Episode 120: High Academic Baseball Recruiting Breakdown

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:11] Speaker B: Welcome to this week's edition of Dugout Dish Podcast. I am Andy Kirakidis, joined by my wonderful co host, Keith Glasser. How we doing? [00:00:19] Speaker A: Great. How are you? [00:00:20] Speaker B: Good. We're going to talk about a topic that we are intimately familiar with. Unique space in the recruiting world, but we're going to talk about high academic college baseball and high academic recruiting. Put together a little checklist here for us to try to follow. We'll see if we're able to stick to the, the bullet points here, but want to touch on the admissions process and how some of that works. I think there's some, there's some gray area in there and some assumptions that get made around how that works in the academic schools. Talk a little bit about athletes before academics and we'll, we'll clarify exactly what we mean by that when we get there. Want to talk about how competitive this particular arena of college recruiting is. And then we'll talk about timelines, how to get in front of schools. And then there's always the cost factor and some things that should be considered when it comes to the high academic world and how to potentially navigate the finances of all of this, which can get tricky with some of these price tags. So let's, let's kick it off with the athletes before academics combo because I think this is something that is important for people to understand and frame it up from a coach's perspective, kind of what they're looking for. So what are your thoughts on this, coach? [00:01:53] Speaker A: You need to be a baseball player first who happens to have really good grades. By and large, coaches are not going to just go looking for grades first and then athletics second, generally. And by and large it's going to be, do you have the physical skill set to be able to play at their level of competition? And then where do your grades slot in after that? You know, I think the only caveat to that statement would be, you know what your major, your intended major is going to be. And I say it from the standpoint of when I was at rpi, you know, if you were more of a liberal arts type kid, where you wanted to be a history major or an English major or journalism, something of that nature. We didn't have that at rpi. So that would be, you know, that would be the lone kind of caveat to the academic piece of, of that conversation of like, hey, what, you know, what is your intended major? Well, it's history. Like, okay, we don't have history. So, you know, I wish you the best of luck. And if anything, Changes, let me know. You know, so if there's a niche in which a school might be where, you know, RPI is generally more STEM focused, you know, that that would be the loan time where the academic piece might, from the jump be something that coaches might kind of like, you know, they might just check the box on, like, hey, what, what's your intended major? Right. Like, I don't really need to know all the other stuff right now, but what is, what are you, what are you interested in majoring in to make sure that they have it before they go down the road of, of recruiting you even further. But for the most part, it's going to be what is your initial skill set and how does that fit into their program, their level of competition, what they're looking to do. And then from there, we'll start to figure out whether or not we think you're going to be able to be admissible academically or even competitive in the admissions process. Right. So, you know, it's going to vary school to school on what they can do from a support standpoint, you know, so that, that could change some things for some people. But, you know, the rule is, like, we're going to make sure that you are going to be able to play at our level first, and then we'll. We'll figure out the academic piece second. [00:04:22] Speaker B: Yeah, and I think that that's oftentimes. And, you know, we've talked to people about this and we've definitely mentioned it on the podcast before, but I think oftentimes there's a little bit of a misconception that it's kind of the other way around. And make no mistake about what we're saying, the academics matter. Right. But the coaches are going to evaluate you on your ability to contribute to the program, and that's where it starts. And then they're going to go and check that box around. All right, Is this kid academic enough for us? Has he done what he needs to do in the classroom? That's going to happen in very quick sequence. If they think you are a player, that is good enough for them. But having a 1500 and a 4.0 with 10 APS doesn't qualify you to go play at Yale if you're not good enough to play at Yale. So just understanding that, I think, is a really good place to start. I mean, at the end of the day, these high academic schools don't get it twisted. They want to win. This isn't a bunch of smart kids rolling out baseballs and having a good time. And you know, it's not club baseball. The Ivy League is legit. Division 3 High Academic Baseball is super, super competitive. They need ball players, they need athletes, they need competitors. And probably the simplest way to put it is they want baseball players who are smart, not smart kids who like to play baseball. And I think that there is a very strong distinction between those two. And it's important for people to understand for two reasons. One, grades don't just get you in the door because you have really good grades, but from a mindset perspective, coaches are looking for guys that baseball is, is 1A on their list of things that are important to them, right? 1A, 1B academics. In baseball, they don't need guys who put the academics way ahead of the baseball because they need dudes who are going to show up, who are going to do the, the things that need to be done to be competitive at that level. And I think a good way to frame up the level of competitiveness is if you take a look at the Ivy League right now and you track some of these guys who had extra years of eligibility and where they're going, you, you got a handful of Ivy League guys, more than a handful, that are all over ACC and SEC rosters. And I think that's a testament to the level of play in the Ivy League right now. And it's not any different. It's not much different for the Patriot League and some of these other high academic division ones. You know, you start talking about like Davidson and Richmond and Georgetown and you know, I'm definitely leaving some off. But like, you think about these elite academic schools, the kids who are playing at these places can play the game at a really high clip. You know, Davidson's had a top 50 draft pick recently. Richmond's got guys that have moved on from their program to the sec. It's ultra, ultra competitive. And that's what these coaches are looking for. They're not looking for the student athlete, they're looking for the athlete student. And I think that's a really important. [00:07:38] Speaker A: Distinction, without a doubt. You know, and I think the, the fallacy is that if you have really good grades, you're going to be able to go play at X school. And that's, that's just not always going to be the case 100% of the time. You know, having really good grades at its at the baseline is going to keep more doors open to you longer. Right? You're going to be able to have a lot more opportunities to be able to find a place to play because academically you're going to be competitive in the admissions process at a lot of schools