You could walk on to most schools in the country, and definitely get scholarships from some schools too.
What state are you in? If in California, like someone said, look at some of the UCs. If you think you can handle high mileage and are willing to work at it hard, UCSB is a very solid choice (also great academics). I'd be a little wary of Berkeley/UCLA/UC Irvine as they seem to not develop runners as well. UC Davis is also a decent school.
I'm from CA, and I havent figured out what I want to major in yet. The tuition for my HS is around 20k so my parents are willing to put in at least that much. The thing is, I hear a lot about people on these boards running 80 mpw+ in college. As much as I love running, I'm worried about getting injured and not being able to maintain a scholarship. I usually always race well, but I have A LOT of trouble keeping my nerves calm before hand. That being said, Im not sure I would fit in well at a super high mileage and intensive running school even though I want to be competitive. I hope that wasn't too confusing!
if you are in cali, in terms of state schools, the top for developing runners are ucsb, cal poly, and chico. since your academics are also strong, i would go with ucsb.
oldXChasbeen wrote:
You have above average PRs and excellent grades. You could get money from some decent schools with those times, especially since your mileage indicates you haven't tapped all of your talent. No, not a full ride and no, not Oregon or Stanford or FSU. But you should get interest from some college coaches. My daughter's HS PRs were 5:22 and 11:40 and she got full ride and near full ride offers from a few D2/D3 and NAIA schools. Granted, the full ride offers didn't come from championship caliber teams, mostly middle of the pack regional schools in the South, but were good academic schools (Rhodes College, Lipscomb). But she wasn't looking to go to Stanford or FSU and we knew she obviously wasn't a good enough runner for those kinds of programs anyway.
She ended ended up signing for a partial athletic scholarship at a D1 C-USA school. Combined with some academic scholarship money, it covered about half of tuition. And she got to be part of a D1 program and compete against high level runners. Not bad for a girl with mediocre talent from a HS that had never had a girl sign a track scholarship. She was a good student and made herself a decent runner through hard work and dedication. Lots of college coaches want kids like that on their team.
Guessing your daughter went to school a long time ago.
Rhodes college is D3 and doesn't give athletic scholarships.
Lipscomb is DI and has a very good distance program, so a girl in the 11:40/5:22 range probably isn't getting any scholarship offers from them now.
I'm a Canadian highschool coach with a girl going into grade 11 (is that Junior in the USA?).
Her PBs are 2:16/800m, 4:42/1500, 10:08/3000m and she's a very good steeplechaser as well.
She is very smart also (top academic student in school). I don't really understand the US college system, but figure there might be good $$ (possibly full ride if the coming year goes well) there for her. Any advice on how we should proceed with recruiting?
random_coach wrote:
I'm a Canadian highschool coach with a girl going into grade 11 (is that Junior in the USA?).
Her PBs are 2:16/800m, 4:42/1500, 10:08/3000m and she's a very good steeplechaser as well.
She is very smart also (top academic student in school). I don't really understand the US college system, but figure there might be good $$ (possibly full ride if the coming year goes well) there for her. Any advice on how we should proceed with recruiting?
Sorry but there is not a ton of money for runners in this country. Full rides are out of the question for all but a very few runners. A DI all-american-caliber runner will probably be on a full scholarship...but that's it. You've got to work your way up, too--no way a school'd blow a full scholarship on a new recruit, unless she was very, very good.
clueless high school girl wrote:
The thing is, I hear a lot about people on these boards running 80 mpw+ in college. As much as I love running, I'm worried about getting injured and not being able to maintain a scholarship. I usually always race well, but I have A LOT of trouble keeping my nerves calm before hand.
Any program worth its stuff is going to gradually transition you to high mileage. If a coach expects you to move from 20-30 to 80 in a year, they're an idiot. How you ferret out whether the coach might do that a priori, I do not know.
Also, some unrelated advice: I would probably not mention the thing about nerves to any coaches.
leave your email and people will contact you
contact schools that interest her
apply to ncaa intial eligibility center
Good series
Having recently gone through the process with my daughter who had similar times in high school (consistently 10:5x in 3200, and low 5:0x in 1600), I'll just tell you what we did because it worked out.
In the spring of her junior year I bought her a book on colleges and had her pick through those, offering to bring her to her top four choices over the summer (within reason). I told her she should not factor potential scholarship money in because we would make it work out where ever she wanted to go.
Once she picked the schools, I had her contact each coach and arrange an on-campus meeting. They were all more than happy to do this. Our summer vacation that year was a tour of colleges (FUN!). She took the "tour" that each college offered and visited with the coach, too. I thought this was a good way to let her see the important non-running side of college life, free from the pressure of potential future team members.
Once the visits were completed, she eliminated one school whose coach she didn't like, but accepted the other three invitations to come back in the fall during the cross country season. She applied to all three schools at the same time. They all called often during the season to see how things were going. Not one other coach ever contacted her directly by phone, even though she was showered with post cards and brochures.
I was surprised (and pleased) to see bidding war develop towards the end, but one coach and school stood above the others. She wound up getting all paid for with combined academic and athletic scholarships. She had a ball in college, graduated in four years, and went on to graduate school.
