Pre-Read Turn Around Times

My son was able to get an answer on a pre-read the following morning (from 2 HA D1 schools).

Edited to add:  In my son's case the pre-reads were requested by the coach, and the coach called my son the following morning to give the thumbs up.  I'm not sure what you mean by "does a coach always give a response", since it is the coach that requests the pre-read from admissions.

We have had a few requests for the pre-read and have 90% of the time gotten a timely response within a day or so. We only had one, that was a reach that didn't get right back to us.  When we inquired they said he was on the cusp and I think they didn't want to give the news. They said needed another 50 points on the SAT and he got that, so it was all good. If you don't hear back right away, have your son reach out so you know one way or the other.

In my sons' pre-read experience with D1 Ivy, D1 Patriot, D3 NESCAC, we always heard back within 5 days.  Yes, we always heard back even when an Ivy initially wanted to see a slight bump in his SAT, presumably to help his candidacy and to boost numbers for the team.   I believe part of the time lag is when the Coach/Liaison/Admissions receives your information and acts on it whether it is the beginning of the week or over the weekend.  

Good luck!

In our limited but recent experience, the pre-read is only really done with players the coach is pretty serious about. So, it's likely that you'll hear from the coach on how it went with admissions at some point because he'll either be talking to you about next steps or telling you why he can't. With one of the HA D3 schools we dealt with the pre-read itself didn't take long, but several weeks passed between the time the coach requested the transcripts and scores and when he actually presented them to admissions. And this was with a school that liked my son a lot and offered him soon after getting the admissions support. So there can be delays along the way that may not mean anything about interest.

Just to add another data point:  IIRC, 8 schools asked my son to send his transcripts and test scores. No school gave him a negative result based on academics or said he needed to pull up his numbers. Two schools got back to him within 2 or 3 days about results. Two never expressed any further interest, but I think that was baseball-driven, not because of academics. The others took a 2-3 weeks, and in one or two cases didn’t respond until my son emailed and asked—at which point they said pre-read was good and that they were still interested (how interested? that is the difficult part to figure out...).

My son is a 2020 and still going through the process with HA D3s, but it seems to me 1) pre-read times vary pretty widely.  2) Longer times don’t necessarily tell you anything about *academic* results, but 3) may tell you something about how interested a coach is (or may have more to do with how organized the coach is). A quick response is always a good sign (duh), but slower responses aren’t necessarily negative.

My son’s experience suggests that some schools ask for academic info early on, before they have decided who they will run by admissions, just as a way to make sure they aren’t taking time for a player who has no shot. It’s a good sign, but maybe not as strong an indicator as I initially thought.