified students who are wrong for the College and would be miserable. The admissions office would be doing those students a disservice. Almost no one on the team at William & Mary rowed before college, and it has not made a difference (a few more losses as freshmen, but no long-term negatives). We have a great team because we have students who prosper where they are. And William & Mary has fine students.
Every coach will tout his own college and rowing program. A good campus visit, chat with a coach, overnight stay with team members, and a trip in the launch will provide a good sense for a student of what a program is all about. So there is really no sense in telling people to look at College X or Y. There are so many fine rowing experiences out there to be had. When I am not wearing my W&M hat and am giving general advice, my advice to college-bound students is this: decide what you want in a college, figure out a list of colleges which meet your academic/location/social profile (which can be a long list), and then check out their rowing programs (which may narrow things down a bit). By starting with the rowing program, I think they've got it backwards.
Someone posted on r.s.r a very useful point: if something awful were to happen and the student had to give up rowing (or simply decided to give up rowing, as many high school rowers do during college), the college has to be the sort of place they would want to attend nevertheless.
Another thing I fear is that too many Americans get hung up on rankings (the growing trend in Britain for "league tables" is similarly annoying and uninformative). There are rankings for everything and they mean nothing. But some students actually use them as a basis for a decision. The most famous ranking system is used by US News and World Report, which seemingly rotates Harvard, Yale, and Princeton through the top rank every few years. This year they changed their system and suddenly Cal Tech ended up on top. While it is a fine place, Cal Tech is best only for those who would find Cal Tech best - which would not be most people, for whom it would be the wrong place. Which is better from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton - depends, since they are three very distinct institutions. And many other places would be better matches for different students who would hate the so-called Big Three even if they did get accepted.
The American Rower’s Almanac sent around an e-mail survey this month asking for statistics about collegiate women’s programs so that they could rank them in the 2000 edition. I replied on William & Mary’s behalf. However, I also asked them why they thought a ranking system would be useful (and if it were somehow useful, why only for women?).
The Almanac already provides a valuable service by listing every college program and its facts, figures, and contacts. Perspective students have plenty of preliminary info to go on from that, and they can then contact the respective colleges which seem to match their desired profiles and take a visit - which is the best way to evaluate a college and its program. A ranking adds nothing of value. Plus, I am not sure how they can give a ranking anyway. Who is to say that So-and-so University is the #1 program in the country and This-and-that University is #2 (or #20, or #200). It is more subjective than that and cannot be so easily ranked. I suppose they could simply avoid giving individual ranks and just cluster programs, but in a way they already cluster themselves (Sprints, Champion, Vails, etc.). And a rowing experience at Hypothetical University (ranked #40) might be more rewarding for a particular student than if she attended Theoretical University (ranked #15), yet should she really even see these rankings which might make her wrongly pick #15 over #40 - given the rankings are somewhat arbitrary to begin with. And given the club vs. varsity debate, varsity does not mean the program is necessarily "better" (whatever "better" means - results? team size? rewarding experience?) but they would appear to be succumbing to the NCAA's wrong-headed logic which was never prevalent in this sport.
They have promised a reply, but are understandably busy given upcoming publishing deadlines. I am curious to see what they have to say. (It is a great publication, by the way. Having lived in Britain where the ARA produces an annual almanac, I wondered why such a thing did not exist in the US. Now it does - since 1996, I believe - although it publishes bi-annually which makes it less timely but probably more cost-effective given that we Americans are not in the habit of buying one every year like the Brits are).
All of this may, of course, sound funny to those on the other side of the puddle. College sports are a much bigger deal over here, and people would indeed weigh into the decision of where they want to go a high degree of where they want to row. But American colleges are so varied, that it certainly serves to take a closer look at the broader collegiate experience. I get an annoyingly large number of e-mails from Yugoslavs telling me heartbreaking stories of how poor they are and how there is no future for them to row in Serbia - so could I please fund them to come to William & Mary, where they would like to study aeronautical engineering. Even if I had the money I wouldn't give it to them. After all, have these people even looked in the catalogue, where they would find that such a subject (nor anything similar) simply is not offered at William & Mary? What do they know about the College, and why do they think it is for them? I am glad we seem to have developed a reputation in Yugoslavia, but this is truly odd. Foreigners' concepts of American colleges are often similarly bizarre, but they are rooted in how we Americans present ourselves and our system. Indeed, with the surge in rowing scholarships, the pig-headed (and pig-skinned) push of the NCAA, and the tilt of an important publication like the Almanac towards publishing rankings, we could very well see a greater number of American rowers attending colleges which are wholly inappropriate for them.