Is this thread anything more than Ivy League jealousy? Seriously, believe what you want, folks. Facts are obviously not going to deter you. But if the ivies were really paying for athletes, wouldn’t they have won something big by now? You want to chew on a school? Why not take on Stanford? It pretends to be an Ivy and … whoa … look at all those athletic titles. Hmmmmmm.
@Lindagaf the Ivy Common Agreement spells this out pretty clearly. Athletic recruits who want more detailed information should speak directly with the coaches. I’m not sure why others are interested but apparently they are. The schools can and do match financial aid estimates or methodology from peers during the pre read process, so in that sense athletes are treated somewhat differently than other students and FA awards for athletes might be more generous on average at some schools.
@AboutTheSame , I don’t understand. This thread is about some people I know who feel that there might, in fact, be scholarships for athletic recruits.
Who’s jealous of the Ivy League? I’m trying to look under all stones to get the clearest answer to a common misconception.
Nope. A non-recruit with an FA offer from, for example Princeton, can ask Yale to re-run their numbers. Maybe Yale’s numbers will change,or maybe they won’t. But the process is the same. The challenge will be for recruits applying to Ivy League schools other than HYP, since they would apply ED with no FA offers to compare. I don’t think, but could be wrong, that the FA office will re-run numbers for athletes based on NPC.
I will, respectfully, correct you. There is, indeed, one merit-based, full ride scholarship to Yale - Questbridge. Questbridge scholars qualify both by merit and by financial need, they are provided a full ride, and Yale is one of Questbridge’s college partners.
Most financial aid is merit based (at least at selective schools) in the same way Questbridge is - you need to be qualified to get in then you get need based aid. I wouldn’t call that merit aid, though. Like Questbridge, you aren’t getting that $$ unless you have financial need as well on top of the academic chops.
@skieurope what I stated is correct. During the pre read process, for athletes also being recruited by peer schools, FA offices will match the methodology of those other schools. Cornell, for example, has a form for athletes to confirm if they are being recruited by another Ivy, MIT, Stanford, or Duke (‘recruited’ is a very low bar; essentially a few phone calls or a single meeting, etc.). They do not require a ‘FA offer’. Some—not all—Ivies might want to see a pre read, but certainly not an offer, from a peer school. So an Ivy recruit who is being recruited by HYP will get the same FA result at any Ivy, and will know that prior to applying ED. Contrast this with a non recruit who is admitted to Cornell but not HYP…
ETA: just so it doesn’t seem like Cornell is alone in this: at a few other non HYP schools, coaches just need to tell FA that a recruit has talked with an HYP coach in person or by email a few times, and FA will run the pre read using that school’s methodology.
I’d like to know what you base that on, @politeperson. In general, one school doesn’t know the ‘methodology’ another sister school uses. Several points in your post are confusing. Not all Ivies are able to match each kid’s other offers.
@lookingforward personal experience with several athletes recruited by Ivies. This is common knowledge among those familiar with Ivy athletic recruiting, seems to surprise only those who aren’t familiar with the process.
Let me know what’s confusing and I’ll try to clarify. It’s quite possible word choice is confusing my meaning, but not in the statement @skieurope quoted.
Agree completely with SkiEurope. I had a child that was a top D1 recruit including the Ivies and ended up going to and playing a sport at a top Ivy. I did not have CC then so it was new to us but during recruiting what the coaches at all these schools told us was in line with the school & NCAA policies and did not match what you would often hear from other parents, etc. I have heard multiple times smart people state that they know someone who got or is getting a full athletic ride or athletic disguised as a merit scholarship to a HYP, which as we know does not exist. I even heard once from someone that they heard that my child got a full ride to HYP. People will believe what they want to believe especially in this age of social media announcing early verbal commitments.
Also, as most know, any outside scholarships would directly decrease accordingly the FA award.
@politeperson is correct, all the Ivys will match financial aid from a peer school who shows “demonstrated recruiting interest”. What demonstrated recruiting interest is varies from school to school. Some wanted actual FA pre reads, others wanted handwritten notes/personalized emails.
In effect, this means that Brown, for example, will apply Yale’s FA methodology to a particular recruit, which theoretically at least means the award will be the same at both schools. When my son was going through the process, each of the FA offices at the schools seriously recruiting him (Penn, Cornell, Dartmouth, Yale and Princeton) openly professed knowledge of the methodology used at the other schools. Whether other schools generally know how peer schools determine financial aid I have no idea.
