Is it true that you can not use NFC Calculator if you are a recruited D1 athlete receiving athletic scholarship money, unless your family’s income is very low (enough to qualify for Pell grant)? Because the school can only give you athletic money or academic merit (assuming you meet the minimum requirements)?
You can use the NPC, but you’ll have to remove any institution need based FA if you are accepting an athletic scholarship. The NPC will, of course, not include any athletic aid on it.
Not all calculators are the same, but the one at D’s school showed merit aid, grants from the school (available to all student who met the requirements, not just athletes), a state grant, a state merit award. It didn’t include any state need based aid or school need based aid because we didn’t qualify for any. If the NPC includes a Pell grant or SEOG, you’d still be eligible to accept those. Remember they are just an estimate. If the NPC says you will receive $20k in need based aid, you probably won’t, or at least won’t be able to accept both.
I was very glad I’d used the NPC to calculate the merit aid. When she got her award, it was quite a bit lower than the NPC had said it would be. Turns out the school had the wrong ACT score, and if I hadn’t questioned it, it would have cost her $20k over the 4 years.
Thank you! That’s kind of what I was understanding. Unfortunately, we likely won’t qualify for any need aid, and this particular school does not factor in ACT, SAT or GPA in to the NFC. So we are going in blind, to some extent.
Can you get a pre read? When my daughter first met with her coach, the coach had the information about merit scholarships and grants (it wasn’t correct because of the bad ACT score, but coach had it). Coach also knew about the state grant and asked if we had Florida pre-pay (no), so we had a pretty good idea what kind of aid we were eligible to receive.
At our school there is also a financial aid person who works with the athletes to apply all aid in the way most advantageous to the student. I’ve spent hours on the phone with her moving funds around so we don lose anything.
For us, it seemed like Private schools did not let our daughter stack athletic w/ academic monies, but public schools did. I don’t know if this is an across the board thing, but that was our experience.
My daughter definitely stacks merit and athletic at a private school. Div 2. No other way to afford it.
I’m thankful it worked out for you that way @twoinanddone . At the 6 private D1 programs our daughter received offers from, she could not stack.
Thank you all for your comments. I think we need to go back and verify with the school/program. It does seem like with public schools everything is a lot more clear cut than privates.