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SAT scores in my experience mostly determine what scholarships you may be eligible for. In terms of getting accepted or rejected from a school, they will also be looking at your essay, your resume, your transcript, and your personal presentation and professionalism (which it sounds like you do very well), so it has less of an impact. Don't let those scores worry you, you can always retake them and do a superscore :)

Reread my previous message and her reply again. Maybe it’s time to start sending videos? Problem is I don’t have any good ones ready.

Baylor is a pretty good school as well. Based in Waco, Texas. They've been in the news within the last couple of years for not so good athletic reasons.

I would recommend researching the NCEA website to see what the style of competition is. If you can find videos, even better. That will help you determine what they are looking for and what to showcase in your videos.

Maybe I should just send her a reply something to the affect of "perfect, thank you. I will contact you when I have videos ready"

My two cents: In college, I really, REALLY encourage IHSA over NCAA for most riders. (I make an exception for those who are essentially entering college with enough skill and talent to operate their own training/showing facility. Most of us don’t start college with a lifetime of professional training.)

IHSA has a very unique format that you don’t really have an opportunity to experience after college, while NCAA is the same type of competition you can experience for the rest of your life. For disciplines where you want to grow as a rider from beginner or intermediate levels, you will be more valuable to your IHSA team at ANY level, which has a wider range of levels including walk/trot that NCAA just doesn’t cover. Each ISHA competition needs a full team with a wide variety of skill levels, whereas each NCAA competition might only feature a few of your team’s very best riders that week.

A few other IHSA perks: you don’t need your own horse, you don’t have to trailer horses to shows (just your human team, as each host school provides the mounts), you get a lot more experience riding a wide variety of horses, the affordability/cost savings is exponentially cheaper than NCAA. I also feel like IHSA teams tend to be more supportive of each other, since they need everyone to do well for High Point Team, and there is less “same school in the same class” competition.

I was an undergrad for several years at two different universities with IHSA teams. One of them was attempting to become an NCAA team, and the team unity just wasn’t as cohesive as the other school. It also cost a lot more for lessons and team dues ($500+/semester vs $40), not to mention the private additional lessons the second school wanted us to take each week on top of team lessons (an extra weekly $80+). While the second facility was fancier, the quality of horses was not necessarily any better.

There are certainly perks to NCAA level competition, especially if you plan to show professionally after college. You may have more exposure to professionals at NCAA shows. However, if showing is a fun, recreational activity for you rather than a career path, I encourage you to look at schools that offer IHSA, too.

Are you partial to the state of Texas? In addition to A&M and Baylor, Check out Tarleton. For rodeo, Sul Ross is great. Tech has its own advantages and drawbacks.

A&M was immediately crossed off my list as soon as I visited, since the instructor who took me to the barns couldn’t be bothered to park and let me see the facilities, with the excuse that “it was muddy.” Um, it’s a horse barn. I’m not expecting it to be spotless. They were already treating me like a number when I was supposed to be seeing the rose-tinted tour, so I took my business elsewhere. (In the same hand, I LOVED WT, because the coach and team made me feel so welcome.) I hope that your tour of A&M’s campus was much more productive than mine!

This advice may not apply to your particular situation, but if not, I hope it can help someone else currently looking at colleges : )

Yes, I've been somewhat dissapointed with the Texas A&M coach. She definitely is not making me feel welcome. I'm starting to like IHSA more too but would be fine with either. I have lots of experience with green horses. I normally have 2+ green horses I'm working with at a time then my 1 main show horse at the time. With paint all around I do horsemanship and hunt seat equitation frequently for most of my life. Then working hunter less frequently. Then only was a horse judger for reining with a total of 1 full lessons and random bits of advice. (Although does piloting an english horse to some points again a real reining horse count as experience? I usually do reining instead of western pleasure as I don't like western pleasure but still go for high points). I do like that IHSA is cheaper. (The host competitions don't provide the horses for NCAA?) Does IHSA still recruit? Part of my problem is one of my life goals is to try every equine discipline. Not just a ride but enough to find what drives people to that discipline.