in the country. The other side of that too is that you're going to, depending on where you end up landing, you're going to command more merit, scholarship money, things like that when you get to those schools. But the idea that just because you have really good grades automatically means that you are going to be able to go play in the Ivy League, the Patriot League, the nescac, the Liberty League, Landmark Conference, Centennial, keep naming them, that's just not going to be overall true for everybody. You're going to have to have the requisite athletic skills to be able to fit in, in those programs and legitimately be actively recruited to, into those programs. And then the flip side to it is to actually play once you get there, you know. So I think that the, the idea, while grounded in, in a sense of reality, it, it's, it's flipped on its head from a recruiting and a coaching standpoint that, you know, you, you, yes, you want to have really good grades. I don't care who you are, you want to be the best that you can be academically because again, it's going to keep as many doors open for as long as possible and it gives you more options in the recruiting process. That said, just because you have good grades does not mean that you end up in a high end academic baseball conference. You're going to have to be able to play and you're going to want to, you're going to have to love baseball, you're going to have to love the weight room because you're going to spend a lot of time doing it, you know, so it's, especially at the Division 3 level, with the limited amount of time that they get to spend with you, you're going to have to do a lot of this stuff on your own. So you're going to have to love it and you're going to have to want to after it when you're there, you know, in that piece. You know, generally they do go hand in hand with the academics, but you know, it's not to your point, it's not a club. It's not, you know, it's serious baseball being played at a high level. I mean, the number one team in the country right now is Johns Hopkins, like one of the toughest schools in the country to get into. And I think they're like 36 and 3. They're the number one seed overall in the Division 3 NCAA tournament. So you, you know, go watch them. They're a pretty good baseball team and they got a lot of really good baseball players there. So, you know, it's not just the idea that I can be really good academically and that's going to lead me to being able to play at a really good high end academic school. You're going to have to be able to be a really good baseball player paired with being a really good student to be able to get your foot in the door at those types of schools. [00:10:55] Speaker B: Yeah, spot on. I think the other thing of note in the academic conversation is how competitive it is. One obviously the academic portion, right. You need to be able to get into some of these schools that are incredibly selective. But I think the other thing that is important to note is how competitive it is for those spots. Right. These schools don't have, you know, the Ivy League and the Patriot League and the NESCACs and you know, schools in the Centennial and you know, you got the UAA schools like Emory and Washu and Chicago, they don't have unlimited spots that they can support with admissions. Most of these schools, and I would venture to guess I'd be willing to say all of them. I know, and we'll get into this how it works a little bit different at each school. But for the sake of the conversation, there's limits to how many of these guys, how many guys at these schools can actually support through the admissions process. You know, Harvard doesn't get to, they don't get to support 25 guys and see what happens. They have a number of guys that they're able to support in the academic process to help them get into school. I mean, make no mistake about it, they still need to meet a Harvard standard. But there are very limited spots. If you take a look at the Ivy League, you're probably on any given year you're looking at about 65 kids who get to go and play Ivy League baseball. That's an incredibly small population of people that fit that niche that they're good enough to play really competitive Division 1 baseball and also have the grades to get into into those schools. Right. You could argue it's more competitive to get into one of those schools than it is to go into play in the ACC where they might have a 12 man class for 16 teams that are in that conference like you do. The numbers, there's more kids to play at that level than there are guys that are going to match up and play in the Ivy League. But there's a trickle down effect to that. Right. Like all those other schools that we're talking about and you were a part of it at rpi. I experienced it at Vassar. It, it funnels down the 70th and 75th kid that were borderline Ivy League guys. They're going to go play in the nescac. They're going to go get an elite engineering degree at RPI or MIT or wherever. There's just not that many spots at schools of that caliber. So it is ultra, ultra competitive to get in front of these schools, prove that you're good enough to play there, and then also have the academic chops to fit in. Because once again, it's not, this is not club baseball. These are, these are serious programs. You know, you look at Division 1, mostly Division 3, not a lot of Division 2 schools fit into this category. But it's not a coincidence that every year there are a handful of elite academic institutions that are in the top 25 teams that go and play in the College World Series. Like you mentioned, Johns Hopkins, right. Washu's been in the World Series. Pomona has been in the World Series. Middlebury has been awesome recently. They're going to be in the NCAA Tournament. Again, these are really, really competitive programs. Swarthmore has been in the College World Series. They play at a high level while holding up the academic standard that is needed to be accepted in schools of that caliber. [00:14:29] Speaker A: Yeah, and it's, it goes back to the original point of they're looking for baseball players who also happen to be very smart. And you know that we can go down a rabbit hole of the admissions process, which we'll probably do here in a couple minutes. But the, you know, it's, it's always, it always has and it always will start with baseball players first and then finding guys that are, that fit the mold academically and you know, let's face it, socially and you know, everything else that, that is going to go into being on a campus, right, like it's, it's a little bit of a different place. Rpi, like it just is, it's not a bad thing, you know, but there's, there's certain people who just like any other school go and visit and they're like, yeah, this, I don't think this is going to be for me. There's other people like, yeah, I fit in perfectly here. This is exactly what I want, you know, so it's, it's finding that piece to it too. Because you can find differences in, in all of these high end academic schools that, you know, some campuses are like, every campus is going to be different so what does that look like for you when you go there too? Like, you might dream of always wanting to go to Bucknell, but then you go and visit and you're like, I don't know if Lewisburg Penn is really for me. And that's okay, you know, but like, it's things like that that you know, also factor into this. But again, it's, it's going to start with can you play baseball and can you be competitive at this level from an athletic standpoint? And then let's go down