The New England Small College Athletic Conference is made up of eleven top-tier liberal arts colleges and universities in the US, including Amherst, Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Connecticut College, Hamilton, Middlebury, Tufts, Trinity, Wesleyan, and Williams. Some of these schools are known as Hidden or Little Ivies, and some are more competitive than others to gain admission to. However, these schools also all have pretty robust athletics departments, even though they’re D3. If you’re interested in attending one of these small liberal arts schools and want to leverage your athletic ability to give your application that push: keep reading.
Because NESCAC schools are NCAA D3 institutions, athletics are not their primary focus. Yes, NESCAC is very competitive among the D3, but NESCAC themselves want you to know that it’s student-athlete, not athlete-student:
“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.”
Basically, if you want to play sports at a liberal arts school, you also need to have a robust, well-rounded liberal arts profile. You have to be able to get into the school without the sports recruiting on your profile. We’re doing deep dives on some of the most popular colleges with our clients, but let’s talk about what it takes to get into a top-tier NESCAC liberal arts school in general.
Grades
The acceptance rate for NESCAC schools varies from 9.1% (ayyy Bowdoin) to 37.4% (Conn College), with the average acceptance rate at all NESCAC schools being 17%, and for those statistics freaks out there, the median acceptance rate is 15%. What this tells us is that for the majority of NESCAC schools, you need a near-perfect GPA in order to be competitive. That perfect GPA also needs to be in the hardest, most rigorous classes available at your school. It doesn’t matter that you’re the fastest in the state if you have a 3.1.
Scores
Each school is going to have their own standards for admission, but if we look at the school with the lowest acceptance rate that actually publishes admissions data (cough, cough, we’re watching you, Bowdoin), we know that the median SAT score for Colby College was 1500, and the median ACT was 34. To compare that to a school on the higher end of acceptance rates, Wesleyan’s median SAT score was 1520, and the ACT median was 34. So what does this tell us? That at NESCAC schools, especially those under the 20% acceptance rate, you are looking at near-perfect SAT and ACT scores to be competitive. Remember, these are median. Not even the top range!!!!
Extracurriculars
A college application is essentially a persuasive essay with the thesis “I should go to this school,” and everything on your application is the evidence to back up this thesis. We know this comparison makes a lot of sense to you, because everyone reading this is a nerd who wants to go to a top-tier college. We were those nerds too!
So how do you build good evidence outside of grades and scores? Building a niche! If other students are applying as an English major, you need to take it a step further. You’re not just interested in English, you’re interested in American literature. Wait, not just American Lit, but 20th-century American Lit. Okay, now hold on a sec, now you’re even deeper, and you love Southern Gothic literature. Oh my god, you’ve done it again, you want to become the preeminent scholar on Truman Capote’s short stories.
You develop these niches by going deep into your extracurriculars. Reading, taking classes outside of school, internships, research, self-publishing, submitting op-eds and analysis pieces to magazines, etc., all can help prove that you’re interested in what you say you want to do.
A Great Common App Essay (and supplements!)
The Common App essay freaks out even the most talented high school writers. We get it. We advise approaching it as a creative brainstorming exercise and starting the summer before senior year. This gives you a lot of time to perfect your essay before school even starts.
Next on your list: supplements. Not all NESCAC schools have supplements, and a few of the ones that do are ‘optional.’ There is no such thing as optional in the application process! And even if they don’t have a supplement, we advise writing an email to admissions that provides them with the information a Why Essay would normally give them.
Athletic Talent
It's time for some tough love. If you're not being actively recruited, it's time to reevaluate your priorities. Those hours-long practices, weekend-long tournaments, summer conditioning camps, etc. can seriously add up and take away from your academic goals. Let's face it, getting recruited to play college sports is no easy feat. It's a long shot for most students, so unless you're feeling confident, it's probably best to focus on other extracurriculars that align with your academic goals. But hey, we’re here to support you. If you're determined to play sports at the collegiate level, then let's work together to make it happen.
Getting recruited to an NCAA athletic program, even if it’s D3, is not an easy feat. NESCAC schools are popular with our clients because it allows them to continue their athletic passions without sacrificing their academic goals. Also, we know that a school recruiting you can make you put on those rose-colored glasses faster than you can run the 100m, but it’s important to make sure that you want to go to school there because it’s a good fit–not just because they want you. It’s morbid, but if you broke your legs tomorrow, would you still want to be there?
f you need help strategizing for college admissions, navigating the process, or writing your essays, reach out to us today.