My son attended Princeton, which in our circumstances had the most favorable aid out of the box, so there was no need for matching. But I do personally know two kids who attended Penn and whose FA package mirrored Harvard’s, the same with one kid who went to Cornell (different sport) whose aid mirrored Princeton’s. It could be that all of these parents were confused as to what was happening, but I seriously doubt it. For anyone who has seen the aid packages at H,Y,P and the “other five” there is a significant difference through most middle and upper middle class income ranges. It is not like we are talking about a difference of a couple grand a year.
And it is not like aid matching is a secret in recruiting, the coaches at the schools with less generous aid are not shy about letting recruits know it is available. In fact, when my son was going through recruiting, the “word on the street” was that it was very difficult to get a written FA pre read from Harvard in football because a particular school (cough Penn cough) would only match Harvard’s aid with a written pre read, and Harvard and Penn over the preceding several years were often in competition for the best recruits. I don’t know if that is true because my son was not that high on Harvard and they weren’t that high on him.
Matching is also theoretically available to non recruits, which is how they get around calling it a special benefit for athletics, but in practice this would require a student to have multiple Ivy admissions in the RD round, something that is likely not a common occurrence.
As far as outside scholarships, Princeton’s rules were the same as those listed by @skieurope for Harvard - first it reduce summer contribution, then work study, then grant in aid. My understand is that for school’s with loans (which when my son applied was everyone other than HYP) loans are reduced before summer contribution.
I know of someone who was d-line/o-line dual player in high school and could have gone to many D1s. Did not go to Penn but mutual friend said there was some money available if he went there. Would not be surprised if there were endowments to fund specific sports, perhaps for kids with specific backgrounds (e.g. not from pennsylvania, etc.) . So I can imagine certain sports at certain schools would have limited scholarship type money in the ivies. At state public school there are named merit scholarships where student must be specific major to apply or in some cases come from specific high school or specific county. Not impossible to think there are internal scholarships for specific sports and specific players depending on other factors, not open to every member of the student body.
^The source of the money is immaterial. What is at issue is whether the Ivys will provide funds in excess of determined financial need to attract specific athletes. No one I know who has anything beyond a passing familiarity with the system believes that to be the case.
That is not to say that there can not be reasonable confusion over how the Ivys award aid, especially since they award grants in numbers well in excess of virtually every other school.
As an example, my son received a grant at Princeton that was a memorial scholarship intended for an academically successful senior football player. BUT the amount of the scholarship was limited to the amount of his financial need, as determined by the FA office. The difference was that this year his FA award said “Joe Blow Class of whatever Scholarship” while in prior years that same amount of money was denominated a “Princeton grant”. Certainly some schools could have similarly targeted endowment moneys that they use to satisfy part of their FA. It is not hard to see how someone can see an award like that and assume that it is an athletic/non need based award.
@skieurope I disagree with you about freshman student athletes. I know multiple that were committed as freshman. No they weren’t lying. And yes they eventually matriculated.
Younger high school athletes (in some sports) can ‘commit’ but it is verbal only, and not binding on either student or coach, and of course not binding on the admissions office since the admissions office hasn’t been involved at all.
Even signing an NLI doesn’t bind you to attending the school, it only prevents you from playing (or accepting athletic aid) for one year from other schools that participate in the NLI program. If a student signs with Duke, he can still go to ND but just can’t play for a year. He can also go to Williams or another school that doesn’t participate in the NLI program (any D3, a service academy, a junior college).
@twoinanddone I agree with you on the details. But saying they aren’t committed just isn’t accurate, imo.
Now we’re just getting into semantics. Yes, a student-athlete can say that she commits to Harvard as a freshman. For that matter, the random Jane Smith, who’s not a recruit, can write on Twitter that she’s committed to going to Harvard. But without an offer (which is not happening as a freshman), it’s just words. For some, the commitment actualizes. For many others, it does not.
@lindagaf I’ve heard from a few parents it’s done with merit money in D3, the merit in question being athletic rather than academic, but called academic since D3s can’t do athletic scholarships.
But who knows if it’s true since merit scholarships are often opaque at the LACs and small Us I am thinking of.
@MWolf I suppose Gates and Coca Cola etc scholars can say they got a full merit ride to an Ivy too. Outside scholarships are a different thing.
I do wonder:
Does any of this get reported if the athlete is not applying or getting any financial aid? I thought only those had to report outside scholarships.
I agree with skieurope, we are getting into semantics but IMO any commitment announced of a freshmen committing to and Ivy is only a non-binding, 1-way verbal from an athlete/parent, not from the school so in IMO it is only words and not a commitment. Admissions has not done any review and there is a lot that can happen academically and athletically between Freshmen & Jr. year that can affect the schools decision.
Also, as a side note, I believe that there are Many more verbal commitments announced than actually available so how can they all be real “commitments”.