All schools will give some money for athletics…they just may call it “merit” instead. I know of a Harvard athlete that had less than the usual credentials other than his athletic ability, but is there on a generous “merit” scholarship and on the sports team he desired.
@chb088, you are incorrect. First, there are no merit scholarships given by Harvard. U of Chicago is D3 and there are no scholarships for athletes, and if they give merit scholarships they can only give them to athletes under the same terms they’d give them to other students. If they are found to be giving preference in money to athletes, the NCAA will sanction them.
+1 for the post above. That kid isn’t at Harvard on merit or athletic money.
agree with @twoinanddone - that’s one of those puffery parent urban legends…
bapats, ask the coach for a financial pre read
Financial aid has walk-in hours (call in if you are not local.) They gave us a good sense of what we could expect next year.
@twoinanddone my cousin has scholarship money to run there. Maybe they don’t call it merit, or athletic, but he got it. And he didn’t have the tippy top scores or GPA, although he is very bright. They definitely offered it to him contingent that he run for them.
@chb088, your cousin has either merit based aid or need based aid as Chicago doesn’t give an athletic scholarships - please don’t perpetuate something that isn’t fact based.
Your cousin might call it “scholarship money”, but Harvard does not. Cannot, in fact.
From the Harvard website:
Does Harvard offer scholarships?
No. As an Ivy League institution, Harvard does not offer athletic or academic scholarships to students. However, Harvard does provide need-based financial aid to those students who demonstrate financial need.
Telling people you got a a sweet need-based financial aid grant doesn’t sound as good as telling them you got a scholarship, though.
@SevenDad, agree. It’s unfortunate as it probably is perpetuated by a student athlete’s parent - our DD had a friend who claimed that she received an athletic scholarship from a D3; turned out half the students got merit based aid as no one would have paid the face rate tuition at that school…
@sevendad it wasn’t need based. they don’t need it.
^^ The only way a Harvard student (today, things were different in the past) has a merit scholarship or an athletic one is to bring it with them from the outside. One girl and one boy from my daughter’s high school received an ‘outstanding athlete’ award of $1000. It was considered an athletic award and had to be reported as such to the AD and financial aid so if either went to Harvard that year would have had an athletic scholarship, just not awarded by Harvard. Maybe there are organizations issuing track and field scholarships. Some of the sports organizations do award additional scholarships to athletes in their sports (but some of them are non-typical sports like cheerleading, bowling, archery).
You can believe your relative or you can believe what Harvard publishes as SevenDad posted. You can google DIII athletic scholarships and see what the NCAA says (it says NO athletic scholarships). It keeps a pretty close watch on what D3 schools award. In recent years schools have gotten in trouble for offering work study to athlete disproportionately to other students, and offering financial aid to hockey plays from Canada under different terms than US students (I suspect it may be cdn/us$ issue).
If the original poster thinks there is going to be athletic money from U of Chicago, he’ll be very sad when there is none. If you want athletic money, you need to go D1 (non-Ivy) or DII. Some of the other D1 conferences award very little. They can, they just don’t.
I believe you have to make about $350,000 to get absolutely no need based aid at Harvard. It’s not athletic and it’s not academic.
Uchicago’s RD last year was less than 2%. Any student/parent thinking they have the stats to get in without ED/EDII support is simply rolling dice. 1500/35 stats + turned away by the thousands. UChicago places a great deal of weight on essays.
Students athletes with support are encouraged to submit ED/EDII as the coaches have more pull when the class stats are still fluid.
Merit aid for those who qualify is offered along with extremely generous FA for all students. Student athletes get absolutely no favoritism.
OP: you can withdraw your D ED application if you don’t agree with FA. Also until you agree/disagree you do not need to withdraw any other applications.
Good luck. Great school. My son loves it as a 1st year.
Alison- Class of 2021 RD was about 400 +/- students out of class of 1730.
@dadof4kids That’s is absolutely not true. A much lower income can yield no financial aid.
@itsgettingreal17 It depends on assets as well. I suppose you could have no income and if you had enough assets then you would get no aid. Just now I put an income of $340,000 into their NPC, and you get about a $1,000 scholarship if you have minimal assets. Which is pretty worthless to go to Harvard, but $350,000 income is the line in the sand where it stops completely, regardless of assets.
My point is that depending on how a family has set up their assets, they can make nearly $350,000 and still get a “scholarship” (need based aid) to Harvard. If Harvard is going to “cheat”, it isn’t going to be by giving a runner something that is easily tracked and explicitly tied to her commitment to run. It would be by an alum giving cash or something else untraceable to a basketball player.