Hi. Junior DS would like to play basketball in college. Should we even look at d3 schools? He would like a full ride. I know naia and d2 have $ to give and d3 does not. But are there any athletes that get full ride at d3’s? Are there private scholarships that they give out to some athletes? DS has a 4.0 but is only at a 27 for act so I think he could get SOME merit $. Son has gotten some interested coaches but I don’t want to investigate this if d3’s cannot meet full ride. Tia!
D3 merit would have to be in line with other non-athlete students receiving either need based aid or merit aid. And yes, the NCAA does check these things.
You need to ask the coaches directly if there is enough merit money at the school to make it work for your family. My daughter was being recruited by a lot of D3 schools and I asked directly. Usually the answer was no, that she’d not receive enough money to make it work.
Are you sure you will get enough at a D2 or NAIA school? At a d1, it would be a full scholarship for basketball, but the full rides are pretty rare at D2 and NAIA, even for basketball and football players. Mixing merit and athlete aid is more common in D2, but then you lose need based aid from the school.
Thank you. I believe DS can get some merit aid with his high gpa and ok act which could be added to the athletic scholarship for a d2 or naia school. D1 is very tough to break into as a basketball player as we’ve found out. They recruit very early and only from very high level aau events. I am just unsure of the d3 money situation as I know they can’t give athletic scholarships but some kids seem to get really good $.
You are not going to get a free ride for athletic ability below d1.
Everyone “would like” a free ride, however, unless your budget is truly zero, you will have more schools to choose from if you are willing to pay part of the costs.
There is a compilation of full tuition merit scholarships here http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/2006094-2017-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships-p4.html
“I am just unsure of the d3 money situation as I know they can’t give athletic scholarships but some kids seem to get really good $.”
I obviously don’t know the people who are telling you this, so take this with a grain of salt. There are a lot of parents who puff the scholarship amount. The term full ride gets thrown around a lot, but it’s pretty rare outside of FB and BB Div1. For example, there were 2 swimmers and their parents who claimed they were getting a full ride at my D’s school last year, but a quick private chat with the coach revealed the amounts were half and third.
btw, have you had your son work on the ACT score? With some dedicated studying he can bring that up and attract a lot more interest.
It’s possible to get the full ride at a D2 school, but it is a ‘build your own sundae’ production. My daughter did. The two biggest parts of her package were her merit award and her athletic award, which basically covered her tuition and fee . Then she had a state merit award (bright futures) and a resident grant. She also had 3 state/federal need based grants. Those covered her r&b for the first two years. After that she moved off campus and still received a meal plan but did pay her own rent. If she had chosen to stay in the dorm, everything would have been covered.
This only worked because she stayed instate and could use the state grants. Other kids on the team from OOS don’t have the same things covered. Some kids don’t get as much in merit money. It’s all very complicated. That’s for our team and some of the other school teams (basketball, volleyball, etc) might be better funded and those kids, with merit scholarships, may be at full COA.
There are D1 basketball schools that are much lower ranked (academically and athletically) and @actiskillingme son may not want to go to them, but they are out there. Daughter has some D1 choices that with merit and athletic money would have been close to full tuition, fees, room and board. She also had some D3 options that with her low EFC most everything would have been covered.
He is working on his act score. Right now he is signed up to do the June act again and is doing the act academy that is available on the act website. Not sure if he will be able to raise the score much though.
@actiskillingme, you probably ought to reach out to @midwestmomofboys, who knows a lot about merit aid for athletes at D3 schools.
Hey, so thanks for the tip – our own experience was D3 Men’s Soccer, not basketball, with a focus on Midwest and east coast LACs. We realized early on we were not eligible for financial aid but could not swing full pay ourselves, so were looking primarily at schools which might offer 1/2 tuition merit. There are good midwest LACs which will give 1/2 tuition merit awards for strong academics and a coherent picture of what a student will contribute to campus. Many of them are also test optional and still give the merit aid. However, the full tuition awards were few and far between. Many midwest LACs have lower tuition and room and board than schools on the coasts, so if the total cost were say, $45k tuition, and $10k room and board, a 1/2 tuition merit award would bring tuition down to about $23k plus $10k – so about $33-35k, but definitely not approaching full tuition or even full ride kind of awards.
Merit awards are essentially reductions in the cost of attendance on account of some desirable attributes of the student – typically, they need to be in the top 25% academically of the admitted student pool and have some thing they bring to campus – music, arts, leadership, athletics etc. There is no secret money for sports, as if a school treated its athletes differently than other students, that would jeopardize D3 eligibility etc. We heard about a school which was sanctioned by the NCAA when a new assistant coach mentioned to a prospect that there might be special funds available to an athlete – that was strictly forbidden to say, let alone do. So stories about D athletes getting “athletic” scholarships are usually explained by the fact that it is need-based aid, not merit aid.
