Helpful advice, I don’t think ivies are top of his list, in-state tuition for this California parent worked well for the first kid that went out the door.
Maybe it’s a separate topic, but related. With Texas high school polo ramping up and it seems popularity growing outside of CA, what are the chances that more colleges will move to a D1 program? It seems like several in Texas could support it immediately, maybe some in Florida? That might open the door for more high school seniors.
that has been the dream for some time. With water polo being an offical sport, could lead to colleges adding the sport.
Max Preps is already on the bandwagon with 5 Texas High Schools on the top 10 national list.
Outstanding academics, great athletics, strong alumni network and overall college experiences can be found at the Claremont Colleges (Pomona, Pitzer, Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd and Scripps).
Both Pomona-Pitzer (PP) and Claremont Mudd Scripps (CMS) are extremely selective with very low admission rates, which means they’re getting very smart and well-rounded student athletes. Both PP and CMS have rosters that include some great players from the top HS programs. Some of these athletes could have gone D1, but are drawn towards the selectively and academic rigor found in the Claremont Colleges and the Ivy’s.
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Sort of going through this right now with a senior. The position your son plays matters big time. Is he a left handed wing/driver? Big plus. Is he a set or set guard - another big plus. If he’s a right handed driver the options get limited as there are a ton of those players out there. I agree with pick the school(s) first along with affordability and then go from there. Grades totally matter as well - expect that your student will need to get into that school without water polo. With the expensive privates in lower divisions all scholarships will be based on academics, not athletics…those $70-$85K a year schools can potentially be cut in half or more if strong academically. PP/CMU are high D3 academic institutions. From there you have Chapman/Occi, then redlands/cal lu and the rest. The only non D1 state school is UC Merced (with a good engineering program possibly - but middle of nowhere). I say you pick school first. East coast has a lot of good options too and are hungry for student athletes. My son as a junior last year got to go visit one and decided he didn’t want to go that far from home. For club purposes - it’s probably better development/improvement wise to stick with the good club, but if he wants to “be more of a player and get in game action” then might not be a bad plan - but I’d leave that to his deciding.
Thank you for the thoughtful response. He’s 6’2” 205 and very athletic at 16, plays both SET-D and SET. He’s open to going east but would rather stay in state. We’ll start to make some school visits over the winter break. Wish you the best in the months ahead, not an easy process!
Hi everyone. My name is Jennifer Jamison - I’m a former collegiate coach for Brown University & Pomona-Pitzer, as well as former program head for the girls water polo team at Harvard-Westlake and age group director at Rose Bowl. I recently stepped away from coaching, and started a business that strictly focuses on the recruiting process for high school water polo athletes. I know recourses are limited on gaining knowledge about the recruiting process, so I want to do what I can to provide information as well as personalized help for athletes. Relying on your athletes coaches to help during this process isn’t always helpful, for the most part they are typically part time coaches and have a lot of other responsibilities on their plate.
If anyone wants to learn more about the information I provide for parents and athletes here is my website, email, & instagram. I have a free e-book available for those who subscribe to my email list via my website. Feel free to reach out to me if anyone has questions!
www.collegepolopathways.com
@collegewaterpolopathways
jjamison@collegepolopathways.com
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No offense to Maxpreps - they do a good job for bigger sports like FB,BB and maybe Lax, but these rankings for polo are dubious at best. The output is limited by the inputs. There are plenty of schools that don’t participate (enter rosters/schedules etc) and all you have to do is look at JOs, ODP or Futures and these rankings don’t add up.
Believe me, I’m not trying to be a hater - East Coaster here for full disclosure. Sure TX and FL have been on the rise with some quality clubs and HS programs, but those more comprehensive competitions I’ve mentioned makes it hard to read too much into these rankings.
Separately, the hope that TX and FL could add collegiate Men’s WP is probably just that. Maybe if (when?) FB becomes a separate non-NCAA sport that could happen, but Title IX will always be an issue. If there’s going to be growth in collegiate D1 polo it’s almost certainly going to be on the Women’s side; see VB: 28 Men’s program and 346 Women’s programs in D1. Perhaps D3 could see growth on Men’s side but that’s also likely marginal.
These next few years will be… interesting!
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If a miracle happens and football is not counted for title IX, a few women’s teams would get cut and there may be a resurgence of men’s teams - but don’t count on it. A team that has swimming and a water polo team probably isn’t in a rush to add a 3rd team to use their pool
Ex:
Pepperdine has Men WP, swim, no WWP
SDSU, FS, Hawaii have Swim, WWP, no MWP
LMU cut their swim team, has MWP & WWP
Cal & UCLA built another 50m pool to accommodate demand of Swim & WP
There’s just not enough time in the day for everyone to get their practice times with school class schedules.