the road of are you going to be competitive and admissible from an admission standpoint? And then how much is it going to cost? What does that look like, all of those things? Because let's face it, like at high end academic institutions, like the elephant in the room for all of this is the straight up cost of the education at these places too. That has to be a factor in your decision making when you're going through this process too, because to your point, it's very, it's very competitive from an admissions standpoint just in general. Right. Like with anybody who's just trying to go and apply to those schools and be accepted, you know, So I think sometimes it, you get a little jammed up in, in getting, wanting to get into that school and having, you know, okay grades and you know, it's a hard realization to kind of see like, okay, they're going to get 40 applications for my college, for my high school, and I'm the, you know, 80th ranked student in the class. They're going to have a hard time justifying taking number 80 when they're denying 15 through 40. So like that, that's something that, you know, I think needs to be considered as well. And we can talk about that a little bit more at the admissions piece. Um, but the, the, the, the, the high end academic world is not as cut and dry from a, from an academic standpoint that I think it lends itself to sometimes. And it's easier to think about through the Ivy League because like, yeah, I don't have Ivy League grades, but I think I can get into these schools. And you know, they're, they're wildly competitive from an admissions standpoint. So like, you know, this is why we always harp on the fact like you want to do, to be the best version of yourself academically so that you give yourself the best chance to be admissible in a lot of these places. [00:18:11] Speaker B: I mean, you're talking about. I just pulled up, I just did a little, little quick impromptu search which is More your specialty than mine. But, you know, you start looking at some of the acceptance rates at some of these schools, right? And I won't even include the. The Ivy Leagues because, you know, you're talking Harvard at 3%, Columbia at 4%. Right. These numbers might not all be completely accurate, but you're looking at getting an idea of how competitive it is. MIT 4%, University of Chicago 5%. You know, you start getting into Swarthmore 7, Colby 7. Like, these places are elite academic institutions where when you're Talking about accepting 7% of your applicants, the, the level of selectivity that you're able to have, you can absolutely 100% pick the 100% cream of the crop, which I think we should take a few minutes and kind of unveil the admissions process at some of these schools, how it works, how some of the systems are in place. This is definitely veiled, right? I am not an admissions counselor, but what I can tell you is that there's more that goes into it than your test scores and your transcript. Where you're from, the high school you go to, where you profile with your particular high school matters, and it's something that factors in. And I ran into this ambassador where we would bring a kid to the table from the admissions perspective to, hey, we really, really like this kid. On the surface, he checked a lot of the academic boxes that we were looking for. You're talking low to low to mid 30 ACT type kids, 32,33 4.0s with the prerequisite APs, but they happen to go to a high school where that student is the 30th best student in that high school and will have eight applicants from that high school that are better students than him. You may not be able to get in as a result of where you go to school. So it's not quite as simple as transcript test scores, right? They're considering school profile, they're considering the amount of APs that are offered, and how many of those are you taking relative to your transcript. They're looking at extracurriculars, they're looking at what state are you from, you know, how are they going to be able to populate their campus with geographic diversity? Like these are things that actually factor into it that I think sometimes on the surface get overlooked. The other thing is there are systems in place for athletic support through the admissions process. All of these schools have some level of communication with their admissions department to understand guys that they're recruiting whether they're going to be admissible or potentially admissible into that particular school. In general, most of the schools have a system that somewhat mirrors the Ivy League, which they use what they call the academic index. I'm not going to get into the 221 and the 193 and all that kind of stuff, but basically what they're trying to do, a version of the academic index, is each applicant gets assigned a number in your class based on your spots, needs to average out to a certain number in order for you to accumulate a class that is going to be able to get into school. So if you have a guy who is a 36 Act4.0 with nine APS and he's the valedictorian, that might give you a little bit of wiggle room with somebody who might be a little bit lower than the normal standard. Right? That's the general. The general system. Each school has their own little nuances of that process. Other schools operate off of a slot system or a color system where you've got like A bands, B bands, C bands, or green, red, yellow, and you get a certain amount of kids that fit into those particular bands that you can support in a particular class. I was talking to a coach at a Division 3 school, super high academic, Division 3 school, who's given me some insight into how things have changed over the years. And basically what they have is a set number of A bands. A bands are going to be kids that are very much admissible, people who meet the standard at that school. B bands are going to be. You're really, really competitive. But if we threw you into the general population, it's probably a coin flip. And then you get maybe one quote, unquote C band where that needs to be your top guy. There's very few circumstances where that person would get in without you having full support of them from an athletic perspective. So this idea that if we like you, we can get you in because we work with admissions is a little bit false. Coaches certainly communicate. They get an understanding of where a kid sits in the admissions process, but they are limited by the factors that are put forth to them by the admissions office. Because once again, when you're as selective and competitive as some of these schools are, they don't need to bend over backwards to bring in an athlete because there's kids banging down the door with credentials just as good as them to get into that school. And I think that's an important thing for people to understand. Now, you've gone through this as a head guy, am I right? [00:24:14] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. I Thought you were gonna continue on with a, with a, With a statement there. [00:24:19] Speaker B: I paused for a second because I was trying to. A stream of consciousness there. [00:24:24] Speaker A: Sure. [00:24:24] Speaker B: No pause. By the way, don't comment on that on the YouTube channel. But. [00:24:30] Speaker A: Yes, I, It's. I think it's. Now, my, my process is a little bit different at rpi, but, you know, it's going to vary school to school, and that, that, that stuff is going to hold true at a lot of different institutions. But what's always going to be. I would, I'm never going to say never, but I would argue that 99% of the time, you. All