Headfirst Round Table Discussion: Building Your School List

February 28, 2019

At Headfirst Honor Roll Camps, our experienced and dedicated staff has been through the high-academic recruiting journey that you’re currently on. While each of us had a unique recruiting process – starting our research at different points, prioritizing different school features in our decision-making process and each finding our own unique stumbling blocks and path through the process – all of us were ultimately able to leverage our recruiting and admissions process to find the best all-around fit for our college experience.

Below, we interview our team on their experiences with building their school list. From the importance of “name recognition” to class size and distance from home, we hope that these insights give you some ideas and a framework for how to assess the schools on your list as you continue navigating your own unique recruiting process.

You can also click on any of the links below to skip ahead to that question:

  1. When did you start researching what schools you were interested in?
  2. What were your non-negotiables for your school criteria?
  3. What features started to matter less to you as you compared the schools on your list?
  4. What feature was more of a deciding factor in your decision than you expected it to be?
  5. Outside of athletics and academics, what was the biggest factor in your college decision?

 

  1. When did you first start researching what schools you were interested in?
  • Cory Spera, Lafayette College ‘15– Between my sophomore and junior years of high school. My original list of schools was: 1. UVA and 2. Harvard. It ended up being a pretty tough summer for me without a lot of success gaining headway with those programs. I was attending an Honor Roll Camp that August and that’s when I really started being diligent with my research to cast a wider net. I started at the top of the “Schools Attending” list on the Honor Roll website and researched/created a profile for every school that was attending.

 

  • Jack Marooney, Kenyon College ‘18 – I started looking at schools very casually my freshman year of high school. If we happened to be near a school for a tournament, we would go and check it out. I started looking more seriously the summer after my sophomore year.

 

  • Jenna Orlando, Lafayette College ‘17 – Sophomore year was when I began truly diving in to research schools, and I started by putting my own academic standings into a larger context. With a full year of high school under my belt and a sense of my test scores, I sought out more information on colleges to see where I fell in comparison to their academic standards and criteria. As for the softball side of school research, I did not begin to truly dive into that piece until the summer going into my junior year. Early in the process, I was only looking into schools for softball if a college coach had approached me expressing interest. Looking back, my approach and research was very different regarding the academics versus athletic side, and early in the process I thought of both independent of each other – rarely interweaving the two or thinking of ways to leverage one with the other.

 

  • Max McKenna, Amherst College ‘11 – I was in many ways late to the party on school research. Although I’d started going on college tours with my brother when I was in 8th grade (as the tours’ annoying younger sibling), I didn’t proactively attack the research process until during or even after my junior year of high school. For me, a lot of my early interest was driven by the “direct marketing” tactics – in 2007 it was mainly direct mail postcards and pamphlets – that various schools used after I’d completed my SATs and registered with the NCAA Clearing House. I don’t recommend my level of passivity in the college research process – if I’d known then what I know now, I would have tackled this process much earlier and in a much more thoughtful and intentional way.


 

  1. What were your non-negotiables for your school criteria?
  • Austin Sumners, Dickinson College ‘18 – The school needed to have elite academics, and I wanted the chance to play immediately. School size mattered – I wanted to go somewhere with fewer than 15,000 students. I also wanted to make sure that my school was in driving distance, so my parents could see my games and I could travel home easily during the holidays.

 

  • Jed Barkin, Denison University ‘18 – I knew I wanted a school where I would build close relationships with my professors. Throughout high school, this was the case for me, and it was extremely important that my professors knew who I was. I also wanted to play baseball at a school where the roster size was limited. I was a player who loved to practice, and I wanted to play somewhere that I’d be able to develop fully as a player.

 

  • Jenna Orlando – It was important for me to be within about 4 hours from home. While I wanted to fully immerse myself in a college experience far enough from home, having my family come to my games and the ability to drive home on occasion meant a lot to me. Additionally, I wanted there to be a strong athletic culture. Even if I did not ultimately play softball, I wanted to be able to attend sporting events and feel the energy that a close-knit athletics culture can instill in a college campus.

 

  • Max McKenna – Academics was the first and foremost concern – followed by financial aid or a scholarship package for my family. Another one for me – and one that I learned about myself throughout this process – was class size. In high school and college, I wasn’t very good at seeking the help or support that I might need from teachers or administrators. I realized that small class sizes would be important so that I wouldn’t let myself get lost in the crowd.


 

  1. What features started to matter less to you as you compared the schools on your list?
  • Austin Sumners – Whether a school was Division I or Division III. As I went through the recruiting process, other characteristics became more important to me – strong academics, the ability to play both baseball and soccer, and the school being the best fit for me and my family. After I took my visit at Dickinson, it didn’t matter whether it was a Division I or Division III program – I knew it was the right school for me.

