They were offered spots on the team back in October and we’ve recently received the Letter of Intent. However, it looks pretty unofficial and is definitely not the binding National Letter of Intent that comes with athletic aid. The coach has given them a deadline of this Sunday to sign this letter. We still have no idea about financial aid. Is this a normal thing to have happen and should we ask the coach if he plans to extend a scholarship offer? He basically told us all aid they will qualify for will come from the financial aid office. We are so new to all this! We just don’t want to get taken advantage of or miss out on $$ that might be out there.
@twoinanddone what do you think?
If this is a recruited athlete, call the financial aid office and ask for an early read.
Is this a scholarship athletic offer? If so, you need to understand how athletic scholarships interface with need based aid.
Two kids? Same school? Same sport? You need to get more info BEFORE you commit…because what happens if this turns out NOT to be annaffordable option for you…especially since you sound like you have two kids going off to college at the same time.
Definitely ask for a financial pre-read and ask for an extension for the deadline to “sign.” We were offered more financial aid in the pre-read than the coach was able to offer. Still waiting for it to all be official, but after we were given the pre-read (by a meets 100% of demonstrated needs college) we decided to go that route instead of taking a lower athletic scholarship (though was not able to sign a national letter of intent).
Is this D3? No NLI in D3 and no athletic aid. Merit $$ at some D3 schools. Merit $$ comes from admissions not coach. Some D3 schools have the kids use generic NLI on signing day so the kid can attend the day with the D2 and D1 guys.
Thumper, they weren’t recruited but attended an ID camp at the school and at the end, he offered them spots on the team. Yes, they are twins and will both be on the team. I guess what we’re wondering is, if the coach’s letter is not an OFFICIAL letter, does it really matter if they “commit” because it is not a binding agreement. The financial aid office says to talk to the coach and that we will not receive any award package until February.
It is a DII school.
So some schools that offer scholarship $$ don’t actually give $$ to every athlete. I had a kid who was offered a spot on a DII athletic program but was told the merit $$ was actually better than any of the athletic $$ my kid was likely to get. Most of the athletic $$ went to kids who really needed the money and/or top performers of the team. Coach told my son that he would not get any $$ in early years as he wouldn’t be starting and we didn’t qualify for any financial need based aid. My son did qualify for a merit award based on gpa/test scores etc.
Maybe you are in a similar position? You have 2 kids going at the same time? So maybe your need based aid will be significant. I would ask the coach if you could talk to someone in Financial aid before signing anything, but it also doesn’t sound like what you have is too binding anyways. But someone in admissions should be able to do an academic pre-read and someone in Fin Aid office should be able to do an aid pre-read and let you know what they expect you to pay.
My husband would also like to know why we had to pay $90 per kid for an NCAA ID if they were not going to be offered a true NLI with a scholarship.
^^ Because all of the kids go thru the NCAA clearinghouse to make sure they pass basic educational requirements and also stuff like citizenship, age, years of eligibility, amateur status etc.
RightCoaster, so should the coach have told us about what to expect when he sent the letter? We feel weird pressing him for info on $$ but with two going at the same time, I do think it’s reasonable to wonder about.
I would contact the coach and ask what is going on. He won’t be mad, he’ll probably try to help you. Most athletic departments have liaisons in the admissions and fin aid offices. If your kids have applied Early action or Regular decision there is no legal agreement to bind you to the school or vice versa. That’s OK. If you applied Early Decision you are commuted to attend except if the financial aid package does not work for you, and you need to find out what kind of aid you will be getting. The sooner you find this out the better, then you can make an informed decision. Some schools don’t release regular decision or early action financial aid packages until after the holidays.
Typically the NLI will include any and all athletic scholarship info. Sounds like the coach has already told you that you won’t be receiving athletic aid. So this could just be his way of informally ‘locking down’ expected walk-ons to both take them off the market and reassure himself that he’s done recruiting. After all, he has no guarantee they’re coming except a verbal at this point. Also could be as simple as the program is doing a press release on ‘signings’ and he wants to include them. Either way, no it’s probably not binding but it does make it tough for them to shop around (no other coach is going to trust the word of a kid who already signed something, except if they end up being offered a true NLI, which is binding). It’s a little weird imo. But if you’ve already decided on the school and can afford it then there’s probably not much downside to signing.
You might want to have mods move this to athletic recruits sub forum for additional opinions.
The NLI is an official NCAA document and there are a lot of regulations on it. One of the requirements for D1 or D2 is there has to be consideration given at time of signing, i.e., $$$, to make it a contract. The minimum for a student to sign the NLI is book money (about $750) but some sports have higher requirements (I think baseball is one that requires something like a 1/4 scholarship or $2000?). You can’t sign an NLI without a second document called the Grant in Aid, which is the scholarship.
What the coach is asking you to sign is meaningless. What would the penalty be for not going to this school, for breaking the contract? For an NLI, the ‘penalty’ for not playing for the school you sign with is that you can’t take a scholarship or play with a team at another NCAA school that participates in the NLI process for one school year. You CAN play for a non-NLI school, which includes all D3 schools, and I believe the Ivies and service academies (but not sure on those) without sitting for a year. You can GO to another NLI school, but you can’t play or take the scholarship. You can also get a release from the signing school.
I’m really surprised the coach at an NCAA NLI school can even request you sign the ‘contract’ he’s offering. I don’t imagine the NCAA would be very happy to have their forms and rules bypassed for the coach’s own contract.
@TomSrOfBoston is correct, you have to complete the clearinghouse form even if you don’t get an athletic scholarship to play on an NCAA D1 or D2 team. The athlete has to be cleared to play on the team and submit both high school graduation documents and gpa/scores.
It is up to the schools whether they want to allow stacking of athletic, merit, and other aid. Many schools (or conferences) don’t allow it at all, but others do (and there are some NCAA qualifiers for merit aid from the school). My daughter, at a D2, had athletic, school merit, state merit, and federal FA and we stacked it as high as we could. If a school gives need based aid with athletic aid, in most cases that need based aid is counted toward the team maximum, and most coaches don’t have room in the total aid given to allow a student to accept athletic and need based aid.