coaches are bound by admissions at the end of the day. Like you, You're. You can't go to admissions and say, I really want this kid. This kid's really good, but he's below the academic standard here, and they're just going to let him in. You're going to have. That kid's going to have to have some semblance of competitiveness from an admissions standpoint for them to even think about it. Right. And some of these schools have super hard deadlines when it comes to admissions. You know, and specifically within the academic world, the transfer deadlines are pretty hard and firm. And they're extremely early. You know, like March for fall semester transfers, where, you know, a lot of people aren't necessarily thinking that they're going to leave, whatever it might be. They're not in the portal. Can't really get in the portal, whatever situation you have. So it's hard for these kids to, to really know that they need to apply and go there, and you miss that window. But from an undergraduate standpoint, there are two. Right. So Division or RPI had November 15, I believe was always early decision one, which is a pretty firm date. December. Usually it was like December 15th or November 1st. Excuse me. It was early decision one, December 15th, be early decision two. And then regular decision was always February 1st or January 15th or February 1st. It depended on the year. But generally speaking, it's in that window. Now, as long as you have your application in on time, all of your other stuff can come afterwards. And that's generally the same rule at all colleges. You just have to have your app in because you're not really submitting all of your other stuff. It's typically going to be your guidance counselor, so they know that it's not on you. But as long as you're absent in time, you're going to be good. But those deadlines are firm. Right. Like at RPI I could not go. I know there are a lot of schools that kind of have the rolling admissions piece where like, hey, it's March of your senior year and you want to apply to said school. There are a lot of schools out there that do do rolling admissions that will allow you to apply and get accepted and then you can enroll in the fall, you know, at a lot of high end academic institutions. That's not going to fly. Like they're probably getting prepped to send out admissions and denial letters around that time. March, April, especially in April, because usually start of May is when you have to deposit, you know, so like they're not entertaining anyone coming in super late, right? It's gonna be, you know, though, you're gonna have to be in, in November, December, January, February at the absolute latest to get, you know, admitted into these schools. So, you know, for me, and I, I've gone through this process and I, I have not talked to Coach Falcon about this, who's currently the head coach at rpi, but I would imagine it's about the same. You know, we would have likely letters that we were able to do and essentially what we were, you know, we had to get some academic information, you know, a transcript, class schedules, things of that nature, and you know, a couple other things that very minimal information, but enough to kind of give a snapshot from an academic standpoint. And if admissions thought that you were going to be admissible, they would tell you like, you know, as long as you continue on this path, you will be admitted when you come to rpi. You know, so obviously it's, it's like a good faith letter, right? Like you still have to hold, uphold your end of the bargain and continue on that path academically. If you don't, then yeah, you could absolutely get denied, you know, but as long as you continue to do what you're going to do academically, then, you know, you know, when you apply, you have a 95% chance of being admitted because you've done everything it is that you need to do. So we would, you know, we could use that from a recruiting standpoint of like, hey, as long as this continues to happen, you're going to be admitted. Now that said, in that process, as a coach, you know, what the general student and what the academic standards are at your school. I knew what they are at rpi, so I only brought kids to admissions that I felt would be competitive in the admissions process. If I thought it was going to be below what they would generally admit, then I, you know, I might Have a conversation of like, hey, this is what I have. What do you think? And then, you know, I would get the. Yeah, that's. That's probably not going to work here. And then I can go back and just say, like, hey, really sorry, but, you know, we're. It's not. You wouldn't be admissible here right now, and we're not, you know, I don't want to waste your time, you know, in doing this and going further down this road just to have you get denied in two, three, four, five months. And then you're left with, you know, thinking you're going to be okay, and you're not, you know, so it's. It does make it a little easier on, on the coach's end because you can kind of lean into the academic side of like, hey, I don't think it's going to work here academically, or, I know it's not going to work here academically, and it's a clean break, right? Like, you're not really leading anyone on. You're not telling anyone that any false information. It's just, hey, you know, I don't want to waste your time. I don't want to waste my time. Like, we're, you know, it's just not going to work here, you know, but it was certainly a recruiting tool because then you knew, right? Like, hey, you know, and it's super easy, right, when you're an unweighted 3.9Gpa with a bunch of APS and a 1352 part or 1400. 1450. Like, yeah, okay, I'm. I'm going to be able to do this in high school. I'll be fine, you know, and from there, it's like, hey, like, you got a spot if you want to come here, you know, and, and I think the, the other thing, too, to mention is generally speaking, you're not doing likely letters or, or putting guys in A, B or C bands if you're not genuinely interested in having them come to your school and recruit them. Like, you're not running likely letters on 150 kids that you've had, you know, email exchange or comment or, you know, a couple conversations with, like, you're, you're doing that on kids that are super high on your list that you want to come to your school, that you can kind of sweeten the pot, for lack of a better term, to get them to understand, like, hey, we really want you here at this school. This is what it's going to look like. You're going to be admissible this, like, here's what it is. And then at least the family has as much information as they can have in front of them to say, this is the, like this is the school I want to go to. You know, so it's, you know, like I said, it's different at every school and I know that it's different at every school in the Liberty League with what they can and can't do. But the thing that will always hold true is that admissions is always going to have the final say. And there is a. While there is a good working relationship with athletics and admissions, it doesn't mean that because they have a good working relationship, you like they're going to get whoever they want in all the time. That's just not going to be true across all these schools. They're going to, you know, eventually you're probably going to bring somebody that they're going to say, yeah, no, that's, that's not going to work out. Because as coaches we push the envelope to see how low we can go. But the reality is you're like you, you, you're still working within the framework of what