We looked at for merit, and were very impressed by (in no particular order) – Earlham, Knox, Kalamazoo, Lawrence, Wooster (not test optional) and St Lawrence (test scores required for merit). Dickinson is another favorite, though its highest merit award was in the low $20k range, and it required test scores for that amount of merit. We also did a lot of online research and had preliminary conversations with Beloit and Centre, and were impressed. Grinnell does offer some very substantial merit awards, and its basketball team plays a rather unusual style, and there may be some more room in recruiting for Men’s Basketball at Grinnell than in other sports. I’ve also heard about big merit at Kenyon and Oberlin, but those are uncommon.
The challenge is, many of these same schools do NOT meet full need, so if a family is eligible for financial aid, the combination of merit and financial aid package may still require more than the family is in a position to bear.
If your finances are low enough, a full need or very close to it school could potentially give a “full ride” or similar.
I know many athletes in D1, D2 and NAIA schools getting a “full ride” or pretty close. Other than D1 basketball and FBS D1 football, it is of the “do it yourself” variety, and usually the coach helps put it together. I am very familiar with a program that uses this extensively. They have several kids that go to school very cheaply but don’t actually get that much of their money from the athletic department. They heavily recruit kids who qualify for automatic scholarships (merit, first generation, etc) hard. Several parents of those kids say they are at or near full ride, but I know they are only getting a few thousand of athletic scholarship money. The coaches help them find the rest from other places, using money available to anyone if you know how and where to apply.
Thank you. Unfortunately we are in the middle class as we make too much $ for financial need but too little to pay the ridiculous efc. This will be our 3rd kid in college so he might squeak out a bit of a grant or something. We’ll probably just avoid the d3 schools and focus on d2 and naia. Maybe DS will benefit from the naia reduction of scholarships that will begin in 2020 if the schools try to entice kids with higher gpa’s.
Do you not think he’d be happy at a lower ranked D1? Because it is a headcount sport, I think the most money might come from a D1. As others have said, a D3 or D2 merit is going to be about half tuition for a good, solid student. If he can get the other half tuition at a D2 for athletics, that is still going to leave all the r&b, books, travel, etc. D3 is even worse as you may get the 1/2 tuition in merit, but the other half would have come from the family.
Playing the sport might be the hook to get into a higher ranked school, but then you have to pay more.
What type of school does he want? Tons of D2 in the SE states, the PA state schools (West Chester, Bloomsburg, etc) and sprinkled across Ohio and Missouri. They might not be more appealing to him than lower D1 schools. Has he looked at schools like U of Denver, where they are D1 but not really known for basketball (hockey, lacrosse, skiing bring in the national championships)?
He is going to be a biology major as he wants to go to med school eventually. He likes the small schools better. I don’t think d1 is a good fit as most of those players cannot have such rigorous courses. Everyone tells us that college athletics is a job and I know his gpa would suffer at d1. He is not willing to have his academics suffer for Basketball. I have focused on d2 and naia at this point by checking the surrounding states (we live in Arkansas) school Basketball rosters to see if they have any Biology or engineering majors on their team. Guess we will not rule out d3 if we get an interested coach. We’ll see how much $ they can offer.
D1 can be small schools. Presbyterian has 1200 students. In fact, my daughter found it much too small and IIRC, it had a big bio department but no engineering, so she ruled it out.
There are small D1 schools out there.
Even in d3, getting top grades in a tough major is not easy.
D3 teams can have captains practices, organized by students, to avoid the rules on limiting practice.
Travel would vary but generally enough to impact grades.
I suggest to look at major of existing roster. If most are business and int relations majors, vs stem,
beware. You don’t want to be only one studying on road trips.
Our experience, with similar grades, $20k/year merit at private school, still very expensive.
But the merit is yours, even if you leave the team.
^^ My daughter was one of few studying on road trips. Serious students do it and if he wants to go to medical school, he has to be a serious student.
But speaking of road trips, I think an important consideration is how often and how far a team travels. My daughter’s coach had them traveling too far and too often her first year, but luckily figured that out. Second through senior year she cut it down to one weekend trip per year, and the other away games were all instate (under 3 hours travel time). Makes a huge difference to play 11 home games and 5 away games. Her friends on the softball team had three games every weekend. A classmate on the soccer team missed almost every Wednesday for games or travel.
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We used a college athlete placement and consulting firm that we were very pleased with when our son was being recruited to play football. He ended up with multiple Ivy, Patriot League and NESCAC offers and now attends one of the Ivies. The service is not inexpensive and they are selective about who they work with i.e. families that have the means and student athletes that have the athletic talent and academic stats to play at highly selective schools at a high level. PM me if you are interested and I could connect you with the consultants we worked with.
Athletics may help you get into a D3 that you might normally not get into, but it won’t help with merit unless his scores are high enough.
Ivies, NESCACs and many high academic schools do not give merit aid. Period. All need-based.