Apologies if this has been addressed before. How does financial aid/merit money and athletic scholarships affect each other? Can they be stacked?
I seem to recall reading somewhere that per NCAA rules that if you receive aid that is not a loan (merit etc) then you cannot accept an athletic scholarship and visa versa.
Actually, your asking a more complicated question that you might know. Usually, a school will drop loans (on financial aid side) first then drop any remaining athletic scholarship down to the level of the finanacial aid unless the original offer was more than the financial aid then the athletic aid will cover the difference between the two. The combo of athletic/ academic merit is a much more complicated thing that can either hurt or help . If the school realizes that the academics out pace the school they may not be willing to offer anything (believing you wont come anyway), but if your in the academic sweet spot they may give a large academic scholarship and a small athletic one to make the school affordable and save there athletic money for other Kids (Both my Ds got offers like this).
Disagree with @RW1.
A student athlete can take merit aid from the school without it being counted against the team max if the student has the minimum gpa/score/class rank required. The aid also has to be offered to all students under the same conditions it is offered to the athlete (ie, can’t be limited to only athletes) There are slightly different requirements for D1 and D2:
A student athlete can take federal or state need based financial aid (Pell, SEOG, state SEOG, etc) without it affecting athletic aid up to COA. An athlete on a full ride that includes a stipend may lose all or part of the Pell because it cannot exceed COA.
Other need based aid from the institution or only offered to athletes (such as an outside scholarship given just because the student was Athlete of the Year) counts as part of the total amount the coach can give. If the student gets a $5k athletic scholarship and $3k in need based aid from the school, the coach will be assessed $8k in athletic scholarships.toward the team max.
My daughter had 9 types of aid, but only her athletic award counted against the team total. She received no need based aid from the school but had merit aid and two grants from the school (awarded as they would be to any non-athlete), a Pell grant, SEOG, state merit aid, a state resident grant, state SEOG, a loan, and her athletic aid. She also had a one time outside grant that had nothing to do with sports so didn’t go against the team total.
Basically, you can take the athletic award, the merit (if you qualify) and outside merit or need based aid. It is rare for a school to give its own need based aid with athletic aid since it will go against the team max, and at that point you might as well just call it athletic aid.
There are also a few schools that will not allow a student to take athletic aid with merit but require the student to choose. That’s up to the school or conference, but merit+athletic aid is allowed by the NCAA.
@twoinanddone is correct.
Basically what you can’t do is stack athletic aid with need based aid.
A friend with a son going through the recruiting process right now was told by a coach that NCAA was reviewing and possibly changing that rule in April. I haven’t seen anything in writing confirming this, although I haven’t looked very hard either. My guess is that even if he is right the rule will remain that you can’t stack athletic and need based aid.
If you could stack need based aid with athletic aid, why would there be a limit on the number of scholarships for each sport? The soccer coach could just give the athletic scholarships to the rich kids and let the more needy kids take the school’s ‘other’ money and the entire team could be on scholarships.
I don’ t think the NCAA would allow that to happen.
Ask for a financial aid pre-read so you can see what aid you may receive and then you can choose whether to receive athletic aid or financial aid. With my child’s case, we chose financial aid but then coach the couldn’t “support” her application with admission. She applied ED and fortunately got in.