You’ve spent the last four years toiling away, both on and off the court/field/mountain/course, and you’re looking for a college that will allow you to play your sport and get a good education. There’s a reason it’s student-athlete and not athlete-student, after all. You’ve settled on somewhere like Middlebury. You’ve been following their stats and know that their acceptance rate has been steadily dropping for years, settling at a competitive 15% for 2022. You may think to yourself, “hey I’m really good at soccer. Maybe that will push me over the edge.” It might, but keep reading.
Students who are looking for the type of environment offered at Middlebury are typically looking at NESCAC schools. The New England Small College Athletic Conference is made up of “eleven of the finest liberal arts colleges and universities in the United States.” This includes Amherst, Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Connecticut College, Hamilton, Middlebury, Tufts, Trinity, Wesleyan, and Williams. These are NCAA D3 schools, so athletics are not their primary target, but NESCAC is still very competitive with other D3 schools, and their conference members regularly dominate the NCAA D3 Championships.
D3 schools do not offer athletic scholarships (you can still get financial aid), have lower athletic budgets, and often have shorter seasons. But this also means you’re on teams with people who are in it for the love of the game, coached by people who also love the sport dearly. And don’t think D3 means “bad,” either. There are over 8 million students a year who play sports in high school. There are just over 250,000 students who play NCAA sports in college. Very few students have the skills to take their sport beyond high school, and using your talent is a way you can add a slight edge to your application.
Today, we’re going to explore one school in particular: Middlebury College. With 14 men’s teams and 15 women’s teams, they have options for everyone. From soccer to football to nordic skiing, a wide variety of athletes could call Middlebury home. Hell, they even have squash, which we thought was invented for those scenes where they interview some Wall Street guy on Law and Order.
It’s important to note that every single sport has its own rules and regulations about recruiting, including who can email who and when, who can call, and who can approach who first. It will be up to you to research these rules for your own sport. Learn them backwards and forwards, because a screw-up can cause big issues for you and the school. Register on the NCAA Clearing House, reach out to the administrative body for your sport for guidance, and educate yourself on the rules.
But in order to play sports at Middlebury, one must actually get into Middlebury. Yes, a coach’s rec can help elevate your application to the top of the pile, but your grades, scores, and extracurriculars need to get you into Middlebury on their own. For more evidence on this, let’s look at this piece from NESCAC’s website:
“All NESCAC member colleges enroll students who will enhance and enjoy the intellectual, social, and extracurricular communities our campuses provide. We seek students who are interested in the wide range of rigorous intellectual experiences offered, and value the role that extra-curricular activities, such as music, debate, theater, political action, and athletics, play on campus.”
You’re trying to get into a liberal arts school. They want you to be a liberal arts student, meaning you should already be a well-rounded, academically motivated young person, on top of being a high-achieving athlete. So what groundwork does one need to do to get recruited to Middlebury?
Grades
You have to have the grades. Middlebury’s acceptance rate was 15% last year, and the average GPA for accepted students was 3.9. Yeesh! Competitive! Again, there’s a huge emphasis on the student part of student-athlete at this level. Grades also need to be consistent throughout high school, so slacking freshman year is out of the question.
Scores
Along with a high GPA, Middlebury wants to see high performance on standardized tests. However, post-COVID, they were one of many schools to adopt test-optional policies, and they don't seem to be getting rid of that policy anytime soon. That doesn’t mean don’t submit–it means having perfect scores will only set you apart even more from the crowd. Their middle 50 for the SAT was 1490-1530 and 34-35 for the ACT. Start studying!
Extracurriculars
Developing a niche in high school is one of the top top top ways to prove to your prospective school that you know what you want to do and will be a valuable asset to their campus. If you’re interested in Political Science, one of their most popular majors, you should have more than just AP Gov and treasurer of the Student Council to show for it. You should have experiences like interning for a member of the government (local, state, federal, we love ‘em all), knocking on doors for a candidate, working the front desk at a political consulting agency, starting a grass-roots movement, or successfully lobbying your city council to increase library funding on your application. We know this can be challenging to do on top of a sports schedule, but for most of you, the season isn’t year-round.
A Stellar Essay
In the summer before your senior year, you should start working on a Common App essay. You’re lucky, because Middlebury doesn’t have any supplemental essays, but that doesn’t mean you can slack on the Common App. The Common App essay is more of a brainstorming exercise than anything else, so we recommend starting early so you can finish early. It’ll suck if you haven’t done any work on it and you find yourself scrambling on October 31st to get it done. Just don’t write it about your sport.
Athletic Talent
We generally tell students who work with us to quit sports if they don’t truly see a future in which they are being actively recruited for it (controversial but correct!). We’re not anti-sport, per se, but as you’ll see, getting a spot on a collegiate team is hard. If you’re not confident in your ability, then ditch the sport and spend that time building your niche and studying. But if you’re here, you probably feel pretty solid about your chances of playing D3 lacrosse. Make sure you’re ready for the new challenges that collegiate sports bring–there’s a much larger time commitment that comes with NCAA sports that high school just didn’t have.
Getting recruited to play an NCAA sport is hard, even if it’s D3. Many students who seek out spots on D3 teams are just as qualified to play on D1 teams, but they’re actively looking for schools that will give them a better education and not take up as much of their time as a D1 sport might. But that’s not even the biggest challenge in your way: you also need to have the grades, scores, extracurriculars, and essays to get into Middlebury on your own. And make sure you want to go to Middlebury because it’s Middlebury, not just because they want you on the track team.
If you need help strategizing for college admissions, navigating the process, or writing your essays, reach out to us today.