you know, right? Like I was never going to go to admissions to be like, hey, here's a kid with a 27 and a 902 part. Can we get him into mechanical engineering? Like, I know that that answer is flat out no. Right? So like it was, there were certain, there's certain hard cutoffs that every coach is going to have in doing those things. You know, it's a game you have to play, but at the same time it's, you know, the idea that like, you know, well, if they like you, they're going to be able to get you in. That's, that's not 100% true. And I think the other side of it too is again going back to the cost of these institutions. If you're at the bottom of what the acceptance range is for their grades, you're not going to command a lot of the money from the school. And specifically in Division 3 where it's non athletic scholarship and it's all based off of need based money and merit scholarship money, you know that that is something to consider. Like you might be going to a school that all in is, you know, 92 grand for a year and you're going to get 15 in merit money and you know, who knows what you're going to get in need based, you know, so like those are things that you have to understand in this, in this realm of college baseball recruiting and Admissions that if, if that's what you aspire to, but you're kind of towards the bottom end of what they deem to be acceptable, you might not be getting a whole hell of a lot of support monetarily for you to go to school, you know, and that's, I would be remiss not to say that because you know, again, it falls in line with the same of like, if they like you, they can get you in like yeah, maybe. But that also would mean like if we can get you in and you're towards the bottom, you might not be getting a whole lot of money from financial aid. And that creates a whole other bag of issues that we're going to have to open up eventually with financial aid. And you know, they might be able to get you a couple thousand more here and there, but like you're not going to be getting what the top flight guys are or girls that are going to those schools to play, to play a sport, right? Like, you know, if you're a 40 unweighted and you got a 1500, you are getting a lot more money than the kid who's a 37 and a 1300 because that's going to be towards the bottom. They're going to try to give the most money to the people that they want to actually attend that school. And that's just, that's just what college admissions and financial aid is like, you know, and without, without athletic money it can get expensive. And that's just another thing to consider when you're talking high end academic athletics. [00:35:31] Speaker B: 100%. I think the other thing to add to that and not to be a downer about the price, but a lot of these schools that are in that elite category, they don't give merit money. It's only financial aid need based money. And that can make it really difficult because you don't have an in to get that cost cut, right? And it's not all schools, but a lot of these really elite schools, they're, they're not going to provide merit based money. It's almost all going to be based off of the family's financial situation and what you qualify for. The good news is, is that most of these schools have really accurate financial aid calculators where you can go onto their website, you can enter in your financial information as long as you're being truthful, right? Because the FAFSA is going to dig on stuff, right? Assets and all that kind of stuff. But if you're, if you're honest about what you put into that calculator, it'll give you a really good understanding of here's how much you're gonna be on the hook for on a year to year basis. And that can change every year, Right. Some schools take into consideration if you have another, if you have another child who's in college and they'll treat that as an expense and you'll get different financial situ, you'll get different financial packages based on that. Some schools don't care. This is the price tag, this is what you show financially. This is how much money you're going to get. Some of these schools, it's become more popular. I think it's awesome that if you're below a certain income, you may not pay anything. Right? So doing your due diligence on the financial piece I think is really important for people. And I think the next layer to this conversation around the financial piece is that if finances are a concern, which for a lot of people they are, right. College is incredibly expensive. And it doesn't matter if you're going to one of these elite schools, it's going to cost 85 plus thousand dollars or even in state tuition can be too much for some people. If you're a great student, you can use that to your advantage. And maybe you don't get the bumper sticker that sticks out at the country club, but you can go to a great school instead of an elite school, get 50% off the rep because you're a great student and you can get a great degree for a lesser cost. Right? And that's something that I think that I would encourage families to strongly consider because there's some fantastic academic institutions that will willingly give out merit based money to students who excel. So if finances are a concern, yes, you need to kick the tires, right? If you're one of those elite students, if you're the 1450, 150040 with 8, 8 or 9 APs, top of your class type of student. But finances are a concern, go do your due diligence on the elite schools that you may be able to get into. But if those price tags are too high, go to that next tier of school and figure out where you may fit in from a financial perspective. There's because those schools open up a ton of doors post graduation as well. And you can do some due diligence on what some of the post graduation outcomes are because you'd be shocked at how good some of those outcomes are at schools that aren't in that Nescac, Ivy League, Patriot League conversation. They're just that one tier below, you can get an amazing outcome from a school for significantly less cost. And I think sometimes people go into this, this conversation when you're an elite student and it's like, I'm going to go to an elite academic institution no matter what, and you end up in $300,000 worth of debt when you get out of school. Right. If mom and dad have the, have the means to pay for you to go to a NASCAC school or an Ivy League school and you're a good enough player to go there, by all means, good for you, go get it done. But if that's something that is a concern, you need to do some research on some schools that may provide that opportunity for money to be given to you. Right. That price tag to be slashed because you did excel academically while you're in high school. [00:40:03] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think one of the other things too is the, what's the end game? Right? You know, what, what is the end game for what you want to do with your career? And you might not know, and that's fine, you know, but there are schools out there that do offer, you know, five year accelerated degrees and six year accelerated degrees. Or you know, that you can do a five year bachelor master's program at a lot of schools where your financial aid package stays for all five of your years and you graduate in that fifth year with your bachelor's and master's together because your financial aid can, can stay for that fifth year. And you know, on the same hand, back to the end game, you know, if you're somebody who wants to be a doctor or psychologist or whatever, where you're going to eventually need to get your