Overwhelmed - where to start?

Athletic Recruits
1

<p>Our oldest is completing his freshman year and wants to play tennis in college. He has been ranked a high 4 star on tennisrectruiting since he has had a ranking, so I don't anticipate his level moving up or down significantly over the next three years.</p>

<p>He also has very high academic stats and wants to major in engineering (biomedical, chemical, or mechanical) and then go on to medical school.</p>

<p>I have used an online calculator, and while I consider us to be middle class, the calculator does not. It looks like we won't qualify for financial aid.</p>

<p>Can anyone recommend schools that offer merit aid that would be a good academic and tennis fit?</p>

<p>TIA</p>

2

<p>Things to consider: D1 offers athletic (merit) scholarships. Engineering is very difficult. D1 athletics is very difficult. Medical school wants very high grades. Combining engineering and D1 sports is possible but extremely hard. I’ve used this line before:
If you’re an engineering major you can study, sleep and socialize, but you can only do two well. If you’re also an athlete, you now have study, sleep, socialize and sports…still, can only do two well.</p>

3

<p>Your student has a way to go–academically, athletically etc.
I don’t know tennis yet know a bit about D1 recruiting.</p>

<p>Also our k1 is an engineeering major and a D1 athlete. It is VERY difficult. Requires huge dedication, self discipline, calories, sleep etc. It is doable. Social life will largely be team in-season. It is doable.</p>

<p>Your student should do the very best they can in the classroom.
Grades matter, as will test scores. There is $ to be had for “need”, for academics, and for athletics. Time will tell where your student fits academically and athletically.</p>

<p>Financial aid is rough. I can say that any planning you want to do for estate/retirement/business should be done NOW as the schools use a base year the year before the students application. So Your finances in your student’s Jr yr of hs will be seen. If you have a business -they will see all of that too.</p>

<p>When we started looking at schools–I took the list of schools that had our K1s sport and cross referenced them with schools that have engineering. I put a sticky note on each page of the Barrons big book and handed it to kiddo…because frankly when I handed k1 a huge book with some 4000 schools it was too much…and there was no forward movement…(Teens just don’t know how to to this–they can’t, as they don’t have the life experience.)</p>

<p>From there k1 eliminated by geography first.
Then read each schools description, the town, area etc.
That created a list of schools–about 70+ that had the sport either varsity or club…</p>

<p>If you do something like this and then look at each schools fin-aid page you can probably find a pretty good group that will fit both major and sport. The fin-aid is no gurantee however you may be able to discern the schools’ policies that are most helpful.</p>

<p>Hope that helps.</p>

4

<p>Thanks for your responses Is there a database that I could search that would list the Div III. schools likely to give merit aid based on standardized test results that also have strong tennis teams?</p>

5

<p>My son (lower-ranked than yours on TRN) is looking at DIII schools. To my knowledge, there is no such database. I think I would have found it if it existed! </p>

<p>You can use TRN to look at all the DIII conferences. You can see how many stars their committed players have (although it is somewhat incomplete because that information is self-reported by the students). You can use the College Board search function or another search function and input DIII tennis as one of the search terms, and engineering majors as another. (Lack of an engineering school will eliminate many DIII colleges). You can then examine those colleges to determine their SAT/ACT ranges. There is also a thread on CC about merit aid percentages of various colleges (to which I’ve contributed) that will give you some idea of how much non-need-based aid those colleges have given in the past. You can look at TRN’s college recruiting class lists, organized by division, to see which colleges have had the top recruiting classes recently. </p>

<p>Essentially, this is a lot of work, but the result will be your own database, tied to your son’s preferences, and you will find out a lot about colleges as you do it.</p>

<p>I have made charts with similar information for my son, and we have visited some of the most likely candidates.</p>

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<p>Thanks. I was hoping that there was a database that I had missed. I have used the website on the College Board by searching with intended major, test score range, and tennis. The vast majority of schools that came up as good matches provide very little, if any, non-need based aid. I’ll search that other thread that you mentioned.</p>

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<p>Go to the end for the most recent list of colleges:</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/696637-merit-aid-percentage-common-data-set.html?highlight=merit+aid+percentages[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/696637-merit-aid-percentage-common-data-set.html?highlight=merit+aid+percentages&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>

</p>

<p>This will be true, and makes sense from an economics viewpoint. From a very general perspective: Colleges at the top don’t need to give merit aid to attract the best students. Colleges slightly below the top might give merit aid in order to attract students with high scores who wouldn’t otherwise go there, in order to improve their numbers. </p>

<p>From a parental perspective, we like to think that our hard-working students will be rewarded with merit aid. However, merit aid from the perspective of the college (which is granting the aid) exists not as a reward but as an incentive.</p>