My "dressage" consists of riding in a dressage saddle on a saddlebred who was supposedly trained for dressage although I never got past basic maneuvers.

Texas is probably one of my least favorite choices as far as weather, but I liked relatively close to Arizona, and its horse country. I definitely will add all of those places people have recommended to my list as I want to apply to as many places as I can so there's a better chance I'll get at least one with a good offer. Also one of my competitors toured there and said that there was a free engineering program for females. I did find on the website that they want to make it easier for females but didn't find anything "for free". But since Engineering is on the "possible" list I figured it wouldn't hurt. But I'm starting to agree with you.... I want a coach that doesn't look at us like a number to maintain their good record.

That sounds good. Just one minor change: is should be are.

Does anyone know anything about William Woods University? I see their ads on facebook and definitely looks amazing as far as the horses go for me, but does is it "academic and impressive" enough for my Dad and cheap enough for my Mom?

Hmm

Danielle,

We send out invites to visit the campus – once we have received your video and can evaluate your riding talent.

At this point – we are very close to finalizing our roster for our 19/20 incoming freshman.

So either I need to hurry it up and get the video done or she doesn’t sound like the right thing for me...

Would’ve been nice of her to tell me when I said that I couldn’t get jumping videos for a while yet....

I think you can put together a solid video with what you've got. It may not hit all of the checkboxes, but it can give them something to consider while you work on the rest. Remember you're only going to be using 1-2 min clips so you can highlight the best parts! Because of this you will need a good video editing software that will also allow you to crop down the frame to focus on you. Try to select music that's more classical or instrumental in nature as its not as jarring as no sound but not distracting like a louder vocal pop culture song can be.

At this point they can only have verbal commits and can't have offered, verbally or otherwise, anyone. They probably have their shortlist mostly ready and don't expect anyone to not sign with them. They can't send out scholarship/NLI offers until mid November.

Do you have access to a laptop or computer? If so you might be able to work something up quickly. If not, it's not a big deal. Send the video you think hits most of what they're looking for and tell her you'll have another video soon.

And that's great that they've agreed to come out and help!

.

My school has an IHSA team for huntseat and western and then a club team for saddleseat, polo, and maybe reining? The IHSA teams have try outs and there isn't any recruiting that I know of. That said, I don't know if that's true for all teams in all states. I'm at the flagship university of my state so it is very competitive here but it doesn't sound as bad as NCAA! I've known lots of people on the team and they all love it but they get little financial aid (if any) from the equestrian team and even have some costs out of pocket.

Sounds like you must have a good team though if it’s competitive.

Sounds like I need to decide if I want to play for financial help, or to keep doing what I love. Student loans sound like they are a rough thing to get stuck with but it doesn’t sounds like scholarships sounds like they give that much anyway.... one of the people at my barn is very successful at applying for colleges and they highly recommend applying to as many places as possible then see who offers me the best thing.

So we got that date down.... I guess I need to decide what specifically I want to try out for. I was going under the idea try for them all. Would I be valuable as a rider that they can use as a substitute and throw me in any class? Helen and dad are planning on videoing Hunt seat equitation horsemanship and hunter under saddle. My horse and I are no good at western pleasure but maybe me showing western pleasure on a non western pleasure horse would show how well I cope with difficulty? (Even if I don’t use the videos here I have them to send to all of the colleges).

My trainer is going to ask a local trainer if I can ride their horse over fences for a video. I would prefer a lady in PHX but that’s 2+ hours away. For reining I’ll ride the super green one I talked about later. Then hopefully I can use another horse at the barn. She said I could use him for an IEA scholarship competition (that my state puts on) I’ve only ridden him once. (Random funny note last time I rode him I couldn’t get him to lope because he’s used to longer legged riders. I was SO embarrassed. Then when I dropped stirrups he loped off) then for the third horse I’ll try to make it to my high school teachers house to ride his reining horse. But it’s hard because he has lots of experience with reining but feels uncomfortable giving me lessons because he’s a guy (trustworthy guy) and another teacher recently got accused of something (that I don’t think he did) years ago at a different school.