master's or more schooling. It's not the worst a teacher, let's say, right? Like it's not the worst idea in the world to get a teaching degree at a state school for a fraction of the cost where you're going to graduate in four or five years with your master's and be certified to teach in said state. Right. Like you need to actually be. I, I'm fairly certain of this so people can fact check me, but I'm fairly certain the state of New York, like you need to be certified by the state of New York. If you go to Bates and you want to teach in the state of New York, you're going to have to take some extra steps in order to end up being certified. Where, like let's say you go to Brockport, you're going to graduate and be certified immediately. And for a fraction of the cost. So you know, it's, it's, at the end of the day, it's what you want to get out of it and what you're doing. But I think it's worth asking the question of what is the end game, right? And I think sometimes, you know, these elite schools, and I've worked at them, you know, we, we applaud that we deny 96% of applicants, you know, but like, I don't know, I don't know. And I'm saying this as somebody who worked in the high end academic world for 10 years, albeit at a different place where, you know, it was stem, it was engineering, it was computer science. It's a lot of stuff that's, that's highly technical and relevant in today's world. Like, I don't know how much different a liberal arts degree is at a super high end academic institution. And the history degree I got at Marist College, like, and I'm not saying this to be negative towards anybody, but like, I mean the history that I learned is probably the same history you're learning at that school. Like that stuff hasn't really changed. I mean, I could be wrong. But that said, it's just, I just think that it's something to think about in the process, right? Like, it's not, it's not something that needs to be, you know, the determining factor. But like, think about that in the long run. Like, hey, I want to be a history major. Like, it's going to cost me $300,000 to be a history major at this school or $60,000 in four years at this school. Like it's history, it's not much has changed. [00:43:32] Speaker B: No, I think it's a really important thing for people to think about, right? Because every, every family has different needs, they have different means to be able to afford this stuff. And to your point, the end game matters, right? You go to college if you have to pursue education post graduation, post undergraduate education graduation, there are very few mechanisms to get money for graduate programs. And you're pretty much going to pay full price if you're going to get a master's degree. Now there's grants, there's different things that can, that you can apply for, but for the most part they don't take money off of the sticker price because you were really good in your undergraduate. It's not like high school where they're trying to get you to come to that school. When you go to a master's, go to get a master's degree or you Go to pursue your PhD. You're choosing to go into that. It's looked at a little bit differently. So if you can do really well in a more cost effective manner under, from an undergraduate perspective and then pursue a master's degree, you're going to save yourself money on the front end. Right. And to your point, what you're studying, I think needs to factor in and you need to think about, well, what am I going to make when I get out of school, what am I trying to pursue? And these are all pieces of the puzzle that I think need to be considered, especially in the academic world, because of the cost of education. Right. I'm looking at some, I'm looking at a list of schools right now. Some of these elite schools, they're minimum $75,000 just in tuition. Just in tuition? Minimum, yeah. [00:45:18] Speaker A: Like the total cost of attendance when you start going into books and meal plans and the like that number starts climbing north of 85 to 95 very quickly. And you know, it's, I get it. I lived in that world. We still live in this world. Like this is why, you know, we do a lot of what we do. And I'm not, I'm not negating this by any stretch of the imagination. I just think sometimes that it's worth, it's worth thinking about your end game and it's hard to do when you're 18 years old or 17 years old, 16 years old, but understanding that, you know, there's more options out there and what you could be doing. And I think the other side of it too, there's a lot of schools out there that are really, really good at. They're a good school. Right. But they're really elite or super high end at one or two different majors or programs within that school. And it's worth looking into those types of things as well. [00:46:36] Speaker B: Right. [00:46:36] Speaker A: Like if you wanted, I can't even think of one off the top of my head right now. But like Brockport for example, because my wife just walked in the door. Like they're really like, it's teaching and nursing, they're elite at it. For the SUNY system and the state of New York, you don't have, you don't have to just go to a private school to do it. You can do it at the state level and get a really, really good degree in educational experience because that's really what they focus on and that's their niche and that's what they're good at. Not to say that they're not good at other things. But you get my point here, that there's schools out there that have really good programs within their academic setting that are a step above what might. That. What might be considered their, you know, their ceiling as an overall school. [00:47:31] Speaker B: Yes, yes. The, the other thing I want to touch on before we close this out because I think that this is an important thing to understand and it's less about the actual recruitment process and more about the preparation to get in the conversation with some of these schools. Right. If you have aspirations of going to an elite academic institution, some of the stuff that we've talked about before, Ivy League, Nescac schools of that nature. Right. Understanding what you need to accomplish from an academic perspective is also very important. Right. Just like trying to be a college athlete, being good at the bare minimum isn't going to be enough. Right. A 4.0 with no APS and you're just taking regular courses or a transcript where your GPA is inflated by physical education and driver's ed. Like these schools are looking at rigorous just as much as they are anything else. And you need to excel in those rigorous courses. So taking aps early on. Right. If you're a parent who's listening to this or you're a younger student athlete who's listening to this, and you're a freshman in high school, your sophomore, junior year need to build towards the rigor that's going to be necessary to be admissible at some of these schools. Right. Taking one AP isn't moving the needle. At an S CAT school, you're probably going to need to take two as a sophomore, one as a sophomore, two or three as a, as a junior, three or four as a senior to be competitive from a rigor perspective. So you got to make sure that you're challenging yourself with what you're putting on your plate. Now, I'll caveat that with not all high schools are going to offer that many aps, but that's something that they consider. Right. If they know that you only. There's only 12 APs that were offered at your school and you took eight of them, you're going to be good to go. Or you took six of them. You know, they, they take that into consideration. The