<p>When college coaches(HYP) ask about financial ability for paying tuition, what is the best modest way to say we are too wealthy to apply financial aid? I do not want it to sound too arrogant or anything.</p>
<p>Simply that your swimmer won’t require financial aid.</p>
<p>I would answer it this way…“we’re willing to fill out all federal (Fafsa) and private financial (CSS Profile) forms as needed”. Because in the end, you’re going to end up filling out those forms anyway as they are required. Whether you need the aid or not is another matter.</p>
<p>Truthfully, my son was recruited across D1, D1 Ivy and D3. A coach never asked about our financial situation. They left all financial matters to the FA office, as it should be.</p>
<p>Both H+P recruitment forms ask if you will be applying for financial aid. Simply answering that question yes or no should be sufficient.</p>
<p>FenwaySouth, that is interesting about leaving the financial aid to the FA office, as I have run across several articles online now, including the one linked below, that imply that for many colleges (perhaps excluding the very well endowed Ivies who can do need-blind admissions), being able to pay full tuition is an admissions advantage, while needing a lot of FA might work against your candidacy. That is, if it comes down to two students being theoretically equal in front of admissions. We have been worried about this, since we will need FA. </p>
<p>Do you really believe coaches pay no attention to financial need? It pops into my mind when I hear talk about how it matters to a coach how “admissible” their candidates are when they go to committee, and whether a coach would take into account (unofficially of course) all aspects of an athlete’s application, perhaps including the advantage of not needing aid.</p>
<p><a href=“Colleges Accepting More Students Who Can Pay Full Fare - The New York Times”>Colleges Accepting More Students Who Can Pay Full Fare - The New York Times;
<p>Here’s another interpretation of an Ivy coach inquiring if you’ll be applying for FA: he knows he is competing against schools that offer athletic scholarships. If you are a low - middle income kid, he knows that your FA package will be competitive with the scholarship money you’re likely to receive elsewhere - esp for an equivalency sport.</p>
<p>If you are a top recruit from a family making 250k, he knows you’ll be choosing between paying full fare to go to an Ivy or accepting a scholarship at another D1 school. So in that regard, if you require FA - the coach knows he has another recruiting tool to use and he has a better chance to land you.</p>
<p>[As</a> Ivies Boost Financial Aid, Teams Up Their Game | WBUR & NPR](<a href=“http://www.wbur.org/npr/147047767/as-ivies-boost-financial-aid-teams-up-their-game]As”>As Ivies Boost Financial Aid, Teams Up Their Game | WBUR)</p>
<p>It depends on whether a school is need blind or need aware. However, with a few exceptions (HYP come to mind), even need blind schools will offer different amounts of aid depending on how much they want a candidate. So I don’t know if coaches pay that much attention to it, but some admissions offices will. </p>
<p>While it might be true that coaches don’t ask about FA, if a student is going to be applying early admission and needs FA, the coach is going to need to know that so that the student can request a financial aid pre-read. I don’t see how that could be done separately from the coach.</p>
<p>fenwaysouth, filling out the FAFSA/CSSProfile is NOT required at any school if you don’t plan to apply for financial aid.</p>
<p>riverruner: I don’t think that’s correct. Schools that are need aware in their admissions process require all parents to fill iout those forms. If the CSS/FAFSA supports that the family is full pay, that kid is then screened in a different pile than the FA kids by admissions. I didn’t understand this myself until a recent FA presentation by a D3 college FA officer at my kid’s school, though I did wonder why full pay friends had to fill those forms out in past years.</p>
<p>My experience with my own kids and dozens of others I’ve helped is that if you check the NO box on the Common Application asking whether you plan to file for financial aid, you will not be asked to fill out any finaid forms. I’m talking about dozens of colleges across the selectivity spectrum. No one can “make” you fill out the forms if you have no intention of asking for aid, and your child will still be awarded merit aid if he/she is eligible.</p>
<p>Riverrunner is correct. You don’t need to fill out those forms if you don’t need financial aid. Went through this with my first kid.</p>
