ED Recruited Athlete and Financial Aid

My son is a track and field thrower (hammer, weight, and shot put) who is being recruited by several NESCAC, Patriot, and Ivys. He is just starting this journey and will be casting a wide net. I just read an older thread about schools not using their “slot” for recruits apply for financial aid in Early Decision. This could really change which schools he considers since we can’t commit to full price tuition. Do any of you have experience with or knowledge of this practice?? So far he is looking at Bowdoin, Williams, Bucknell, University of Vermont, Yale, and Cornell. He will be adding safeties at our insistence too!

Ask coach for a FA preread. My D plays another sport but had to apply ED to get coaches support. Not sure how T&F works.

I haven’t heard of an Ivy track coach refusing to use a slot for an athlete applying for FA. The generous aid is a competitive advantage for them against other D1 programs. Usually recruits will get an admissions and FA pre read mid summer prior to senior year. Most Ivies will match FA from other Ivies (Cornell will match Ivies, Duke, Stanford, MIT methodology if there was serious recruiting interest, even if no pre read from those schools was done). So with Ivies at least, you should know the FA picture well before taking official visits in the fall of senior year. ED might not be required from all Ivies in T&F. Depends on the situation. But practically speaking, most athletes who have already decided based on the OV would probably prefer ED anyway.

ETA: best resource for Ivy recruiting is still “The Essential Guide to Ivy League Athletic Recruiting” by Tier One

There are some schools that won’t let you combine merit aid with athletic aid,but the NESCAC and Ivies don’t have athletic aid. The Patriot schools may have some restrictions. I doubt UVM has that restriction.

i can’t see how the coach gains anything by not having you apply for FA. Most of those schools are need blind for admissions.

I had a child that was a top T&F recruit throwing events. We narrowed in on the Ivy’s + others like Stanford and ended up at a top Ivy. I don’t have any direct NESCAC T&F experience but have had other children recruited by NESCAC for other sports. For the NESCAC I don’t know how many slots they get for T&F.
As others stated and you probably know, the Ivies and others like top NESCAC are need blind FA with little or no merritt, all need based aid/scholarship.
I don’t think FA will impact recruiting and coaches support at all and in fact my experience is the coaches like to promote that they are need based aid and meet 100% (their formula) of the family need based aid.
In the end, my belief and experience is that a Likely Letter or Slot/Support will come down to how high the athlete is on their recruiting list plus the students AI/academics. It will be a combo of both.

Of those schools Bucknell and UVM don’t meet need and don’t give much in the way of athletic scholarships. My daughter was an Ivy recruit for track and they never asked about financial need in the process. I can’t comment on the NESCAC schools. Bucknell has a huge roster and my impression is that the coach fights an uphill battle with the party culture there ( he does not allow members of his team to join the Greek system either). UVM recently reduced athletic scholarship for track which to means that the program will decline as scholarship athletes graduate.

If you’re son is Ivy material then UVM and (maybe) Bucknell are safeties. The Bucknell coach will promise an ED slot and give a financial preread as well as admissibility read in case you are applying to a highly competitive major. If you go RD they are less likely to offer a slot and based on what we heard from the team, athletes with a slot get preferential treatment.

My daughter we recruited for track and field. Visited 17 schools. She had low D1 numbers in her top two events (400m/200m). Determined she wanted a smaller school with academic rigor in D3 (“I don’t want to be owned, dad!”) Interviews with 12 coaches/coaching panels. Probably not quite the academics of yours, (4.5/3.6 GPA, 32 ACT, 4 APs (5’s)… When it was getting down to it, she did overnights at her top 4 schools and offered spots on all those teams/schools. All D3’s want you to go ED (as to the other divisions). I told the coach she could go ED if we had the financial pre-read done, which her top school did. After getting that back, great offer (1/2 cost of our state u) but I didn’t really like the amount of work/study time (12 hours per week), so they came back with second offer, same net cost, 3 hours/week work/study. Coach reassured a job in the athletic center. She committed to that school .Def recommend the early financial read. Feel free to PM me with questions.

Different sport but DS targeted Ivies right away. In our case, the FinAid at Ivies was way better than any Athletic scholarship he could have gotten at other schools. Also, since it’s in no way tied to the athletics, it puts less pressure on the kid.

ED is very normal in his sport and I didn’t run into anyone where the combo of FinAid and ED was an issue. Just make sure you get a financial pre-read. Perhaps that thread you saw was from back in the day when they didn’t do financial pre-reads??
The FinAid office at his first choice very helpful. THEY let US know that if we could prove recruitment from the ‘other’ Ivies, that they would match the other’s algorithm. ( P and H don’t count the family home in ‘assets’)
‘The Ivy League Recruiting Guide’ mentioned above is very good. I would also recommend ‘Paying for College Without Going Broke’. Not an easy read but very helpful in getting your situation in order before filling out all those forms. Luckily, I found this book before DSs older sibling started college so by the time we had 2 in, we were pretty well organized.

It’s a very exciting time, enjoy!

If you can get considered at Princeton or Harvard, I would try. I’m pretty sure they just ran my numbers on the Harvard online calculator to calculate the financial aid offer for S at a less generous Ivy. But he could document recruitment by coaches at both of those universities. I don’t know who the more generous nescac or Patriot schools are, but they probably will match too, at least to other schools within the league. Documenting interest is good enough, athletes don’t need an actual offer like a regular student because they know you have to apply ED so can’t get multiple financial aid offer to compare.

UVM track just lost a boatload of money. They have virtually no scholarships to offer track athletes. It is a great school but buyer beware. There is no football at UVM and the athletic money is divertered away from track to fund infrastructure and salaries and other sports. You will get more at a Patriot league college for track.

https://vtdigger.org/2018/12/20/uvm-trims-scholarships-in-track-cross-country-and-swimming/