Do private high schools offer financial aid on the basis of athletics? from all the official documentation, it looks like scholarships are need base only…
Need based only.
I would say that most private high schools - day, boarding and international - only offer need based grants, but there are few schools who offer merit scholarships. In regard with athletic scholarship, it is very rare to non-existent in secondary schools. There are definitely [secondary] schools who recruit athletes, but I almost never heard that they receive athletic scholarships. There are recruited athletes who also receive financial aid package, though. However, schools decline to offer a direct athletic scholarship in the admissions process.
I’m not aware of officially recognized athletic scholarships. Lawrence Academy got in some trouble 5 years ago related related to indirect scholarships to several players on their football team. I’m also not aware of a family receiving aid that they did not need solely based on athletics. I would say that a strong athlete who needs aid is more likely to get it than an applicant that does not have something extra. A proud parent could refer to this as an athletic scholarship but at the core it must be need based. There are a limited number schools that offer merit scholarships.
The Independent School League only allows need-based aid.
There are private schools that do offer merit scholarships. This links to a list of boarding schools that offer merit scholarships: http://www.boardingschoolreview.com/merit-scholarship-offered-boarding-schools. For day schools, I suppose you should look on the website of the particular schools to see if they mention such scholarships.
Periwinkle is right. It is just like the Ivy/non-Ivy NCAA rules.
But, I guess the big question is why do students receive more aid at some schools than other schools? And, why are there so many posts about athletic hooks? It seems as though qualifying for FA opens the door and then the school can do what it pleases no? This is really the athletic scholarship by another name. This probably isn’t any different than college (Ivy or not) because no one is getting educated at an Ivy or pretty much any ranked college or university for the Pell amount. Is need defined by the student’s relative need to the rest of the prospective applicants or existing students? All rhetorical questions of course – and the answers to which none of us will ever know.
MAandMEmom: yes. FA is used as a tool with athletics. However, if you dont qualify you get nothing. The amount of aid absolutely fluctuates if they want you.
Center is correct.
My daughter’s sports club does athletic college placements all the time, including at colleges that formally do not provide athletic scholarships, such as the Ivy League. Instead, the recruited athletes are given an academic scholarship. Same animal, different name.
There are no academic scholarships at any Ivy , to my knowledge.
@Center It is possible. There aren’t athletic ones either. Whatever the name, three girls from my daughter’s club have been offered a free ride to play at U Penn, Harvard, and Yale.
Are you sure it isn’t just financial aid? From what we have seen and heard. Ivies use financial aid as their tool. If you don’t qualify for aid you get nothing.
“Ivy League schools provide financial aid to students, including athletes, only on the basis of financial need as determined by each institution’s Financial Aid Office. There are no academic or athletic scholarships in the Ivy League.” That’s from the www.ivyleaguesports.com website. So they call it financial aid. In reality, the girls whom I know are given full scholarship (financial aid) to play a sport. Their SAT scores/grades alone or FA needs alone would never merit an Ivy League admission, let alone full FA package.
It’s actually a terrible system. The middle class is disenfranchised. Sports or not.
Are we talking about college or prep school FA? There are differences. It’s not the same thing.
In colleges, for athletes, athletic scholarships conform to NCAA rules. I’d refer you to the CC forums for college athletics for more details.
At the Ivies, there is only need-based aid. Certainly, the ability to play a sport at a high level can influence the decision to admit a student, but the admission is not predicated on the sport. If the student’s injured freshman year, and unable to play the sport, she still receives financial aid.
I believe NCAA rules require athletic scholarships to last only one year–they are renewable. If an athlete is injured, though, the scholarship may not be renewed.
The bar is set lower for athletes in the Ivy League. They still have to be within a certain range of the average student body statistics. Search for “Ivy League Academic Index” for more information.
For prep schools, some schools do offer merit aid. In general, though, most prestigious schools don’t. They certainly like good athletes. When those athletes qualify for need-based aid, it is possible that they will be offered admission and enough aid to make it possible to attend. However, there are also prep school athletes attending whose parents are paying full tuition.
AND, most prep schools are not need blind. They may admit without looking at whether a student can pay full tuition, but then many have a set financial aid budget. That’s why you’ll see many stories come March 10th of students who are told by schools that they would have been admitted, except the school couldn’t afford to offer them any aid. Sometimes schools will call parents to ask if they would prefer their child receive an offer of admission without aid, or an outright rejection.