9

<p>Thanks for the link to the other thread. Lots of great info there!</p>

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<p>Not knowing tennis sounds to me like your son has talent so don’t rule out athletic scholarship money, D1, D2 or NAIA all offer athletic money for players who have talent that could help their programs.</p>

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<p>We have a lot in common – my son is a junior tennis player (TRN 3 star - just finished JR year), very good academics, and I think I am in the same economic circumstance as you. I have spent a lot of time thinking about this and researching this, and here is my advice:</p>

<p>(1) Even though your son is a high 4 star, he is just a freshman. Lots of things change between freshman and junior years – kids get bigger, lose interest, get injured, kids who started later get better. College coaches care about your rating when you are a Jr/Sr. not younger. Now of course if he drops a little, that is not the end of the world. He is not going to drop that much and he will be able to play college tennis at lots of different schools. The most important thing is that he will play someplace – he is not going to be on the tour, so just competing in college should be his goal.</p>

<p>(1a) Even though he has good grades now, he has to keep them up. Also, his SAT scores will be very important, so you have to wait for all the numbers to come in to see where you stand academically. But at least he is off to a good start.</p>

<p>(2) Go to TRN and see what colleges are taking kids at his level. As a high 4 star he can go virtually anywhere – even some Ivies. He just might not be able to make the high D1 schools, which he would not want to play at anyway, because you cannot play for USC or UCLA and be pre-med. At those schools your job is to play tennis.</p>

<p>(3) I am an engineer myself. If he wants to go to med school – he should not major in engineering. Engineering tends to grade on a lower curve, and med schools mostly care about GPA and MCAT. Probably a traditional pre-med major will work better.</p>

<p>(4) As far as aid goes – (a) there are lots of things that you may be able to do now to position yourself financially to actually qualify for fin aid in the future. You can read a lot about this on other parts of CC. If you start now, you should be in good shape. (b) that other thread that was referenced gave some great ideas re: merit aid. I am not sure if Tulane was listed, but that is a very good D1 school, and they give lots of $$ for merit aid. Just go for schools that give merit aid based on academic stats only. Do not bother with merit aid scholarships where you have to write tons of essays. </p>

<p>(5) We are going to look at about 12 schools. Some of them are reach for tennis, some good fits and some safeties. I think everyone should pursue that strategy. Aid (whether financial or merit) can vary tremendously between schools. Plus in D3, some coaches may have influence over the award. So you have to have lots of options and be somewhat dispassionate if you are going to have your decision partially influenced by the amount of aid. Also, with lots of offers, you may have the ability to negotiate, even though aid officers do not like that word (I believe the term is ‘revisit or reevaluate the aid package’.</p>

<p>I worked with my S to get to our 12 schools. In our case, it was pretty easy – he does not want to go to a real small school, and that eliminated a lot of D3s. And his tennis level eliminated a fair amount of D1s. But I think if you lay out all the criteria (academics, geography, merit aid, tennis team, etc.) you can get to a reasonable sized list pretty quickly. Start with TRN. I would also ask parents of Jrs/Srs at your regional tournaments what they are doing, and ask your son’s coach about what schools he is familiar with.</p>

<p>I have spent a lot of time on CC, satscores.us, division3tennis.com and tennisrecruiting.net to figure all this stuff out. It takes a lot of time, and I am still learning new stuff. You can PM me if you have any specific questions.</p>

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<p>You can look at the NCAA and the NAIA websites for the top 25 tennis rankings to get an idea of which schools have good programs. If you want merit money, focus on DIII schools. If you want athletic aid and merit money, focus on NAIA.</p>

<p>I would also spend some time on the pre-med board here. Getting the highest GPA possible is necessary for getting into med school. It’s usually not recommended that you get an engineering degree for undergrad if you want to go to medical school.</p>

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<p>snowbeltmom,</p>

<p>My two cents…</p>

<p>You have alot of time to figure it out. Your son should continue to focus on school and tennis, and his SATS/ACTs will become important in a few years. As a parent, you should try to understand the tennis recruiting process better as well as Financial Aid. I very strongly suggest you read “The Financial Aid Handbook: Getting the Education you want for the price you can afford”. It is fantastic and vey helpful.</p>

<p>fogfog told you like it is. My son is also an engineering major, and D1 baseball player. It is extremely difficult, competitive and time consuming. My son has a few things going for him in Ivy League baseball in that he is a starting pitcher (weekends only), and D1 Ivys play less games than than typical D1 baseball programs. If son was an everyday position player, it would be next to impossible for him to be an engineering major due to mid-week travel and the everyday practice nature of baseball for position players. Your son would be practicing, travelling or playing tennis every day. </p>

