Thanks so much!!Alex worked on the letter and email with me. She wrote the letter, she had another friend who went through the process. So she had some ideas of what she wanted to say. And it has to come from the athlete. There were just so many emails to send - I did the first batch of email - but they were all her words and it was from her. Again I was so impressed how involved she got.
We never got to the arranging appointment stage until several months after the process started. A couple of the Universities started following her on Instagram (which have since deleted her now that she didn't chose them). Some sent back strongly encouraging emails inviting her to camps. She also got a call from one University to come down to the camp. They can call you about camps but not about university. So we knew there was interest. So it was just the feel we got from the universities.
Again, she had narrowed down her list to a few that she really wanted to go to and we really ramped up the communication. One way of course as they can't come back to us. Alex would send new videos of skills every time she upgraded one.
Now she was really interested in 3 - we told 2 of them as they were fairly close together - that we would arrange a trip to come down to both and could they accommodate. They both said yes. All this reply communication was back to our coach. Again they can't talk to you. If they had said no we can't accommodate that sends a pretty strong message they are really not interested. And then we made it happen.
The universities we have dealt with have followed the rules about no communication or anything. We even had one come watch her train. She watched her but never spoke to her. Only the head coach. It was kind of strange. But those are the rules.