By DIANE D'AMICO Education Writer

Published: Sunday, June 10, 2007

The restaurant had a view of the water. There was a balcony, palm trees. After dinner, they took a walk on the beach.

“It was just amazing,” Megan Kesselman said. “The restaurant was listed as a popular romantic spot.”

But it was not a young man wooing Megan that balmy October evening. It was the University of Miami, which saw in the Oakcrest High School senior the opportunity to enroll both a top scholar and a competitive athlete.

For two days, Megan and two other crew recruits were given the royal treatment, including a meeting with college President Donna Shalala.

“She came back with such a grin, I thought this was it,” her father, Harvey, recalled.

But it was really just the beginning. The recruitment of Megan Kesselman was about to get serious.

* * *

Each fall, the annual college mating ritual begins.

Hopeful high school seniors peruse Web sites and make pilgrimages to the colleges of their dreams. Essays are written. Applications are sent. Fingers are crossed.

Meanwhile, at college admissions offices, coaches, department heads and admissions personnel begin reading transcripts and watching videos, looking for the cream of the crop, and those mostly likely to accept an admissions offer.

Some students, such as Megan, will get multiple offers from an enviable collection of schools. But that doesn't happen by accident.

For top students, acceptance by a highly ranked college is the culmination of years of hard and often little-recognized work. While the accomplishments of athletes are publicly displayed in front of cheering crowds, academic achievements are mostly solitary, buried under privacy and confidentiality laws. There are no cheerleaders at the SATs. Student scores are not posted for public review.

As a top student, a girl and a member of the competitive varsity crew team, Megan was recruited early and often. But, as she discovered, the more competitive the school, the more she had to compete for money as well as admissions.

Her father, an administrator at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey in Galloway Township, thought they were informed and prepared for the onslaught. But even he was sometimes amazed at the level of interest and offers his daughter received, and the amount of work she put into researching colleges and completing applications.

“It was mind boggling,” he said. “She had an entire file cabinet full of application forms.”

But the process that ultimately led her to Princeton University didn't start in her senior year — it started years before.

* * *

When she was 10, Megan learned to row. A talented athlete, she had tried ice hockey, lacrosse and karate, in which she earned a black belt. But crew just captured her heart.

“I loved it right away,” she said.

She rowed through her youth with the Atlantic County Rowing Association, and in high school recruited friends to join her on the Oakcrest team. By sophomore year, they began winning.

“That was the year we realized we could really be competitive,” Megan said.

At the same time, Megan was leading her class academically.

She had graduated second in her eighth-grade class from the William Davies Middle School in Hamilton Township. When the top student went off to a parochial high school, Megan decided there was no reason she couldn't be valedictorian at Oakcrest in four years. Starting in her freshman year, she took the most challenging academic program she could, including numerous Advanced Placement courses, scored at the top of a competitive class, and stayed there.

In her freshman year, she took the PSAT. That June, she also took the SAT, scoring 1350 going into her sophomore year of high school. She then took the SAT once each year, boosting her score each time — until in November of her senior year, she scored 2160 out of a possible 2400 on the new expanded SAT.

Colleges began noticing, and even in her sophomore year, began sending her material.

“All of a sudden there was this influx of paper from colleges,” she said. “I read all of them at first.”

College coaches later took notice as well, but by law cannot call a potential recruit until July 1 of their senior year. But they can talk to coaches — and they do.

* * *

Former Oakcrest girls crew coach Dan Welsh's first college calls in 2005-06 were not about Megan but about teammate Veronica Townsend, who had done some testing for the junior nationals. Townsend will attend Northeastern University in the fall, with a full-tuition scholarship worth more than $160,000.

As college recruiters learned more about the team, interest trickled down to the other rowers.

“There was a chain reaction,” Welsh said.

Crew is a good sport for girls, Welsh said, because colleges will offer scholarship money to offset football and meet Title IX regulations for equality in sports. But because it is not a common high school sport, girls still have to market themselves until a program gets known.

“When Holy Spirit went to the Henley Regatta, they won for the entire area,” he said. “It raised the profile of crew in the region.”

Now the girls' coach at Egg Harbor Township High School, Welsh said he's already getting e-mails from coaches about crew team members there.

Kimberly Eberl, director of public policy for the National Collegiate Scouting Association, said academics play a major role in athletic recruiting, especially at academically competitive colleges. While colleges compete to get the best student-athletes they can, the top schools don't have to try very hard because students come to them.

“Students will get all these letters from schools they don't want to go to,” she said. “But we try to tell them not to just get caught up in the name game, especially if money is a factor.”

She said the huge amount of publicity given to a few outstanding high school athletes, usually in basketball or football, paints a very distorted picture of what most athletes can expect, especially if their academics are not the best.

“So many student athletes think they're the best,” she said. “But national recruiting realities are very different. Most of the opportunities are not in Division I schools, but in Division III. There is such a huge amount of competition for the good schools, most athletes will also need the academics to get in.”