percentage of APs that you've taken relative to the number that are offered. But thinking that a 4.0 with all normal high school level classes is equivalent to the 3.8 with seven APs is a false, it's a false assumption. And in order to get into these schools, just like if you want to be a college athlete, you need to be willing to do the hard stuff. You have to be willing to challenge yourself with the weight room and the conditioning and the skill work. Like you have to put in all that extra work. If you want to go to one of these elite academic institutions, you're not going to be doing it by doing the bare minimum. Right. Not all A's are created equal. And I think that that's really, really important for younger student athletes and parents of younger student athletes to understand that if this is what you're driving towards, you need to build towards that. Because once you get to your junior year, you can't make up for it with AP's your senior year. You gotta, you kind of already have to have that resume built a little bit. So taking into that into consideration as a freshman, as a sophomore, as a junior, and building out a course load that is going to give you the opportunity to be in the conversation with some of these schools. It starts well before the recruiting process, the academic stuff starts well before you're going to actually get recruited. [00:51:05] Speaker A: Right. I also think to the. I lost my train of thought. Yikes. AP's challenging curriculum. Gosh, I'm sorry everybody. I completely lost my train of thought. The whole time you were talking, I was like, I have to piggyback on this and say one thing. And then it just completely went out the window. [00:51:35] Speaker B: We could come back to it. [00:51:38] Speaker A: Gosh. You, you were talking about curriculum rigor. Yeah, let's go back to that. Sorry, everybody. [00:51:47] Speaker B: All right. It'll come to you. Okay, so curriculum rigor, really important. Want to hit on this timelines and how to get in front of some of these coaches. Right. Most of the academic schools are going to operate on a little bit of a slower timeline for obvious reasons. Certain things need to be done from an academic perspective before they can fully evaluate whether you're going to be admissible or not. Do some of these schools move a little bit quicker? Go. [00:52:18] Speaker A: I got it. Before you forget came back, the, the. When it comes to the rigor and your transcript and those things, the one thing I was going to add on to it is if you're specifically looking at or you aspire to get into higher end academic institutions, their websites, specifically their admissions websites are great resources to use. You can go on there and you can see what, you know, the, the average SAT score, the average ACT score, what the average gpa, how the average aps, honors classes, IB credits, depending on what type of school it is. Right. You know, so you can go on There. The thing to keep in mind when you see all of those, right, Is that it's an average. Like exactly what it means. People look at it be like, well, it's a 1550. Like, yeah, but there's people below a 1550. You know, it's a 1300. Like there's people below a 1300 because like that's the average. That's how it works. But the other thing too is that, at least to my knowledge, I would imagine that every single admissions department in the country has a general email box that you can email these questions to as well. Like you can email and be like, hey, I want to be a mechanical engineer at rpi. I am a sophomore in high school. What, you know, what type of things does RPI look for in the admissions process for these students? And they'll give you a general email back that says, like, hey, you know, we look for, you know, your course rigor and you know, what type of classes you're taking. Like, if you want to be an engineer, you should probably take to at least pre calc and physics, right? Like, you don't want to just have like business and baking and underwater basket weaving on your transcript. Albeit, you know, very, very, very impressive that you can do it. Not really going to lend itself to you being an engineer, you know, so like you can ask those questions to the admissions departments as well. Nothing is stopping you from doing that and doing your research and due diligence on the front end from an admissions standpoint to see what it is that that average student looks like. And do you, how where do you stack up in that, right? Like maybe your test scores aren't, are below the average, but everything else lines up to where you'd be above the average. Like you're probably going to be competitive in the admissions process, you know, so it's. I'm glad it came back to me because I think it's important, especially in this realm. Like this information is readily available from an admissions standpoint on these schools websites. Go do it, look at it and get that information so that you have it and you can kind of see where you stack up. [00:55:01] Speaker B: No, great point because we've talked about this with the engineering that there are certain math courses that you need to take to be competitive at certain engineering schools, period. Like if you don't have physics and you haven't gotten, if you haven't taken calculus and you haven't taken physics, there are certain schools that they're probably not even going to consider you because you haven't checked that box yet. So no great points. [00:55:26] Speaker A: I mean, it's, I'm not going to tell you, it's a non starter at rpi. Like, you have to have at least physics and pre calc by the time you graduate high school. Now if, you know, if you go above and beyond, you're probably going to put yourself in a better spot. Now, are there areas in which you can go get a college course and do things of that nature? Like. Yeah, absolutely there are. You know, but you might find yourself in, you know, I don't want, like, it's not remedial math, but you might find yourself in a very basic calculus course your freshman year to make sure that your foundation for what you're doing moving forward is strong, you know, and that. And it's, it happens every year. It's not a bad thing. Like, it's by no means is it. It's just what, it's what they do to ensure that you are going to have success moving forward, not just throw you to the wolves and hope that you figure it out. They want to make sure that you have the success moving forward. But like, if you don't have pre calc or physics, it's going to be really hard to be admitted as a, as an engineer at a school like rpi. [00:56:31] Speaker B: Well said. Timelines, all right. They're typically slower, right. For obvious reasons. Most of these schools, they need to have a pretty good idea where you're at academically before they're going to be able to make a commitment to you from an athletic perspective. Right. There are outliers like everything else. Right. But we're talking more norms. Are there going to be some Ivy League kids who are 20, 27 that made commitments this fall? Yeah, probably. But I can tell you right now that's going to be contingent upon them doing some stuff, right. That they knock out what they need to knock out academically. There's going to be some guidance on what they need to put together from a senior year class perspective, all that kind of stuff. We've been through that with some guys. But for the most part, the high academic schools, if you're a 20, 26, like, this is when it gets really serious, right? You're coming to the end of your junior year, you've got a complete picture