Yes, there are some schools that make it work with 3 teams and one pool, but I can’t find one where all 3 programs succeed
Ex: UOP- good MWP, ok WWP, Swim teams finished 7/7 (M) and 8/10 (W) in MPSF last year.
SJSU - good MWP, ok WWP, swim 2nd to last in conference.
Anyways, there are many hurdles to adding teams (title IX, convoluted WP rules not easily understood by outsiders, access to local competition) but don’t discount the facility needs and think “they already have a pool” that they’ll be eager to bring in another team.
Our best chance for getting into Texas may be SMU: private, swim teams and two 50m pools.
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Anyone know why the other five Ivies don’t add polo? Add both men’s and women’s and you stay in Title IX parity. With a full 8 team league the travel would be fairly light and hence low incremental cost. Bring in more wealthy California families. Win-win.
$$$ is the answer. Some were (are?) interested in starting a program but the price tag is endowing the program with $5-$10Mm. If any of the rich CA families is interested, I am sure they will find a buyer.
Going rate for Yale admission is 8 figures. Just need 20 families with age group kids to jump at this 99% off special!
While it’s always about the $$$ for all colleges, the money is perhaps not even a tertiary concern at the Ivies. Remember that all of the Ivies are relatively small, so the construction of their classes comes down almost to the student.
Said differently, adding 36 polo players is non-trivial across a number of measures: economic (a number of Ivies are already under pressure to keep their endowments free from taxes given how many students are coming from the 1% or even .1%); even with the AA no longer in effect, race and ethnicity remains an imperative (it’s not always, ahem, black and white, as the ruling said it may not be the only or primary reason for admission. They can still comprehensively use:
- Ethnicity/race
- Geographic location
- Recommendations
- Application essay
- Interview
- Non-GPA-related academic and other accomplishments
Again. With relatively small classes the marginal overweight on any of these vectors makes an outsized difference.
Then there are the facilities. They all have men’s and women’s swimming so pool time becomes yet another issue with the cherry on top being the sub-optimal shallow-deep (except Penn) configuration of the pools.
As a parent of an Ivy League swimmer and a current high school polo player I’m speaking from experience with the process and facilities.
Finally, there are a number of sports that would be ahead of polo in some theoretical queue if none of these other things mattered: volleyball, wrestling, golf and gymnastics - to name a few are all sports that were varsity at some point that have been cut from varsity level that have alumni support/pressure to bring back etc.
Personally I’d love nothing more, but….Sigh.
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My info (direct from coaching staff) is that with CalTech/MIT you have to get in first, then worry about water polo. And a 4.7GPA with 13 AP classes and 1575+ (800 Math) SAT may not be enough (was not in one example I know well).
That is, for the most part, correct. Unlike some other D3 schools, the coaches aren’t given any spots; “if the applicant meets these academic criteria, fire away. For X number of spots.” At MIT (full disclosure I’m an alum) for sure, it’s definitely “noted” along with all the other non-Academic pursuits and the coach may say something like, I HAVE to get this one kid, that increases their chances. But also remember that MIT’s classes are only around 1100 students only half of which are men for 16 sports. So, even a kid with that academic profile might just be “redundant”.
I feel like I’m being a negative ninny on this thread. However, as parents we have to be cold-eyed in this process and not get caught up in the hysteria that is so tempting to focus on and you end up playing whack-a-mole.
Anyway, hope this helps.
Roll Tech!
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Redundant is a perfectly cromulent description–the base applicant to an MIT/CalTech/Johns Hopkins (and some other elite academic institutions) carries a 4.5+GPA, over a dozen APs, and a 1550+ SAT. For admissions, putting together a class is not easy. CalTech enrolls ~250/year. MIT, ~1100; Hopkins, ~1500.
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Engineering? Has he looked into the Naval Academy? Doesn’t cost you a penny, and Academy grads are among the highest earning college grads by ranking. Usually top-5, higher than most of the Ivies.
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Yes, on his list, great institution and program for water polo.
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I would reach out to the coach directly and hear it from them. Coaches frequently use “admission requirements” as a way to gently tell players and parents that they can’t do anything for them. Additionally, at the top academic schools, coaches will tell certain players what the bar for scores/grades is and for the top recruits have a different bar. I can’t speak for Cal Tech, but until recently MIT had a unique system where the coach would submit to admissions his top ten players and admissions would select the handful of kids who get in from that list. Maybe its changed, but I doubt it. These schools have to have a system for making sure they are admitting enough players to fill the teams.
Not sure if this is the right topic for this questions however…
Does anyone know what is the deadline for colleges to decide if they are going to opt-in to the new NCAA rules around expanding scholarships , roster limits, etc…
Also, assuming you do not opt-in is there any governing of size of polo rosters minus the 4.5 scholarships currently.
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