Where does the scholarship money come from if an athlete is recruited by a private D3 school and the athlete does not qualify for need-based aid?
Does the athlete receive a “merit” scholarship?
No money at D3. Your prize is jumping the admissions queue because a coach wants you.
In addition, nothing happens if you stop your sport.
If the D3 school gives merit aid, the athlete is eligible under the same terms as all other students.
What twoinanddone said – if a school gives merit awards generally (NESCACs, Swarthmore, Haverford, Vassar and others do not), then a recruited athlete is eligible the same as any other student.
But to be clear, being recruited as an athlete does not necessarily mean receiving merit aid (like a scholarship at a D1 school).
The athlete can only receive any merit or financial aid under the same terms as other students. There was recently a school in NYC that was reprimanded by the NCAA for giving more to athletes than other students, like more work study and more FA. It is watched pretty closely.
Nothing happens at D1 or D2 schools if you stop playing the sport either, except that you lose any athletic money. You don’t lose any merit or other scholarships or aid.
Thank you for your responses.
I was wondering if coaches have some ability to tip the “merit aid scale” to recruit full paying athletes to D3.
A local mom in town (the family definitely does not quality for need based aid) said her son received a good offer from a D3 school to swim. I thought this may be a tall tale. She encouraged us to look at D3 schools but didn’t want to pursue that route as I was skeptical.
My understanding is, no, coaches cannot tip the scale, at all on merit awards for athletes. To get D3 merit, you have to look beyond the usual NESCAC (Amherst, Williams, Bowdoin etc) and other schools like Haverford, Vassar, Swat etc. Schools which are outside, usually the top 20, use merit to attract the students they want, usually because of high test scores and other stats. Some schools (Dickinson) award merit based primarily on tiers of gpa and test scores (based on conversations with coach). Others have a more broadly holisitc approach (Denison, as reported by admissions).
As my kid moved through D3 recruiting cycle, coaches sometimes predicted what level of merit award he might receive, based on his academic achievement. It was always based on his academic and other contributions to campus, not his sport.
There are many people who will tell you that their student got a full ride athletic scholarship to an Ivy or at a D3 college, or they know someone who did, and no matter what you say, they believe that their child DID SO get the athletic scholarship or extra consideration toward merit because the coach really wanted that athlete… I’ve heard one of the dads on my daughter’s team say this and I know it is not true, that his daughter has a half tuition scholarship, and other financial aid (merit, state grants) which may or may not equal her COA. I’ve heard him say ‘full ride athletic scholarship’ several times. It causes resentment among the team as they don’t think it is fair that she gets more than they do.
The rules for all of D3 are fairly simple. No athletic scholarships. Highly competitive academic D3s don’t give merit aid, if for no other reason than they have no need for merit aid to attract the high academic achievers. How do you differentiate between an applicant with a 4.0 GPA and a 34 ACT and an applicant with a 3.92 GPA and a 35 ACT. For highly competitive LACs, both applicants want to attend without the attraction of merit aid. Consequently, these LACs have the luxury of using their FA pot to attract low income applicants to increase economic diversity and to give lower income kids who have achieved in tougher circumstances the LAC opportunity.
As MidwestMom indicates there are some terrific LACs that do have merit aid. Kenyon and St. Lawrence come to mind, but I am sure MidwestMom could give you a longer list.
That leaves needs based aid. Like twoinanddone, I have heard stories about D3 athletic recruits getting disguised athletic FA, but I am somewhat skeptical. You have to be something pretty special for a school to risk NCAA sanctions by disguising an athletic scholarship as needs based aid. There is too much at risk. For the families that have personally told me about this aid, I think there is a reasonable chance that they received straight up needs based aid. It is possible that the needs based aid is a tad more competitive for a recruit, but not by much, and I think it is a mistake to rely on it being there. Or, as twoinanddone suggests, there could be a “fish story” going on.
Just chiming in, we know families out there who call need-based aid “athletic scholarships” because it sounds like their kid earned it. So, learn to take it with a grain of salt.
Or, the kids who say they are recruited to schools, and then they are not on the roster the next year.
There are just a lot of “fish tales” out there. I understand things happen behind the scenes, and life is complicated. But there are certainly people we have encountered on the bleachers who tell a story – which is pretty obviously not true --in order to save face.
My son is playing D3 soccer in the Northwest. There is no athletic money at D3, only merit and need based aid. As others have pointed out already, it is risky and unlikely that a coach would have influence on either of those aid decisions.
Also, while a kid might be recruited to D3 and offered a spot on the team–the coach’s job is to recruit better players each year. There are no guarantees regarding playing time. There is a reason there are few juniors and seniors still playing sports at D3… two years of practicing and not seeing much, if any, time in games leads many to “retire” after sophomore year.
Something I looked at during the college process for my son…did the coach play freshman? what was the attrition rate typically? how big is his freshman recruiting class? does he bring in junior college (JC) players regularly? Online stats and historical archives make searching for these answers rather easy.