 

  • Cory Spera – I think getting over the “name recognition” bias was an important step. I started to fill my list with schools that not all my classmates knew – they all knew UVA and Harvard, but most of us didn’t know about Lafayette, Middlebury, and Haverford. That was an adjustment at first – I got a few sideways looks from my peers when I told them where I wanted to go to school – but the name recognition among my peers started to matter less and less to me.

 

  • Jed Barkin – I thought location would be a much bigger factor when picking a school. Coming from the south, I was skeptical to leave the warmer weather for the cold winter winds of Ohio. The on-campus atmosphere and connection with the coaching staff made me more comfortable with leaving home for a state that I’d never been to before my visit.

 

  • Max McKenna – When I first started my search process, I was dead set that I’d be going to school far away from home. I was looking in California. For me, I thought that I needed to go far away from home to get a completely new experience. However, as I learned more and narrowed my list, I realized that distance from home could be overridden by other, more deciding factors (as long as it was above a certain distance threshold – for example, my parents live in Lexington, MA so it was never on my agenda to go to MIT or Tufts).


 

  1. What feature was more of a deciding factor in your decision than you expected it to be?
  • Al Morris, Duke University ‘13 – The level of support from coaches and teachers really stood out to me at Duke. Setting aside the academic and athletic prestige of the school, it seemed like an environment that would help me be successful – not just during my four years of college, but also professionally and socially well after I’d graduated. With how personable the coaches and academic staff were, it was tough to imagine getting that level of support anywhere else.

 

  • Jack Marooney – The opportunity to live somewhere that was different from where I grew up (NYC) and different from where I imagined myself living later in life (currently DC). As the schools became more and more similar in the most important dimensions (e.g. academics), it became about getting to go to school in a place that was outside my comfort zone – a place that I might not come back to after I graduated but would challenge my preconceived notions and allow me to see a place that I might not otherwise.

 

  • Jed Barkin – The coaching staff became more of a deciding factor for me, especially Coach Deegan’s vision for the program. He explained the importance of building not only a program full of talented ballplayers but also instilling leadership in each of us and helping us mature. I felt that Coach Deegan would not just be a coach, but a mentor for life – and that’s proven to be true.

 

  • Max McKenna – It didn’t occur to me to think of early in the process, but one thing that kept growing on me about Amherst was its open curriculum, and lack of core course requirements. I started to appreciate that for all the wrong reasons (I just never wanted to take a math class again) but it ended up being a key part of my college experience. I was free to take all kinds of courses in sociology and biology that I never thought I’d take, as well as exploring a wide breadth of courses within my double majors.

 

  • Jenna Orlando – Small class sizes. Initially, I didn’t give much thought to my ability to be successful in the classroom based on class size. After touring Lafayette I realized that professors would know my name, recognize if I missed a class, and heavily emphasize participation and meeting with them outside of class time. It was an amazing feeling to recognize that I would have a place where it felt as though I was being put in a position to succeed and that – depending on what I was willing to take advantage of – I could not only get by at a high-academic school, but I could excel by simply taking advantage of the resources that were so readily available to me. I have professors that are invested in me as a person and I still keep in touch with – which is very special to me.


 

  1. Outside of athletics and academics, what was the biggest factor in your college decision?
  • Al Morris – Community – There are many universities and colleges that have unique communities, but it was important to me that I create lasting friendships with other students with very different backgrounds from my own. These people may go on to do something radically different than me in their future careers, and I wanted to be exposed to different perspectives during college.

 

  • Cory Spera – The size of the school. Being the son of two alumni from a large, southern school, all I really knew growing up was that – the ACC and its big schools/big-time athletics. I thought this was the environment I wanted until attending Honor Roll and receiving interest from many smaller, liberal arts schools. The interest from schools started from the Division III level, and I began to visit and explore them. Turns out, I wanted the exact opposite of what I grew up. When the time came to make my decision, I ended up choosing from a list of a few Division I programs, and from that list I picked the smallest school with a unique but strong liberal arts curriculum.

 

  • Jenna Orlando – I chose Lafayette because I felt that I’d be surrounded by people that not only cared for me but also were going to push me. Whether it was a friend who pushed me to interview for a job on campus I was hesitant about, a professor who eased my mind about post-graduate plans or a coach who pushed me to be a better leader when I went 0 for 1,000 at the plate – I knew I would be constantly encouraged to take advantage of every opportunity presented to me and to actively seek opportunities outside of my comfort zone.

 

  • Max McKenna – Financial aid package. I had some merit and academic scholarships at other, larger schools, but the financial aid package at Amherst made it cheaper for me to go there than any other, even with those scholarships in place. Another nice part of the financial aid package – and one that I had no idea about during the college process – was that Amherst was moving to a “no loan” financial aid position. This meant that all the financial aid that I received from the school would come in the form of grants and scholarships, so I wouldn’t have to pay any of it back.