<p>I totally 100% agree with XWords59 and SteveMA. I’m not clear on why you would want an engineering undergrad, and then graduate medical school. Engineering GPAs are significantly lower than traditional GPAs which will be used to gauge acceptance into graduate medical school. I would think very long and very hard about taking that path regardless if it is D1 or D3.</p>

<p>I suggest you look at some of the bio and majors of the current tennis players at a potential school. In addition, have your son ask the tennis coach if he has ever had an engineering major. That answer will tell you alot.</p>

<p>Best of luck!</p>

14

<p>Thanks for all of your great suggestions and resources. We do have Div III schools in mind exactly for the reasons mentioned. My youngest brother had a full-ride to a top DIV I school for baseball. It was more than a full-time job and keeping up with classes was difficult - and he was not an engineering major.</p>

<p>Ds has been able to accelerate in his science/math curriculum, and has already achieved top scores on three SAT subject tests that it seems some of the top-tier schools require. His SAT, while not at 2400 (and more than likely never will be), is in the upper 25% for the top schools. He knows that GPA is also very important and many kids with top standardized test scores don’t get accepted to their first choice college.</p>

<p>Regarding the engineering as an undergrad: The thinking behind that was that we have read how competitive medical school admissions is these days, and we wanted him to have a good “back-up” plan. Thank you for bringing up the negatives to that plan. </p>

<p>Thanks again for all of your recommendations. I have a lot to learn.</p>

15

<p>Sounds like you have a math/science whiz in addition to top notch athlete.</p>

<p>You say you have tried the ‘online’ calculator? Have you tried the financial calculators specific to different schools? They will give significantly varying results as each school has it’s own formula they use. </p>

<p>I suggest trying the MIT calculator for one. I was surprised at how generous it was. And also the Harvard/Princeton ones too. </p>

<p>Top athlete with great academics should give you a lot of options at the top schools which can be pretty generous to those <$180,000/year income. </p>

<p>BTW, income >77,500 puts you in top 25% in the country, and >92,000 puts you in top 20% (=not middle class, 2005 statistics)</p>

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<p>I did not know that schools have their own online calculators. Thanks for that info. An instructor at a summer camp told that my son that he should apply to MIT, but we thought it was out of our price range and obviously a reach school as well. Also, from what I have heard about the workload at MIT, I’m not sure he would even have time to play tennis.</p>

<p>He is strong in math/science, but not a Superstar - he advanced to the AIME level in math and the National round of the Chemistry Olympiad, but he didn’t advance any further than that in either of the competitions.</p>

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<p>Snowbeltmom:</p>

<p>I think you are underestimating both your kids athletic and academic prowess.</p>

<p>MIT is very generous with their FA and is quite affordable for many. Many kids play varsity sports and manage just fine. I think the school sets 5-7pm as sports time and has no classes or labs scheduled in that period. I think they want to encourage kids to participate. And I’m sure the coach would positively drool over him (I’m assuming 4 star rating is a good thing as I don’t know anything about tennis).</p>

<p>With good math/science ECs, great scores and athletics, he’s about as sure a thing as MIT would get.</p>

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<p>I think he would make MIT with a good GPA and 2100-2200 boards. the question is does he want to go to MIT. I think my kid can make it based on his tennis and grades, but he absolutely refuses to even look at it.</p>

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<p>OP</p>

<p>fyi
MIT does not recruit in the traditional sense.
All sports at MIT are D3 I believe–except for rowing. Check that.
For MIT the athletes that a coach wants get added to a list…that may help nudge them in…as would say a musician etc. MIT coaches don’t get slots or tips etc. The MIT boards have some posts about it…so the search function there may reveal more</p>

<p>Fin aid varies ALOT. For example HYP policies are very different and using the same #s a student will be offered different aid. So what the calculator ESTIMATES for one will be different from the other.
Also the calculator is an estimate-meaning the schools policies and how they crunch your numbers from your tax returns, FAFSA and CSS Profile will be different. What they say you can pay and what you think you can pay will be different…sometimes by 10ks…because they will put in “allowances” and add back things that you normally have as deductions to obtain AGI…so you are doing well to consider now what your family budget is…Good luck</p>

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<p>snowbeltmom-medical schools do not like to see undergrad degrees that can lead to a job in that degree-nursing, engineering, etc. It actually lessens your chances of getting accepted. He is better off getting a degree in Math, Biology, English, etc. then he is with an engineering degree. A better back up plan would be grad school for engineering if he doesn’t get into medial school.</p>