@twoinanddone Agree completely with that. It’s a celebration of them getting recognized for their achievements in their sports and almost always their academics as well for the true student athletes.
@twoinanddone @moscott totally agree–it’s great to celebrate these athletes moving to the next level.
To the OP, if your nephew is a prospective baseball player, and you want to provide his parents with a little relevant information, start with this. There are about 300 Division 1 baseball schools. The max roster allowed by the NCAA is 35, of which there can only be 27 on scholarship. The maximum number of available scholarships allowed by the NCAA for D1 baseball is 11.7. Those can be divided among the eligible 27 players. In other words, every single full roster has at least 8 kids (and probably a lot more) who are full pay, or regular financial aid. The minimum scholarship amount allowed is 25%, obviously the max is 100% scholarship. Given the numbers and the restraints, kids on 100% baseball money are essentially like unicorns. If a kid is that good, he’ll likely be selected in the first round or two of the draft as a HS senior. On top of that, the vast majority of schools are not fully funded at the full allowed 11.7 scholarships. For example, the NCAA baseball tournament is currently going on. This past weekend, Davidson College won the Chapel Hill Regional over UNC. Davidson has a total of 3 (three) scholarships for their 35 roster players. That means most of those kids are full pay (or regular financial aid). The very max that could be getting any help at all would be 12 (3 scholarships, divided at 25% each).
Academics do come before being an athlete and that is the case at the ivies. There are plenty of engineering majors on my son’s team. 
I was actually surprised by the level of flexibility in scheduling and other academic endeavors (semester abroad etc) that the athletes on the team enjoy.
And I’ve stated it before, the schools that offer need based FA only are the best bet for student athletes in that the aid is not contingent upon athletic participation. This allows a student who may wish to end their athletic commitment the freedom to do so without the loss of FA.
On the offer letter, some of these schools call their need-based aid ‘scholarship/grant’, so it is not really incorrect when you hear them called scholarships at awards ceremonies and in casual conversation. It would be incorrect to call them merit scholarships.
Lots of good advice here, some of which I already shared with my sister. I think she would like him to choose a school based on academics first, where he might be recruitable or might end up playing on a club team. BIL was a college athlete (crew) and I think he is more the catalyst behind looking for schools where nephew has a good shot to play on the varsity squad–not primarily for financial reasons but because BIL really enjoyed that aspect of his college time.
They are fortunate to be able to afford a lot of schools (she hasn’t told me their exact budget for nephew, but they are paying around $175,000 for older Ds 5-year program and seem to be fine with that. Niece will have finished by the time nephew starts). So seems like they are looking for merit (athletic or academic) to bring their cost to (I think) $40-45,000/year (maybe more if his business continues to do well).
One of the camps they are considering is focused on high stats kids with coaches from a couple of Ivies plus schools like Tufts, Holy Cross, JHU, etc. I will just caution sis that many of those schools don’t offer academic or athletic scholarships, but they can look into the ones that do (Richmond, Lehigh, GWU). Depending how he does on ACT or SAT this fall, then they can decide whether places like Vanderbilt, Georgetown, Notre Dame might be worth taking a closer look.
Thanks, everyone!
My presumption is that is a Headfirst Camp you are referring to. Generally they are considered well run and a good option for high academic baseball kids. Other organizations run high academic camps, but Headfirst is generally the leader in that arena from a camp perspective. You referenced Vanderbilt - assuming the kid in question is a 2019, Just an FYI - Vanderbilt currently has 14 kids committed in the 2019 class and 8 of them rank in the top 100 players in the country for 2019 graduation year kids.
Announcing a D3 player as having signed an NLI in Fall Senior Year is both disingenuous and risky as unlike D1 nothing is certain until the acceptance letter is received, and calling a need based award an athletic scholarship is just as bad as it also misrepresents the truth - I am not saying you call out need, but just call it a scholarship.
My DD’s school had a D1 NLI signing day in Fall Senior Year and then a celebration of those that were going to be continuing at the D2 and D3 level after all acceptance letters were received and admittance commitments were formalized as plenty of D3 coaches have missed being able to come through - my DD was in the 2nd batch as that’s what she is doing and I’m fine with it, and unless all waited until Spring Senior Year it would just be puffing one’s chest with the risk of egg on their face come Spring for those in the D3 world.
D1 and D2 kids can sign an NLI in the fall for most sports, before they are admitted. My daughter did, but she delayed her signing ceremony until the spring because that’s what she wanted to do. At her school, the fall ceremony was very small (her year only 4 women rowers signed) and the spring includes anyone who want to participate no matter the level (D1, D2, or D3, NAIA, junior college) and included those who weren’t really ‘signing’ or who had already signed.
Many D1 and D2 kids sign before they are admitted to their schools. That’s allowed, and the commitment is contingent on being accepted to the school. If they aren’t accepted, then the NLI is void and they can sign another commitment in the spring.
Kids announce they are ‘committed to the process’ with Ivies all the time, but we all know they still have to get in. Same announcing they are ‘committed’ to Army or a D3 school. They are excited and want to shout to the world where they are going. Many change their minds. D3 schools aren’t all that honorable either. My daughter committed and was then contacted by a lot of D3 coaches who told her that even though she signed an NLI, she could still go to a D3 school and not be penalized.
