I’m researching the CDS for various smaller schools for DS '17 and came upon one that says, under line H2A, that the “average dollar amount of institutional non-need-based athletic scholarships and grants awarded to students in line p” is $15,000. This is a small school with no football, though they do have basketball. Are they really saying that their average sports scholarship is $15,000? If a student has need based aid, does that stack, generally?
FWIW, around their undergrad enrollment is around 1500, and 130 have non need based athletic scholarships. They have 26 students on their male and female basketball rosters, and 9 on their volleyball roster (the other big scholarship sport). So I’m squinting at the data trying to figure out if I can guess how much $$$ is left for sports like cross country and track. It’d be nice to have a sense of whether this school is in reach at all financially before we put too much effort into it.
Is it division 1 or division 2? If D1, some of the scholarships might be mandatory full tuition, room and board, books and fees,which will really alter the averages. Basketball and women’s volleyball, golf, tennis and gymnastics are headcount sports.
You cannot stack need based institution scholarship with athletic, your can only get need based or athletic, not both… You can get athletic award and still get federal aid and state need based aid. You can also get a merit award. There is a lot of math that goes into figuring athletic awards. Some are percentages, some are flat $$, some are divided by the number on the team. That number might also include merit aid as non-need based aid on that line.
If this is a school that costs $60k, then $15k is about a quarter. That doesn’t seem out of line, but if those 30 basketball players are getting a full $60k, everyone else is getting a smaller piece of the pie.
It’s DII, with a school cost of $33,000 (direct costs). So the $15K is almost half, which seems a lot for a small Christian college. Thanks for the info on need-based not stacking with athletic scholarships.
We would get significant Pell and state need based aid, plus at least one guaranteed merit scholarship. So maybe we should look at this college a little more closely.
You have to talk to the coaches. It is virtually impossible to figure out scholarship situation for a particular team and year from outside. Majority of minor sports are not fully funded, even at some schools in the Power Conferences. When there is not enough athletic money to go around coaches may have different approaches to how to allocate them. Among them - not give any money to freshmen, give full rides to a few stars, give athletic money only to students with financial need, split available money equally, do not give athletic money to athletes eligible for other types of aid, etc.
Headcount sport means there is a limit to the number of athletes that can receive athletic scholarship. In headcount sports if the team is not fully funded then scholarships can be split.
Headcount sports can’t be split, but if not fully funded, each can get less than the full tuition/r&b/fees. If there are a max of 6 scholarships for that sport, 8 players cannot split them. But, she said it’s D2 so no headcount teams.
I think from the info given that the merit money is also being reported on that line, so if a student gets $10 in merit and $5k in athletic, they are reporting $15k in non-need based aid received. My daughter is at a D2 school and while a few sports are giving $15k in athletic awards, there are a lot of teams, including football, that only give $3-5k per player. However, there is a lot of merit money added to the athletic and the average is probably over $20k for the athletes. COA is more like $55k, so the scholarships are bigger per allotted slot.
^^Maybe that’s it? Although in some of the lines up above section H2A, they list out merit money separately from athletic money, and if you divide the # of student athletes by the total athletic money, it comes out to the $15,000. Are you saying that some of the money they’re putting in the “athletic” pot is actually academic merit money, but they list it under athletic? Of course one hopes that DS could get the guaranteed merit plus an athletic bonus, but if wishes were horses…
He might get both. My daughter gets both, and in fact there are 10 lines of awards on her account this year, including loans, state aid, 4 kinds of school aid. It just does seem like a lot to get $15k in athletic money if billed tuition, fees, r&b is only $30k. Say a team is fully funded for 10 scholarships, that coach would have $300k to hand out. If there are 30 kids on the team, either on 20 are getting the $15k average, or the average is $10k. That is just really a high percentage, especially if the school has merit money too, say of $10-15k per student.that means a whole bunch of kids are paying nothing.
I think your first impression is right, that having most athletes receive half of tuition/fees/r&b as athletic aid is high. One reason might be that many athletes are getting almost full awards and the others get nothing. If you are only giving the average for those who receive award, and most athletes receive nothing, then yes, your award average is going to be high, an ‘all or nothing’ type department. I don’t think that’s common, but it really is up to the school or coach. Just ask the coach for your sport.