Talk about the highs and lows of college; my son gets accepted at Ithaca and is been in contact with the crew coaching staff and they say they want to bring them on their team. Great! He gets accepted and then the gut punch of the financial pkg if you call it that. Not one cent of merit scholarship, just the bare min. Fafsa of $5500 in loans. So with one in college already as a parent I’m on the hook for additional 55k a year. Sorry Ithaca, I’m not paying that.
After that rant, here’s the question__ Has anybody appealed at Ithaca and got anything for it? We are going to draft a letter to the coaching staff to ask what they could help with but I’m not holding any hope for that.
Is there people that look at your financials and help with making it look better for need based money? I mean i live in CA so everybody that has a home for the last 20yrs has a boat load of equity so I guess I look wealthy i assume to Ithaca. Strange since he has recieved over 20k in merit money for other schools and from Ithaca zero.
Ithaca is a D3 school, so there are no athletic scholarships—not sure there is anything to be gained by speaking with the coaches.
If you want your S to be reevaluated for merit $ or need based aid, contact the financial aid office and go from there. Ithaca does take into account parental assets, in addition to income, when calculating financial need, so perhaps as you suggest, your home equity is the reason you were not awarded need based aid. Good luck.
@Mwfan1921 merit aid is usually awarded through the admissions office. The financial aid office deals with need based aid.
Definitely appeal. Look into what merit aid they offer and see if you should have qualified for it (stats, special talent like art or acting). What was your FAFSA EFC? If it was really high with 2 in school and only one home (FAFSA doesn’t consider equity), then you’ll likely not get much from schools using CCS (when equity IS sometimes considered). If your federal EFC was low, use that as an argument that you really NEED financial aid.
You can let the coach know that the school is not affordable and see if they offer any suggestions. Crew is not an NCAA sport, so the same ‘no scholarship’ rules do not apply (but there aren’t a lot of them out there).
Thanks for the replies. Yes I know that D3 doesn’t give out money but its funny that other D3 schools that are interested in my son rowing for them somehow came up with 20k or more in “merit scholarship” money. He has other viable choices but Ithaca was his top pick (and ours) I think the home equity value definitely skews the financial picture. Which is i think is borne out of the fact the D3 schools and D1’s that gave substantial monies did not require CSS, only FAFSA.
I will add the postmortem when we finish.
thanks again for the comments.
PS. anybody heard of Jim Kuhner of Coach for College? https://collegeselectionstrategy.com/ seems to give help in appeals etc.
D3 schools can give merit money, but they can’t give it only to athletes; your son would have had to earn it through grades and scores, leadership, talents (music, art). Men’s rowing is not an NCAA sport so there might be other funding available, but don’t count on it.
Is your screenname your email addy ?? If so, you need to change that.
thanks, i guess you can’t do it yourself. sent in request to admin