Can I add an Ivy league need-based aid question here? It’s well known that the various schools in the Ivy league have different levels of calculating your need. Princeton and Harvard generally give the best need-based aid whereas I personally found Brown to be the worse for our family. it’s also possible that a student accepted into multiple Ivy league institutions is able to get the other schools to match the best offer. My family personally saw this with Columbia and Princeton. So my question is does this effect Athletic recruiting? Are school’s able to offer a standard need-based aid that is universal to all Ivy league schools or would the athlete have to be accepted to multiple schools before matching could occur? It seems this would put some schools at a disadvantage in recruiting to other schools in the same league if there isn’t any standardization.
FA in the Ivies is completely need based, so I would think an athletic recruit accepted into multiple schools can still play the match game like anyone else. The major difference is that most athletic recruits who got one of the coveted spots had applied either ED or EA. If I recall correctly, only HYP are EA schools, so an athletic recruit to any of the other schools would have no choices. So if the kid was accepted as an athletic recruit to HYP, and had the academic chops, essays, LoR’s and EC’s to get accepted into multiple Ivies without the athletic hook, that rare kid would be able to try to negotiate a better package. Can’t say how the original coach who offered the spot would take that, or the coaches of the competing schools.
I would also say that HYP currently have a recruiting advantage since aid is 100% grant. For a low/lower middle income level kid, the FA is worth more than that of a D1 school, especially for sports outside of football and basketball, where most scholarships are partial. That is why the Ivies are nationally competitive in sports like hockey and lacrosse.
The ED thing just makes it more imperative for a school to be able to give the best offer available before the student is accepted anywhere and why I wonder if they can calculate a higher need for athletes than for other students.
Not sure how much pull the coaches have with the FA offices, especially the schools with weaker endowments. I would guess recruits with FA concerns would work with the coach and FA office before they applied ED to get a read on FA, and they would argue their case here for more aid then based on economic vs. recruiting/competitive criteria. Once the recruit gets accepted ED, they lose most of their leverage, like any other ED student. Don’t have personal knowledge here, maybe another poster does.
They cannot calculate higher financial need for athletes. What would be the justification for that?
I don’t know if the Ivies have to do it, but D3 schools have to prove to the NCAA that scholarships for athletes are in line with scholarships to all students. I guess there have been issues with Canadian hockey players getting more than other students in their same family income range.
@Dolemite
Not sure if I understand your statement but athlete need is not calculated at a different rate. As a parent you submit your FA records and the FA officer sends the coach the offer. If a family wants to use the best FA offer and ask another school to match it they can and the other coach may or may not be able to have FA officer match it.
Same as if a non-recruit gets a FA offer from one school and asks another school for a matching offer during regular admissions.
The Ivy used to have a unitary financial aid policy, which meant that every school would use the same financial aid metric. The idea was that no student should favor one school over another for financial reasons. This policy was struck down by the courts as violative of anti trust laws. This turned out to be a good thing, because it started the move towards really butt clenchingly generous financial aid by Princeton which was quickly followed by Harvard and Yale, and then by slightly less obscenely generous aid from the other five schools.
The way it works now is that each Ivy will match an actual award of financial aid from “peer schools”, which generally means the Ivys, Stanford,etc. Each school will also match a “bona fide” estimated offer of aid from the same peers, although I have never heard of an Ivy matching aid for an athlete from an academic peer that competes in a lower division (MIT, Williams, Amherst, etc). This benefit is technically available to all students, although in practice it applies, prior to RD decisions, to athletes and a few select other applicants who can show sincere interest from another school.
Some interesting information. Has anyone ever done an Ivy NPC and then got a better offer? I will say my D got a substantially better package from Penn once she was admitted than the NPC I did. About 12K more each year and not that far from Princeton’s package. I’m going to eliminate user error also since the Penn NPC is through College Board so the information is saved and used for other institutions NPCs and every other NPC was basically spot on. I’ve wondered if it was because she was a Philadelphia Public High School Student as there advantages to that for UPenn. Long ago before need-based only aid there was such thing as the Mayor’s Scholarship for Philadelphians @ Penn so I wonder if it now remains as better need-based aid. It appears legally nothing is stopping Ivies from using preferential packaging. Of course it could be an NCAA violation if it’s used for Athletes exclusively (impermissible benefits).
Does it really matter what the financial aid is called at top tiered schools? The student had the chops to make it in, therefore in my estimation need based aid IS merit based at those selective schools.
In this case, it absolutely matters.
The most meritorious candidate on earth will not get money from Harvard if there is no financial need as determined by Harvard. And if HYP aren’t offering you any/enough need-based financial aid, then it’s unlikely that other schools will.
If my sister just took the word of her son’s coach that, “The Ivys make the money work out for the kids they really want, especially athletes,” then we’d have one extremely disappointed family if nephew actually got admitted to, say, Princeton. The NPC indicates that he’d receive zero financial aid, yet his family won’t pay $70,000+. Doesn’t matter if he “had the chops to make it in” if need-based aid is the only aid available and he doesn’t qualify for any.
However, there are hundreds of other schools that may offer him merit money. This is a vitally important distinction for a kid whose NPC results show schools that technically are affordable, but where costs exceed what the family is willing/able to pay.
So yeah, semantics matter… a lot.
@LuckyCharms913 I have an example of what you’re talking about: my S had a teammate recruited for football by H. Parents made too much for any aid and they weren’t willing to pay full price so he ended up at a PAC-12 school full ride. Shame though because he’s a bright student who would have gone to H