I felt that the personal meetings (on our own dime) in the summer went a long way towards getting the right coaches interested in her specifically. They knew she was genuinely interested in their school and so they became genuinely interested in making that happen.
To the OP (and the Canadian coach):
An early response suggested Cornell, but I'm going to expand that to the Ivy League as a whole.
The Ivies have no athletic or merit scholarships. However, they have outstanding need-based financial aid for all their students (at least all their US/Canada students--about other internationals, I simply don't know one way or the other). Many families, including upper-middle class families, are finding that the Ivy schools are often a better financial deal overall than accepting, say, a three-quarter ride somewhere.
OP, if you have board scores/class rank to match your GPA, then you should think seriously about the Ivy League--not least, because your junior-year times would make you a valuable recruit for most of the schools, and the coaches could boost your admission chances.
I've known several Ivy coaches/teams/athletes. Of the current personnel, I'm most familiar with Cornell's group and can say that they seem to do an excellent job, not just in recruiting top runners, but in *developing* both their top recruits and also the next rank of middle-/distance athletes. Morgan Uceny is the current postergirl for that program, of course, but their recent success seems to go much deeper--and, if anything, their longer-distance runners are performing at least as well, nowadays, as their vaunted middle-distance crew. [Historically, they've had quite a few Canadians on the team, too.]
But I would seriously recommend investigating *any* of the Ivy League schools--I just know Cornell better, at present. I've seen some recent Ivy League ("Heps") championship meets, and the school spirit seems to be matched by a kind of League-wide camaraderie that's wonderful to see. I believe someone said that the Heps is also the highest-attendance DI conference meet--great atmosphere, for sure.
asdfasdf wrote:
Sorry but there is not a ton of money for runners in this country. Full rides are out of the question for all but a very few runners. A DI all-american-caliber runner will probably be on a full scholarship...but that's it. You've got to work your way up, too--no way a school'd blow a full scholarship on a new recruit, unless she was very, very good.
You're just wrong. 100% wrong. There is a boatload of D1 scholarship money available for women. This Canadian would likely get many full ride offers, albeit from less-established D1 programs.
Canadians have 13 years of schooling before college, yes?
So if the Canadian girl has two more years to improve her times before heading to a U.S. school--then, yes, with decent progress she'd be *very* interesting to a lot of DI U.S. coaches.
But a number of DII schools also have decent money (as do the aforementioned Ivy schools, though theirs is need-based). If she has an idea of what academic field she might be interested in, she could start building a list of the schools that are strong in that area, and then see which ones could be a match for her (athletically and $-wise).
If you have a 4.0 at a good school you should be looking at great academic schools with solid (but not the best) running programs. Your times aren't good enough for the very best running schools, but this may be a blessing as they are good enough to get you into an amazing university, that you may not be able to get into solely based on academics. Actually, Cornell might be a great fit for you, but certainly consider the other Ivys as well.
lease wrote:
Canadians have 13 years of schooling before college, yes?
So if the Canadian girl has two more years to improve her times before heading to a U.S. school--then, yes, with decent progress she'd be *very* interesting to a lot of DI U.S. coaches.
But a number of DII schools also have decent money (as do the aforementioned Ivy schools, though theirs is need-based). If she has an idea of what academic field she might be interested in, she could start building a list of the schools that are strong in that area, and then see which ones could be a match for her (athletically and $-wise).
12 years, not including K. Someone born January 1st will graduate at 18 years old. Yes, she has two more years (grade 11 and 12).
Those kind of times will get you into pretty much any Big Sky school. Those are the kind of times most of their recruits come in with. NAU has 5 recruits coming in with similar times as yours and they all are getting money.
Big Sky schools
Northern Arizona
Idaho State
Weber State
Montana
Montana State
Sacramento State
Portland State
Northern Colorado
Eastern Washington
oh if you're from Cali I definitely wan't to second UC Davis. It is a great school. One of the best in the country in some subjects (especially the biological ones). I believe it has the most majors out of the UCs, so its great for someone who isn't sure what they want to do. They are also really close to Sacramento, so there are a lot of political and economic internships up for grabs during an undergrads schooling. They are well known for developing their athletes and your times are around what they usually take. With your grades you may even qualify for a regents scholarship which is practically a full ride academic scholarship (offered to the top few percent of applicants). Plus Davis is a really nice city. Its small, but 10min from Sacramento, an hour from San Francisco and its a really sporty town.
I still think you should consider talking to the Ivys though. If you don't want a "high milelage" school, you should ask the coach of each school what their coaching philosophy is. Then you may want to consider which schools match your running philosophy.
go stanford!
You should lay out your priorities first. If you are going to college mainly for running and not for school then just find a consistently good college program that\'s willing to give you money (D1) and get in contact with the coach.
If you\'re academically oriented, which is probably the case, try and find a list of 10 academic schools you would like to get into and e-mail all of them with a list of your pr\'s, gpa, and sat scores. From there, you can ask about training and whatever if that is really important to you. College coaches can usually pull some strings (but not all the time)so talk to schools that you might not even think you can get into. Hell, I got into one of the most selective schools in the nation and it was most likely because of the coach.
Also, if you just add on like 3-4 miles per week on your own, you\'ll eventually get there, just build up to like 45-55
tl;dr version
START EMAILING AS MANY COACHES POSSIBLE