These are schools that offer varsity women’s lacrosse that I think might end up being able to meet your budget (assuming around $20k). I suspect that many also have Net Price Calculators that request academic info, which should give you a good idea at the minimum amount of merit aid that your daughter would be likely to get. For the D1 and D2 schools then there may be potential athletic money on top of it. So there may not be any guarantees in this pile, but I think several of these would have a good chance at meeting your number.
Cornell College (IA): D3…similar to Colorado College, classes are taken one at a time at this school, CTCL
Hendrix (AR): D3, CTCL
Kalamazoo (MI): D3, CTCL
Mercer (GA): D1
North Central (IL): D3
Oglethorpe (GA): D3
Ohio Northern: D3
Ohio Wesleyan: D3, CTCL
Otterbein (OH): D3
Presbyterian (SC): D1 (the smallest D1 school in the country, I think)
Regis (CO): D2
U. of Cincinnati (OH): D1
U. of Colorado: D1
U. of Louisville (KY): D1
U. of Redlands (CA): D3
Westminster (UT): D2
Whittier (CA): D3
Realize that I know virtually nothing about lacrosse, so should it happen that one of these schools has one of the best lacrosse programs in the country, that would obviously decrease the likelihood of your daughter playing there. I suspect that all of these would be academic acceptances for your daughter.
Lots of good advice. I would add that one person’s experience positive or negative doesn’t mean a thing to the next person. Someone getting a great package 5 years ago or even this year isn’t applicable unless it’s your kid.
Things have changed a lot with Covid. Many of the very top players dropped out because they couldn’t practice or get seen at tournaments. Some have repeated a year or gone to 1 year post grad programs. Some just stopped playing.
The idea of paying someone to represent your daughter doesn’t seem valid. It’s going to be a lot of work, but I think if you follow some of the advice above you’ll be fine. She might find a spot, she might not but at least you’ve tried.
Also, your financials will matter. You might be eligible for some FA already which would bring down your costs. I’d call the FA offices of the schools she’s most interested in and have a chat about stacking/merit/grants etc. You don’t have to give your name.
Things have changed A LOT since 2020 and Covid. Sounds like it worked out great for your daughter. In our area, Club teams are ALL 5 K ( that was a few years ago, probably higher now) plus tournaments (3-4K at least). So if you want to play club, and most kids going for college play do, then you need to join a club and they all cost the same. Perhaps you were in a lower cost area or also it was several years ago.
Even the D1 schools have formulas for how much they can give to each player. And the school matters. The most sought after give less $ as they have more interest. My close friend whose daughter went through this 5 years ago played D1 and got the max ( it was about 25% of the school tuition). They are high income and didn’t qualify for merit because there isn’t merit at lots of the top schools. For example, the Ivies don’t give merit aid.
Agree that paying a recruiting service seems unwise.
Your daughter is very late entering the lacrosse recruiting process.
There are 3 kinds of scholarships: athletic, merit, and financial aid. For the most part, being a recruited lacrosse player only affects the amount of athletic aid she might receive. D3 schools (as well as Ivy League schools) do not provide any athletic aid. Also, many highly selective schools do not provide merit aid. I have heard of highly recruited athletes getting offers of both merit and financial aid, possibly from coaches working behind the scenes to entice a coveted player to commit.
At this point, many of the schools especially high D1 and D3 have already filled their spots for the HS class of 2023. Some D1 programs filled all of their 2023 spots by October of last year. I think most programs with openings have already identified who they are interested in and have created their rank list. A school like MIT might continue to look at prospects until the application deadline date because their admissions office shows very little preference toward recruited athletes. Anecdotally, West Coast D3 schools seem to be slower in recruiting than East Coast. The athletes that tend to get the most money are usually the ones on top of their rank list or commit early- there is only so much money that can go around.
Your best bet is to have your daughter directly reach out to the coaches of the teams she is interested in to determine whether they are still evaluating prospects and whether they can feasibly provide the aid that you are looking for. She should do it now. It would be great to be able to send them her highlight video, but what would be even better would be to attend their prospect camp > showcase (where they will be watching) this summer/early fall so that she can be evaluated in person while there is still time left to do so.
Did I miss it? What academic interests does your D have?