Vince Sera, the current Oakcrest girls crew coach, spent two years coaching crew at Lehigh University, where recruits had to meet academic standards.

“We'd get their athletic stats, then match it with the academics,” he said. “They needed at least a 1300 (out of 1600) on the SAT.”

When Megan was named to the U.S. Rowing Scholastic Gold Honor Roll, it increased her visibility and her desirability — but not always at colleges she was interested in attending.

* * *

On July 1, 2006, the Kesselman home phone rang at 7 a.m.

It was the Gonzaga University crew coach. Recruiting season was open, and they were putting in an early bid, saying she could get money both for academics and athletics that would cover pretty much all her costs.

“I was nervous,” Megan said. “It was my first coach call. But it was cool. They knew all about me.”

The coach urged her to post her rowing times online, which increased her visibility.

“Then I started to get e-mails,” she said. “The Naval Academy asked me to visit. UVA, Clemson. All of them have different ways to recruit. Some are very upfront. Others are more subtle. But they were all very professional, following the NCAA rules.”

That meant they could call her only once a week, but she could call or e-mail them all she wanted.

As the summer progressed, application packages began to arrive.

“I got a huge package from Harvard with an application form that said, ‘Please fill this out,'” she said.

Ever the organized student, she created an Excel spreadsheet to track colleges she liked and their characteristics.

“I started with a list of 25 possible schools I thought were cool,” she said. “Each week I took two off the list.”

A University of Pennsylvania crew coach urged her to apply early there, pretty much assuring her she would get in, but she wasn't sure that was where she wanted to go.

She decided to apply early to Harvard, but got deferred to regular admissions.

Throughout the fall, Megan was invited to tour campuses, and accepted visits to Williams, Miami, U. Penn and Columbia. She was familiar with Boston and Princeton from rowing camps. The University of Connecticut invited her and three team members to visit, making a play for the team.

Still, despite all the attention, it wasn't until she got to Columbia that Megan had a startling realization about the admissions process.

“I was visiting with the dean, and he said, ‘We're really trying to get you to come here,'” Megan said. “It was the first time I really got it, that it wasn't just about me impressing them, they were trying to impress me, too. I realized I just had to be myself, and decide where I fit best.”

Ultimately she applied to six schools — Harvard, Miami, U. Penn, Boston University, Columbia and, almost as an afterthought, Princeton.

“Princeton was the last I applied to because they seemed the least interested in me for crew, and I wanted to row,” she said. “They have a fabulous women's team.”

By April she was getting acceptance letters, but money offers varied widely.

Miami offered her a full-tuition scholarship worth $128,000. She could graduate in six years with degrees in both engineering and law.

Boston awarded her a trustees scholarship worth $186,000 over four years.

“It was great to be recognized on merit,” she said. “You really have to work hard to get that. And it's very enticing.”

Megan felt some personal pressure to take either the Boston or Miami offer, because she knew it would be easier on her family, and both were tremendous opportunities.

But when it came time to decide, she was really torn between Princeton and Penn.

“I really liked Princeton, but I thought I wouldn't be able to row there,” she said. “I didn't think I'd be good enough. But, when I called the coach, they had me on the roster already.”

But the Ivy League schools base most aid on need, and Megan's parents earn too much to qualify for much aid. Princeton does have a scholarship for New Jersey public school students, and Megan will get about $10,000 per year in grants.

David Hawkins, director of public policy for the National Association of College Admissions Counselors, said Ivy League and other top schools don't have to sell themselves, and will base most of their financial aid on need. That can put a lot of pressure on middle-class students to consider other offers.

“The middle class have to leverage themselves more with colleges,” he said. “The best offers happen when each party has an interest in the transaction, and each gets what they want. Students who can do both the academics and sports are at a premium because that's good for the National Collegiate Athletic Association. But the Ivies don't have to sell themselves.”

Harvey Kesselman has accepted the reality of refinancing the family home to pay for Princeton.

“If you're in the middle class, you're still going to end up paying at the Ivies,” he said. “But you have to think about the value long-term.”

As she prepared for graduation recently, Megan said she doesn't regret the effort it took to get into Princeton. But she does admit that the workload the fall of her senior year, when she was juggling school with college planning and campus visits, was staggering. Her advice to students trying to match up their interests with scholarships is to start early — even in freshman and sophomore year.

“The one turnoff is the amount of work you have to do to get the opportunities,” she said. “You have to be willing to do that work.”

http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/top_story/story/7484600p-7379605c.html

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=643703&forum_id=1#8241932)

Even a female headed to Princeton feels the sting of your lash.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=643703&forum_id=1#8243703)

You should have stayed retired in self-acknowledged disgrace after you ruined the career of one site administrator and helped smear the name of XOXO.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=643703&forum_id=1#8243755)

Some of his "contributions" may have been preserved, fortunately.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=643703&forum_id=1#8247717)