Lots of interesting feedback from everyone. I think the one thing that’s abundantly clear is that, at least officially, there is no money for coaches to get a particular athlete into an Ivy League college. No one has any real evidence that athletes might get money apart from financial aid, and the best anyone has presented is hearsay. I will stick to my original story?
What began as a rumor-mongering thread actually has produced some real news. @politeperson and @Ohiodad51 have provided credible descriptions that came as a surprise to me (and I’m a former Heps athlete) and apparently surprised a few others too. This information may be useful for future recruits so I will summarize what strikes me as the big wows and invite these guys to confirm or correct.
We have long known that ivies and other peer schools will sometimes recalculate financial aid offers if an admitted student gets a better offer from a peer institution. We can quibble about whether to call this “matching” or just “re-running the numbers” but essentially the result is the same–an amended offer in response to a competitor.
It is common knowledge that HYP, by virtue of endowments in the tens of billions, are more generous with financial aid than other ivies and peer schools. The big revelation of this thread was that the other ivies possess the HYP methodologies and can run them to match the offer by a better-endowed rivals BEFORE THE ATHLETE IS SERIOUSLY RECRUITED OR ADMITTED by rival HYP. Until now, I (and apparently others too) only imagined this happening after a kid was admitted to two schools. From what @politeperson and @Ohiodad51 described, you could get a HYP-type financial aid package from, say, Cornell or Penn simply by leveraging a few contacts with a HYP coach–without even waiting to learn whether that HYP coach is really interested enough to seriously recruit you. If so, there’s a big incentive to flirt with the HYP coach even if you really want to go elsewhere.
It is interesting to note the scenario briefly described above by our polite informants. We can imagine a scenario in which two students with identical financial aid inputs (ie., real “need”) get two different “need-based” packages at the same school. An athletic recruit at BCCDP could wind up with a more generous HYP-type aid package while another kid admitted to the same BCCDP school with an identical financial aid profile gets a lesser award based on the school’s normal methodology. Is that correct?
@oldschooldad Yes, in my experience everything you’ve described is correct and what you’ve described in the final paragraph absolutely can and does happen. The matching certainly doesn’t require admission and takes place very early In the recruiting process, prior to OVs. Or at least it did in the situations I’m familiar with. Some of that timing might vary by sport.
Yes, it’s theoretically possible to leverage contacts with HYP coaches (and at Cornell, SM) with the sole purpose of improving FA at a different school. Of course the catch there is that one needs to be good enough to get calls or emails returned from those coaches. In some sports that’s not easy. So while the threshold for showing recruiting interest is fairly low, one still does need to be a pretty good potential recruit to meet it. But yes, I know of a match that was conducted based on communication with HYP that had stopped several months prior, with no intention on either side to take things to the next level. I should add that even though they were aware of the possibility of leveraging HYP contacts, in all the situations I’m familiar with the athletes were sincerely exploring all these schools and programs. I suspect that’s the case with the majority of Ivy recruits—they tend to look at more than one Ivy program, and one of HYP usually is part of the mix at some point.
@OHMomof2 "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."
D3s cannot offer merit scholarships to athletes that they would not offer to a non-athlete. Schools that don’t abide by this rule are sanctioned by the NCAA. A D3 school in Michigan was sanctioned a few years ago because the NCAA believed that they were not following the rules when awarding merit scholarships to athletes.
And the NCAA also watches the need based money given to athletes. If an athlete appears to be getting more than others similarly situated, the NCAA will question it. There were a few schools recently that were questioned about how much money Canadian hockey players were getting. I think some of it came down to the exchange rate, but the NCAA (and other schools in the conferences) do care.
One D3 in NYC got into trouble because they gave more work study to athletes than to other students.
I’m aware those are the rules. I’m also aware of some kids whose college coaches basically told them different.
But this could be part of the overall merit game at these non-elite tuition-dependent private schools too. I was able to get an offer changed for my S - a non-athlete - by presenting a better offer from a similar school. Another $2k appeared for going to a music open house. Merit is not awarded by public stat charts at these schools and athletic ability may be one thing that is considered in desirability of that student - and thus merit/discount offer - along with musical or academic talent.
I choose to believe that Ivy and D3 schools do not give athlete scholarships because they choose not to. They have joined an athletic conference (Ivy League) or division (div 3) and agreed with other schools in those groups that they won’t give athletic scholarships.
The Ivy league schools could just say to the NCAA that they now want to give scholarships and live by the NCAA rules. It’s not impossible to remain an elite school and give athletic scholarships as ND, Stanford, Duke and many others do it.
A few years ago during one of the superbowl pregames, Richard Sherman’s mother went on and on about how he’d gone to Stanford on a full academic scholarship. I’m sure she really believes that and no one can tell her otherwise.
