<p>Is it possible to combine a full ride athletic scholarship with a national merit scholarship to get the maximum benefit?
- maybe extra stipend?</p>
<p>What are the NCAA rules about that? </p>
<p>@mom2collegekids, thank you, for pointing me to the right direction. “NCAA”</p>
<p>NCCA allows to combine merit and athletic aid but you need to ask the college coach.
If it is an equivalency sport or the program is not fully funded they may want to substitute part of your athletic money with NMF money.</p>
<p>You can stack certain scholarships with athletic scholarships, and you should be able to combine a national merit (since it is merit scholarship) with an athletic one. However, full ride athletic scholarships are very rare, except for the 6 sports that are ‘headcount’ sports -Division 1 football (m), basketball (m&W), and volleyball, tennis, gymnastics for women. Other sports will also have restrictions for the number of walk-ons who have received other merit aid.</p>
<p>First you’d have to know if NMF scholarships are ‘refundable’. Can you get an ‘overage’ if you have more scholarship than need. You cannot with the NCAA, you can with Pell grants and some other need based aid. NCAA scholarships can cover tuition, fees, r&b, books, but not transportation. What can NMF cover?</p>
<p>Basically for the NCAA scholarships, which are usually a fraction of the COA except in the headcount sports in D-1, you can also accept merit scholarships that are available to any other ‘similarly qualified students’, plus the federal aid (Pell, Perkings, Stafford), military, and any state award or aid, but not need based aid from the school. Or you can accept the need based aid from the school but no athletic money (and that’s when they’d look at the number on the team getting institution aid to make sure it is not an athletic award disguised as need based aid). The athletic department will have a person whose specialty is compliance with NCAA rules.</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>That is what I was concerned about. I know that the NCAA will allow a partial (equivalency) athletic award to be combined with a partial merit scholarship. But, who knows what the NCAA’s policy is when the two would combine to exceed COA. </p>
<p>@CCDD14, @twoinandone, @mom2collegekids, Mahalo!
Last part of my the question: Can NMF scholarship be deferred, just in case kid decides to quit sport after a year or two?</p>
<p>I highly doubt that a NMF scholarship could be deferred. </p>
<p>What is your situation? Is the NMF award big? If so, why not just accept that and then let the athletic award cover what’s left of COA?</p>
<p>There are too many variables in your question. Just on the sport side, which sport, which school (because the Big 5 school divisions are now giving sport stipends, 4 year scholarships, health insurance while other conferences aren’t). In general, merit scholarships can be stacked with sports scholarships, but you still have to follow the rules of both (or multiple) scholarships.</p>
<p>Unless the sport is one of the 6 listed above (or ice hockey which happens to have a lot of scholarships), it is very unlikely your child is going to get a full ride athletic scholarship. There just aren’t enough ways to split the pie for every player to get a full scholarship so the coaches are thrilled when a student has other sources of money. If a coach has 12 scholarships to split among a team of 40, not many are going to get a full scholarship, especially freshmen.Coaches want players who have their own source for tuition.</p>
<p>@mom2collegekids, D’16 has a full ride to play golf at a private ncaa D1. Will most likely be a NM Semi-finalist.
Will also encourage her to apply to be a finalist. Not sure if school will apply merit first to save athletic money. My concern is, in case she will not maintain her gpa to satisfy merit, will she be able to ask for original athletic aid?</p>
<p>what GPA is required? What school is this?</p>
<p>what is their NMF offer?</p>
<p>I assume a gpa of 3.2- 3.5 ish to maintain merit? USC offers 1/2 tuition for NM Finalist.</p>
<p>I think USC requires a 3.0 gpa, but write to them and ask.</p>
<p>Since the USC merit award is only half tuition, then ask if the NMF award can go towards the uncovered COA.</p>
<p>Usually, athletic scholarships are NOT true free rides. They usually only cover tuition, housing, meals, books and maybe the trips to home and to school at the beginning and end of semester. The awards usually do not include “personal expenses” which are part of COA. Maybe the merit award can go towards that? </p>
<p>USC is in the Pac 12. The athletic scholarship, whatever it is, will be for 4 years and will have a stipends beginning next year. You really need to work this out with the coach and the school.</p>