<p>Thank you for all the postings. Another question,
Do coaches make sure about the financial matters taken care of before OV talks starts?</p>
<p>Short answer- no</p>
<p>I concur with what varska says. The coach wants to know all he can about your decision-making considerations, and therefore his potential to recruit you. The FA picture is one piece of that. At all the Ivies plus Div 1 schools like Duke and Georgetown, our athlete requested and was given a financial aid/athletic scholarship pre-read/estimate prior to accepting OV offers.</p>
<p>If you’re just looking for the most modest way of saying you have too much money to qualify for financial aid, then I suggest saying it as simply and straightforwardly as possible - “we will not be needing any financial aid.”</p>
<p>The other posts, however, raise an interesting situation:</p>
<p>If a student is a D1 scholarship recruited athlete, then telling an Ivy coach that you won’t be needing financial aid (i.e., wouldn’t qualify for any financial aid) is alerting that coach that he is likely to be at a competitive disadvantage against the D1s that will be offering scholarships, and that attending his school will be significantly more expensive (regardless of how well you can afford it) than any D1 offering a scholarship. He may, as a result, think recruiting your student may not be an efficient use of his recruiting time. </p>
<p>My only suggestion to anyone in this situation is that if the Ivy is your preference, make very certain that the coach understands that.</p>
<p>Generally speaking, therefore, the Ivies are at a significant disadvantage in recruiting D1 scholarship athletes who cannot qualify for need-based financial aid.</p>
<p>For those D1 scholarship athletes who do qualify for need-based financial aid, as well as for those non-D1 scholarship athletes who don’t qualify for need-based financial aid, the Ivies seem to be on an equal footing with the D1s.</p>
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<p>Athletics aside, I’m pretty sure I remember visit presentations people at several schools saying to fill out the FAFSA (even if only receiving merit aid).</p>
<p>I know this has been argued on CC many times.</p>
<p>Filling out the FAFSA: I’m sure it’s institution-dependent, but I’ve seen MANY cases where students received merit aid without any financial forms and have never seen a kid denied merit aid because they wouldn’t fill it out. For athletes, I’m of the opinion that saying you don’t plan to file for aid makes you just that much more attractive.</p>
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<p>It might make one more attractive but on a false pretenses basis.
What happens later on when the truth comes out when the family applies for fin aid?
You may have one very angry coach on your hands.
Not the way IMHO to start a college athletic career.</p>
<p>I know my family is still pretty early in this process but I’ve advised my daughter to be open and honest in her dealings with coaches and schools and let the chips fall where they may.</p>
<p>PS: Our EFC is $60,000 and so we’re not going to be eligible for any need-based aid anyway.</p>
<p>I’m not suggesting anyone tell a lie ever about anything. If you are certain your family will not qualify for need-based financial aid, there is no need to file and it would be fine to let coaches know that you won’t need a pre-read because you won’t be filing. They will receive the message and be able to file away the added value your child will be bringing: full pay.</p>
<p>I hear what you’re all saying…nonetheless, my friends whose kids applied to competitive, D2, need aware/meets full-need schools all were required to fill out the CSS, even though it was clear they would not receive FA. It doesn’t say that they need to on the website, but they did. They did not know why. I notice that at least at one of those schools, the CSS is due before the decision and so surmise that it has to do with admissions decisions.</p>
<p>There aren’t many of these schools–more schools claim to need blind, but don’t guarantee that they will meet full need (or in the case of Ivies, are both need blind AND meet full need) in which case it wouldn’t matter whether the parent fills out the fa applications or not–but it makes perfect sense that need aware/meet full need schools would want evidence of a family’s need or lack of need–both because it will be easier for a full-pay student to get admitted and because they guarantee to meet full need. Requiring that parents fill out the CSS seems to me a safeguard that parent will not try to go full pay for better admissions , then apply for FA down the road.</p>