Daughter is currently being recruited by several d2 programs and 2 d1 programs and a D3 program. D3 has no athletic scholarships. D3 coach indicated he will go to FA and ask for a secondary review of daughters merit aid as we qualified for no FA under schools guideline. Is this feasible. The D2 schools and this particular D3 program have similar costs. I am trying not to get our hopes up but the cost difference is 6000 at this time. Daughter has indicated she will be happy to attend 3 of the 4. Is this normal when D3 has no scholarships? Daughter received 21000 in merit for Act/GPA. Our share currently is 22000 per year plus books and fees
Is it possible? As long as the D3 school gives merit scholarships, sure. Is it likely? I’d guess not. The school needs to justify merit scholarships. If all other students at the school receive $21k as a max scholarship and 10 athletes with no financial need receive $30k, I’d think there is something fishy going on and so will other schools in that conference.
If the coach is just checking to make sure your daughter is receiving all she’s qualified for, then it should be okay.
I suggest you do your own financial aid/merit aid appeal, separate from what the coach is doing. If she already received that much merit aid, they may be able to find some more. We were in a similar situation with a LAC and presented the financial aid office with the aid offer from a close competitor college, which was about $3,000 cheaper/year after all was said and done. We were clear that our son really wanted to go to this school, not the competitor, but money was a critical issue. They agreed to match it. It never hurts to ask.
From what I’ve seen, I think D3 schools/coaches can monkey around with merit scholarship money, or even financial aid money, for athletes they really want. In other words, a bit of an “end run” around the “no athletic scholarships” rule.
But while I think it happens, I don’t think it’s very common.
Also, you’d have to wonder about the next year. I know someone who was given generous aid the first year, but then much less the second year. So much less he had to transfer out to a less expensive school. So in the end, it was a mess and not worth it.
It depends on the school. I, for example, am committed to a D3 school and received zero financial aid because of $330K family income and average ACT. My coach made it clear early on that he does not try to get pull for any commits, he said he can’t do that. The school I’m going to though is extremely academically oriented. They don’t even have a football team. Sports at the school are a joke. A D3 school that cares about its athletic programs, though, would likely have a financial aid department more willing to “find” money for athletes. In a nutshell, it depends on the coach and the school.
There is little harm in letting the D3 coach inquire as to what is available.
While there are no athletic scholarships per se for D3, in speaking to one D3 school, it was suggested that my son could be offered what I would term a “memorial scholarship” set up for student athletes with certain types of majors. This was a small, partial scholarship that was auto-renewable based on a min. GPA and continued sports participation. It had both academic and athletic terms associated with it, and was listed on the schools website, but required a recommendation from the Athletic dept. for consideration. The school you are interested in may have similar type awards, so it never hurts to ask.
Depends on the school. My kid was a recruited athlete at a handful of D3 LACs and got substantial merit award at all of them, based on strong academic, arts and athletic portfolio. When my kid let the coaches know what his awards were, they were all thrilled, and we got the impression that, even though they really wanted him, they had no say in the merit conversation and that was all between him and admissions. We did not go back and try to find additional money from any single school, so maybe at some of them, the coach would have been part of that later conversation. If these are RD or EA schools, I would imagine that a school wants to know that an improved offer is going to result in an actual commitment from the student athlete, so that a coach could be part of that follow up conversation.