The NCAA rules at the D3 level actually are quite clear, and do not permit colleges to consider “athletics leadership, ability, participation or performance as a criterion in the formulation of the financial aid package.” Rule 15.4.1(a). Moreover, a “financial aid package for a particular student-athlete, group of student-athletes or team of student-athletes cannot be clearly distinguishable from the general pattern of all financial aid for all recipients . . .” Rule 15.4.1(c). So, it is a violation if a school considers the leadership of a student as team captain in awarding merit aid. The rule is enforced by requiring the institution to submit “an annual report that includes data regarding the financial aid packages awarded by the institution to freshmen and incoming transfer student-athletes and to other incoming students.” Rule 15.4.1.1. Variations in the data trigger an NCAA investigation. Notably, the rules also preclude the athletics staff from “arrang[ing] or modify[ing] the financial aid package (as assembled by the financial aid officer or financial aid committee) and are
prohibited from serving” on “financial aid committees and from being involved in any manner in the review” of financial assistance awards. Rule 15.4.5.
Does it happen? I am sure that it does, just as many D1 schools violate NCAA rules. But that wink and a nod that parents talk about can have severe consequences. https://ncaaorg.s3.amazonaws.com/enforcement/infractions/decisions/Feb2019D3INF_NVU-LyndonPublicDecision.pdf
@oldschooldad , this thread was started as an attempt to debunk rumors, not to start them. I think, by and large, there have been some very useful posts that really clear things up. I am going to refer people to this thread in future discussions about this topic.
^But realizing, Lindagaf, that this thread includes plenty of “anec-data.”
Of course, @lookingforward .
Oooooh, I’m gonna use that in the future. 
Another user said upthread, and I’m paraphrasing, people are going to believe what they want to believe and there is no changing their minds. That also holds true for some users on this site, IMO.
In my experience what often happens in these “heard it from a friend” stories is that someone misunderstands the nature of the FA the student receives and the family either doesn’t correct them or can’t before word circulates.
Just for sng I googled “got an athletic scholarship to ___ College”, the college in question being one that from many sources, including a current trustee on the Admissions and Financial Aid committee, I know doesn’t give athletic scholarships. Up popped a newspaper story including the words “[kid’s] mom, [name redacted] spoke on the college and what it means for her second son to get a scholarship to play baseball.” It also mentioned him signing a NLI even though the college doesn’t issue them. Many high schools hold a celebratory ceremony and let the athlete sign a piece paper after they’re admitted to mimic what athletes who do sign NLI get to do.
A parent could be forgiven for mistakenly thinking a published news story to be proof that this school offers athletic scholarships and NLIs, when in fact it was just a matter of sloppy reporting.
Having a kid with this sort of accomplishments is really cool, both for the student and the parents basking in the reflected warmth of public adulation. That can lead to a certain amount of vanity or pride (or a desire to protect a student’s pride) that can hinder parents from jumping in to correct every misstatement like this. It’s not all confusion or conspiracy.
One of the things that has always puzzled me about the persistent reports of more or less open flaunting of the rules (either by admissions shenanigans or providing athletic aid) in the Ivy League is that the league only exists because those eight schools voluntarily removed themselves from the level of athletic competition which breeds such corner cutting in the first place. If they wanted to exist in a world where they provided athletic money, or let the AD determine who to admit, they could. Even Brown, with its “paltry” 3.8 billion dollar endowment, could easily fund a normal P5 level D1 scholarship granting athletic department if it so chose. Heck, HYP could spend like Alabama, Texas or Ohio State and not even care if they got a TV deal to defray the expenses.
Instead, these eight schools voluntarily turned their back on what they perceived as the increasing negative effect of big time athletics on their core mission (after growing the endowment) at a time when most of them were huge players in the college athletic scene. That is what makes the Ivy schools truly different from Duke, Notre Dame, Stanford, Vandy, or Williams and Amherst for that matter. The very first Ivy agreement (that only covered football), flat out said that no scholarships would be allowed, and athletic talent would not dictate admission. As far as I know, this agreement, signed after WW2, basically aped an agreement signed by HYP in the 1920’s (when people were worried football was too violent, and “ringers” would routinely sign to play with this or that college for a game or two). Those twin ideas have been foundational in the Ivy.
No one here has ever been able to explain how or why the Ivy schools would all of a sudden back away from such ideals, and start cheating on each other over sports that garner one tenth or less of the interest and participation of the sports they walked away from in the first place. It makes no sense at all.
And yes, I am aware that the Yale women’s soccer coach got busted in the college admissions scandal. And I am not saying that other individual coaches haven’t gamed the system (or tried to) in the past. What I am saying is that the Ivys publicly take the most important decisions out of the hands of coaches largely to avoid situations like that.
Athletic talent most definitely dictates admission.
@OHMomof2, the Ivy system is somewhat unique in that while athletic skill and desirability certainly can influence the admissions decision, that decision is made by the admissions committee or admissions director rather than by the athletic department. Most other D1 schools provide the AD’s office with a discrete number of slots to fill and objective academic benchmarks which must be hit (which can obviously be greater than the NCAA minimums). It may be a subtle difference, but in application it is an important one.
@Ohiodad51, how do you think what the Ivies do is different from the process at the NESCACs? If anything, at least in my experience, coaches at schools like Williams and Amherst have less control over the admissions process than their Ivy counterparts, although being a recruited athlete is a huge hook in both leagues.
It’s definitely a subtle difference.
I cant believe you think coaches have next to no say, at Ivies. Have you ever seen an Ivy adcom defer to the coach? I sure have.