Ivy League Recruit?

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Would a SS/P who's rated by PG as a mid major D1 recruit talent-wise, 86 max mph fastball as a junior, 6.87 speed, 1900 SAT and 4.3 GPA have a good chance of getting accepted at an Ivy League school for baseball?

Generally speaking, YES!

Can he hit?

There are Ivy League baseball players with lesser academic qualifications then those you list. Your next step, IMO, is to get your player in front of Ivy coaches in a playing environment. Perhaps the best avenue (or most efficient) is the Stanford baseball camp. Have your son write a letter to Coach Stotz announcing his interest in Stanford baseball and his academic qualifications. That should generate an invitation. Most Ivy League schools have coaches attending and working the Stanford camp looking for recruits. My son attended the Stanford camp & received interest from 3 or 4 Ivy League schools before settling on his choice.

There are some good articles written about Ivy League recruiting available on this site if you do a little digging.

Also, start writing letters to the schools that interest you.

If I read your post correctly it seems your son is now a senior. If he hsn't been contacted by the Ivy's at this point I would say your chances may not be too good. His grades and the numbers you provide are very solid, but probably a little low to be accepted from the general population that applies, so without help from a coach I think it might be too late. I am pretty sure you would have needed to apply already to be considered.

The grades, test scores and ability are very close to where my son was and he had several IVY league opportunities. They are obviously looking for scholar athletes. The important thing, as already stated, is to let them know of your interest and submit some sort of a profile with both academic and athletic accomplishments. Try to get in front of them in some way. They do work the Stanford camp and attend some of the academic related showcases as well as some of the larger events such as Jupiter. Some of them also have camps that you could attend next fall if you are still in your Junior year and going to be a Senior in the fall.

jmepop, my son is currently a junior and will graduate in 2009. We're very fortunate that his current HS coach coached for five years at a very prestigious academic university and personally knows coaches at several of the Ivy's and at Stanford. He used to recruit in the same circles. He's receiving interest from a couple of these schools due to his coach's conversations with their coaches. I'm trying to determine if he needs to take the SAT and ACT everytime they are offerred from now until the end of this school year to continue to try to raise his scores.

ncmtnbbdad, sent you a P.M.

I would have your son attend the Head First Honor's Camp, some of the Ivy's attend this camp. My son attended Stanford and Head First and he was recruited by several Ivy's from these two events.

It's very difficult to go to an Ivy League school and also balance time necessary to play baseball at a competitive level. You can ask many standout athletes that have tried it and let me tell you it is just so very difficult. There is absolutely no social time and the grueling winters at some of these institutions leads way to many other complications. Forget about a fraternity or any other social activities. I would be interested to hear more positive stories of baseball players at Ivy League schools who had a great experience and were ALSO able to keep up with the books and graduate with high grades or at least acceptable grades. The voluminous amount of sheer homework and reading is unbelievable. Immense amounts of study time are tantamount to your success and are another of the mountains to climb.

switch, we are very good friends with a young man who played football, was an all Ivy defensive back his sophomore and senior year, was a double major in Economics and Engineering and graduated with a 3.65 cumulative GPA.
Another of our good friends was a baseball player who's GPA at graduation was something around a 3.70.
Both have always been excellent students and dedicated athletes, with terrific social skills.
I am not sure why you would isolate an Ivy, if you are. Players at any of the top 50 or so academic schools, including Stanford, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins, Pomona Pitzer, and others compete in baseball, combined with academic opportunities that are demanding, grinding...and rewarding.

I would think most of the kids that qualify for admission to a top academic institution have a pretty good grip on balancing loads.

I don't know any program anywhere that encourages a mix of athletics and greek. Every coach I've ever talked to discourages it.

The thought of discouraging a kid from leveraging his baseball talent to a highly prized degree, I would think is counter productive to the whole process. In our house, the degree comes first, the baseball is a way to the means.

There's balancing academics and athletics at most prestigous academic universities. Then there's the military academies. Talk about a balancing act! My hat is off to any kid who can make it through. Then there's the kids who make it through playing a sport.

Civil Wars was an interesting read. It chronicled the lives of several Army and Navy football players over a four year period. It was a great book on character and preserverance. The real Rudy's are the athletes at these academies who stick it out four years just to get a moment on the field in one Army-Navy game.

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Originally posted by switchitter:
I would be interested to hear more positive stories of baseball players at Ivy League schools who had a great experience and were ALSO able to keep up with the books and graduate with high grades or at least acceptable grades.

I know several young men who have done just that, and I have enjoyed watching them play when I have the opportunity. And don't rule out fraternity life. Nearly every baseball player at Dartmouth is in a fraternity. They even hold leadership positions in the fraternity (as if that should surprise anyone).

There's Ivy League and then there's the Ivy schools that are almost impossible to get into without SAT's above 2100 or 30 ACT: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia (I know, I know...I had to draw the line somewhere). We're talking just 10% and less acceptance rates versus up to 27% for some others in the league. First daughter graduated from there two years ago. Second Daughter currently sophomore on volleyball roster at Columbia as a walk on, on executive board of her sorority, Outing Club guide during Freshmen orientation, 3.2 gpa majoring in engineering. And she's not the exception. Her real passion was s****r but another walk on was selected over her. Many, if not most of the football players and baseball players at Columbia are in a fraternity, though they have less significance there than at an SEC school like LSU. Your son's stats are like my son's, only mine has higher ACT (29) and his gpa sucked at 2.6. We attended the Headfirst Showcase in Virginia last summer and got an honest evaluation by the Columbia baseball coach who would have loved to have him on the team but was pretty sure the 2.6 gpa would be an issue as well as his speed. But, I will tell you that it was one of the best experiences in his life and he got all kinds of interest from DIII schools. Some of what I witnessed at the camp, though, was pretty sad. You had parents literally cornering Ivy coaches and badgering them with their son's information hoping to get an advantage. I heard one parent almost begging the Yale coach to get him in. Its hard enough to earn a spot on a DI roster anywhere, but to nourish expectations in your children that they need baseball to get into an Ivy league school is cruel.

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LL posted: I heard one parent almost begging the Yale coach to get him in. Its hard enough to earn a spot on a DI roster anywhere, but to nourish expectations in your children that they need baseball to get into an Ivy league school is cruel.

Nourishing the requirement to make a D1 roster is also cruel, imo.

That is really too bad. Doesn't that parent know the only thing he talked the coach into was to stay away from his kid?

I was at the HF showcase in Sacramento with my son last summer. Very good experience. He's an 09, so we may go back this year.

I'm feeling my way through the recruiting process just like everybody, but it seemed total common sense to me that my son was the best one to talk to the coaches.

It was very good practice for him - he would corner the coach, look him in the eye, introduce himself, and ask what he needed to earn a spot on his team.

I never talked to a coach the entire time.

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to nourish expectations in your children that they need baseball to get into an Ivy league school is cruel.

I remember classmates being crushed they didn't get accepted to Ivies. I saw it happen again when my daughter's class went off to college. A kid should be pushed to go to the best school possible not an Ivy or die.

While I'm a proponent of the best school possible and hope it's an Ivy for my son (daughter wanted no part of it), I've seen people go to NoWhere State and be very successful. Better schools open doors in the real world. Others just need a door in front of them so they can kick it in.

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It was very good practice for him - he would corner the coach, look him in the eye, introduce himself, and ask what he needed to earn a spot on his team. I never talked to a coach the entire time.

I'm guessing the coach would be thinking, "I'm talking to a young man, not dealing with the parents of an immature child."