By: Dave Galehouse
Director - www.varsityedge.com
Date: March 21, 2011
This was an article I was interviewed for that discusses how Likely letters play a role in the athletic recruiting process for Ivy League Colleges. As you may or may not know, Ivy Colleges are not part of the National Letter of Intent program and are thus unable to "sign" athletes and award them athletic scholarship money. Because many athletes do not have the opportunity to wait for admission decisions from Ivy Schools because they are getting offers from other Colleges that may be offering athletic scholarship aid, the Likely letter was created in a sense to give some recruited athletes guarantee's regarding their admission. This allows athletes to turn down scholarship offers at other schools. While a likely letter is not binding, what they really signify is that a coach has presented your academic information to admissions and admissions has basically signed off on your credentials for admission. So you in a sense don't have to wait till the spring to hear if you got accepted to an Ivy school.
In the article, there is a reference to me saying the following: (Division I institutions can essentially guarantee a student’s acceptance at their schools. He said he believes likely letters are a way to compensate for that disadvantage.)
I think what I was trying to convey to the editor of the article was that, Division 1 institutions can guarantee the reward of athletic scholarship money for the period of one year through the signing of a National Letter of Intent document for a given school. I also said that the Ivy's are at a disadvantage because they cannot offer a National Letter of Intent, and that is regardless of whether they offer binding early decision or not.
Regardless of the National Letter of Intent program, NO college can guarantee your admissions until you are actually admitted. Furthermore, signing a national letter of intent DOES NOT signify your acceptance to a particular college, it only signifies that if you are accepted, you will be rewarded whatever athletic scholarship money you were offered for a period of one year.
Now you might be thinking the following? "Why would a coach have me sign a National Letter of Intent if I couldn't get into the school?"
Coaches don't usually extent scholarship offers to players without having that player’s academic information reviewed by admissions so most coaches have been given an "ok" as far as acceptance goes with a given player. However, there have been a few instances of higher level admissions personnel reviewing and eventually denying the acceptance of recruits that have been extended scholarship offers and in a few rare cases, already signed NLI's with that school. This is usually a disaster for both the school that does this and the recruit, so they try to avoid that from happening.
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