My standard advice (the old-timers are tired of hearing it from me). Schedule an evening to go through your finances- figure out where every nickel comes in and where it goes out. You will all be MUCH happier senior year with an actual, “this is it” budget than you will with a “kinda sorta we can make this work” type of attitude. Knowing your EFC is important- but knowing what your actual hard-stop financial limit is (which is often well below the EFC…especially with other children in the picture) is REALLY important.
U of Colorado, U of Louisville, Cincinnati, and Mercer are not going to work for lacrosse (teams highly rank and will have full recruiting classes). Colorado is not going to come in at $20k, or even $40k for an OOS student. It is expensive to live in Boulder.
Presbyterian is very small (1200 students?) but used to give full lacrosse scholarships plus merit that stacked. However, they no longer give football scholarships so don’t have to offset those with women’s scholarships; the scholarship situation for women may have changed significantly. The school is really remote.
I’m not sure how far your D is willing to go, but Centre College is a great liberal arts college (top 50) in KY. My nephew will be playing lacrosse there and received a 30K academic scholarship (and his stats are not as good as your D’s). That brings the cost of attendance to around 30K plus travel, books etc. Centre is known for have a very high percentage of their students study abroad.
Yep, lots of great advice so far. Sorry in advance for the long post, but just want to circle back to your original post re: the Claremonts. Like another one of the posters, one of our kids was heavily recruited by both PP and CMS for a different sport (eventually picked Pomona and had a LAX roomie). While kid was recruited in 10th and 11th grade by D1s, she decided late 11th grade to shift focus entirely to selective D3s (she wanted to do things in college that would have been difficult/impossible at a D1). So, kinda late in the D3 game like you, but as someone else mentioned, we found that west coast coaches seem to run a little late in recruiting - and even if an east coach at a selective school had been tracking a HS player for a while, when they faltered in their classes, the coaches needed to find an academically eligible replacement. While LAX teams at both PP and CMS have All-Conference/State/Americans, club champs, they also both have “mere” high school players on their rosters. That being said, I don’t know how much help the latter received during admissions. Financially, it sounds like we were in a similar boat to you so we also compared merit/need aid at 4 of the 5Cs: CMC does have a few substantial merit scholarships (and last year infamously told 300+ admitted students that they had received one of them - when there were actually only 8 of that particular award available). Scripps had the most merit with - we were told - about 25% of admitted students receiving it. Practically speaking, Pomona doesn’t do merit, and Pitzer’s is extremely limited, but Pomona’s and CMC’s need-based aid ended up being roughly ≥ the athletic scholarships that many of her HS/club teammates seemed to get at D1s. So yeah, definitely run the full NPCs for all. Like others have said, start filling out recruiting forms, email coaches, and shy away from paid recruiting services. But, this late in the recruiting process - at least for our kid’s sport - we found it essential to have a highlight video to link in the coach emails. Finally - and can’t stress enough based on the experience of several of her HS/club teammates - if things do work out LAX-wise, urge your daughter to pick a school as if she were to have a career-ending injury during the first week of practice.
BIG thanks!
Super helpful and insightful stuff. A few pieces of omitted info.
We are not paying the lacrosse recruiting service. It was clear that it wasn’t going to pencil out for us, especially at this late stage.
She is a bit all over in terms of academic interests. She has done really well with her math (AP/ACT test scores) but definitely seems to lean towards liberal arts. Her latest plan is becoming an attorney (I know, I know.)
Parent contribution would be 20k. We had told both of our kids 15/year but her brother got a very generous merit award at his college (he is a junior next year) that allows us to go up to 20/year without loans.
After re-reading this entire thread, it sounds as if there is little connection posters can draw between playing lacrosse and potentially receiving additional merit aid. This makes sense and was what we expected, honestly. The comment from the meeting with the recruiting service about colleges increasing offers based on what other schools are in the mix was what we wanted to “fact check” and I think we pretty much solved that. Thanks to everyone. Very kind.
There’s a lot for the kids who are Div I or who are Div I level but chose DivIII for academic purposes. Harder to read for the others who are good players but not outstanding ( state/national level and highly ranked). We’ve seen some goalies in all sports and M/F do really well.