of what you've accomplished your first three years of high school. This is when it really gets hot and heavy, Right. It doesn't mean, like I said, the Division 1 stuff is a little bit different. Right. High academic division ones, they're going to Try to move a little bit earlier if they can. Right. But there are limitations. As we said earlier, you're, you're subject to the admissions department. And most coaches in good conscience aren't going to extend an offer to a kid if they don't have some sort of an indication that that kid's going to be admissible at their school. Potentially with some, some boxes that need to be checked. Right. But I can tell you that Ivy League coaches aren't offering kids and then praying for the best. They got a pretty good indication of this is what you're taking your junior year. This tracks with what gets you in here. We need to make sure that we, we do what we need to do in the classroom, stay on the up and up and kind of hold up your end of the bargain there. But the high academic Division Threes, you know, what's it May 13, it's starting to get hot and heavy, right? Transcripts, final junior year transcripts, test scores are coming in, getting ready for the summer. Like this is when it gets busy for these schools. But in general, they don't operate on the same timeline as the SEC and the ACC and the Big 12 and some other Division 1 schools that don't have the same academic barriers. And I think that's important for people to understand. That just tends to be a little bit slower for good reason. [00:59:01] Speaker A: I'm going to push back just a tad bit on your it gets hot and heavy at the Division 3 level now statement kind of for what you just said. But the, you know, a lot of these schools need to see where you are at at the end of your junior year. Right. So most of those people, most kids aren't going to start finding that out until, you know, mid to late June with where you are, what your test scores look like. And then the other side of the coin for that is all of the, you know, I believe the NESCAC has a starting date on when they can start talking to admissions with stuff, you know, rpi, unless it's changed since I was there. We never really had like a firm start date. But, you know, it was definitely later, you know, mid to late July and into August when they would start kind of doing that stuff, you know. So like you're, you know, everyone and, and I think we talk, I think the podcast and it's going to come out on Monday. For those who listen, the Hurry up and Wait podcast there, while it seems like everything is moving very slow and, you know, there's not much action going on, it'll start to heat up here once you start getting to the end of June into July and August, because that's when coaches are really going to start to move on where you are academically, what that looks like, what your transcript look like, where are your test scores, and then, you know, where. Let's get you to campus. Let's see if we can get you admitted, those types of things. So it might seem a little slow right now, and it's by design, but there's a lot of moving pieces in all of this. It's not just, you know, we talked about it earlier, where admissions is the one that ultimately has the final say in this. Like, they have to be a part of the process as well. On the front end, you know, it is. You know, are there going to be outliers in this process? Absolutely there are. If you walked in my office at RPI and you had a 4 oh unweighted, and you were 1550, like, I know that you're getting admitted, right? Like, there's going to have to be a catastrophe for you to not be admitted. If you have a 4o unweighted, with a ton of AP courses that you knock down A's in and you're a 1552 part, who wants civil engineering? Like, that's an easy one to be like, hey, like, I don't really need. We're going to do an early read and all this stuff. So we have it in writing, but we don't really need to do an early read because this one's relatively easy on this side of things, you know, so it's. Obviously there's going to be, you know, it's a different scenario for every kid, for every family. But that would be my loan pushback that like it until you get your final junior year transcript and you have an idea like, you know, and most of these schools can't really start doing anything with their admissions department until later into the summer, earlier in the fall. That's when it'll. But from that point forward, it's going. It can spin up really quickly on you for what's going on. Because all of a sudden, four, five, six schools are saying, like, hey, we're, you know, we can get you admitted. You know, you're going to be admitted at this school. Admissions really likes what you've done. We like what, like, let's get, like, let's get you on campus. Let's see what we can do. See if we can be the right fit, you know, so we can spin up pretty quickly from there. It just might Seem like a. A slow burn until you get there. [01:02:33] Speaker B: No, I think that's a good clarifying point. I should have been more specific around. This is when things are starting to come into clarity for these guys. But you're absolutely right. Like, offers and all that kind of stuff probably are still several months away. But this is when those coaches are freeing up to be able to evaluate guys and, you know, get an idea where they stand academically. So, no, thank you for. Thank you for pushing back, Keith. [01:03:00] Speaker A: It's my fault, Andy. [01:03:02] Speaker B: No, no, Keith. It's my fault. [01:03:04] Speaker A: My fault. [01:03:05] Speaker B: Accountability on this. [01:03:06] Speaker A: My fault, Ryan. [01:03:07] Speaker B: My bad. [01:03:10] Speaker A: And there's a guest appearance for my wife. [01:03:12] Speaker B: Hi, Brie. All right. Anything we didn't cover? [01:03:22] Speaker A: No, I think we. I think we covered a lot of what we needed to cover, even more than we probably needed to on this high academic podcast. But I think this one, like, this one's a tad bit different from other ones that we've cut. Like, I think we pulled the veil back on a lot of things and probably raised some questions for people who listen to this podcast and think about the high academic world, about whether or not. Whether or not it's worth it for you, but there's more than just meets the eye when it comes to, I have really good grades. I'm a good baseball player. There's a lot more that goes into this decision and what you want to do. And I'm glad we did this. [01:04:01] Speaker B: Yeah. For anybody who's listening, you know how to reach us if you got any questions on this, this topic in particular. Obviously, it's. It's something that me and Keith have been immersed in. So more than welcome to answer those. Hit us up on the interwebs, the social medias, if you have any follow on questions, anything that we talked about today. But thank you for listening. Tune in next time. We'll talk to you then. Thanks, everybody. Thank you for listening this week. If you're watching on YouTube, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and smash that, like button for us. Check us out on Apple Podcasts, Google podcasts, as well as Spotify. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram MDBaseball. If you want to find out what me and Keith do to help families and players navigate the recruiting process, go ahead and check us out on emdbaseball.com take a few minutes to check out our new online academy. I promise you'll get some good information out of that. Thanks again for listening. Check in with you next week.