Sorry I’m just brainstorming. But now I have a plan!

Ok, I forgot about that. I wonder if bareback is even better? When we were having issues with my mare she was more sound bareback so I rode her bareback quite a bit. Also she would be a good one to ride different disciplines. Surprisingly one of the more green mares I plan on riding as another horse for the English video moves off my leg better than Lexi. (She was the one my trainer “bought” for me. Appendix quarter horse mare). I’ve lunged her over jumps before and half considering to lope her over a jump on video and see what happens.

That's awesome! I definitely would love to hear more about it!

Yesterday we wandered around and did a general tour. The general tour was kinda boring and sad was having a hard time hearing her. So when we saw a physics building we ditched the tour.... There was a swinging pendulum which was cool. After we read some info on their staff (which was amazing) we heard another tour. This lady was passionate and talking about a bunch of cool engineering stuff. So we followed that tour... well worth it. She knew what she wanted in life and she was getting it! Learned everything from housing and how much it is to keep the car to some of her engineering classes

It sounds like you've found a program that you're not only excited about, but also checks a lot of your boxes. It's still a great idea to continuing to check out other schools just to be sure.

That's a bummer that your score wasn't quite as high as you were hoping for. Have you taken a test prep course or is this what prep scholar is? I know when I took the ACT course my composite score increased by about 2 points.

That's quite a promise! What was your score if you don't mind me asking.

Sometimes looking at schools that don't really interest you can give things to consider for schools that do.

That's a very solid score and nothing to be disappointed in. You should be able to get a fair amount of scholarship with your score.

Didn’t realize PrepScholar was 600$.... nvmd... especially since I did come out of the SAT feeling so confident and good about the test.

I'm worried that I'm running out of SAT test days. Especially if they think I should redo the SAT (When I try to convince Helen that I honestly felt good about the test and that its the best I could do she looked me in the eyes and held my shoulder and said "sounds like a mantra that you say to convince yourself" it was mildly creepy but I was honestly happy I did my best). Also figure out what subject tests I want to take

My sister thinks I should go to Montana state. I've never heard anything about it. But she would offer me free rent. There is a stable down the street to put my horse up at but not sure its 100% quite the right thing for Lexi. But I'm sure we could make it work.

Like HT said, you've still got a handful of test dates to try again. The bigger concern could be test burnout. I took the ACT 3 times chasing a 30, but my last time I didn't even want to be there. So much so that I forgot my calculator! In my car!

It sounds to me like they're expecting you to hit a near perfect score, which is really difficult to get. Some people don't test as well as they're GPA suggests and then there are people who test out of the water. For example, my class valedictorian's best score was lower than mine, but there was a kid who just didn't try in school and tested almost perfect. How do you think your dad and Helen would react to an agreement that you will take the test one last time to get a higher score, but no matter what the results are you're done taking the test?

I haven't heard anything about Montana State either (there's quite literally thousands of colleges and universities in this country). It sounds like being close to your sister may have some advantages worth exploring at the very least. And sometimes the online face is different from what you see in person.

It sounds like your school needs to reevaluate their class selection at the community college, but it can't be helped at this point.

It's not too uncommon really, especially considering that some high schools will help keep their athletes eligible. The test score does give a much better idea of where individuals stand academically but no system is perfect.

Tuition cost doesn't necessarily relate to the type of education you'll receive there. They may not have the most recognized faculty, but you're more likely to get teachers who can spend more time teaching and not researching to maintain their accreditation. My thought is Montana State doesn't want to discourage potential students with a high out of state cost.