<p>I posted this in the Prents Cafe regarding the same issue:</p>
<p>You win the lottery. A D1 athlete earns his scholie.</p>
<p>There is no “good conscience” about diddy’s athletic award. It is not financial aid. It is a merit scholarship.</p>
<p>How many posts are there on this forum each year about families that earn “too much” to qualify for financial aid and are steered by so many posters here (for years!) to schools that offer merit awards. </p>
<p>There are individual threads and stickys just for this situation. Parent(s) make too much and would like not to pay full price.</p>
<p>Since when do we distinguish how much is too much? or from the family where one parent refuses to pay? Why does the “why” they want a merit award make any difference? Why is it our business and who are we to judge?</p>
<p>UCLA’s football makes money for its program and probably carries their other athletic programs as well. Having P Diddy as a football parent makes tons of sense to me. They tend to participate and contribute beyond just financially. The dad has friends, family who will all want to participate and that in itself will help their program.</p>
<p>Meg Whitman’s son attended p’ton and while there her donation of $80 million built the new Whitman college. And she paid nor more than the $33K in tuition, should she have paid more since she could?</p>
<p>This is a case of envy and it’s just ugly.</p>
<p>Kat</p>
<p>I remember a similar situation came up several years ago (someone knew a rich kid who received merit aid and was upset by it). At that time, many posters thought it was immoral for wealthy kids to apply for and accept merit aid. I disagreed and now that my kids are in college, I can offer even more reasons why it is acceptable. As my kids have moved through their college years, they have applied for numerous opportunities, be it internships, fellowships, etc. Almost every application asks what kind of awards a student has received and in our experience it seems the more awards you have received in the past, the more likely you are to receive awards in the future–I think having received awards in the past shows the deciding committee that you have been vetted in the past and found worthy. While not every award is a merit award, many of the awards my kids have received have had money attached to them. If you think about it, almost all of the prestigious post-grad fellowships (Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright) are merit scholarships. Should bright, rich kids not apply for these?</p>
<p>Also, I’m guessing it is more than likely that P. Diddy will donate far more than the value of his son’s scholarship to the school in question.</p>
<p>The kid earned it. If anything the scholarship may have enticed the student to attend UCLA. Would he have gone somewhere else if he didn’t get it? If so, then it is worth the $ (assuming he pans out on the gridiron).</p>
<p>katwkittens I could not agree with you more.</p>
<p>If a school chooses to give Merit Aid or Athletic Scholarships and my child is fortunate enough to receive one because they have some quality the school wants and is willing to offer them an incentive to come there how is that immoral, creepy or wrong?</p>
<p>Isn’t that something that should be praised?</p>
<p>I feel bad for the kid. The kid should not be in the public eye in a negative way for doing something to the best of his abilities. </p>
<p>He earned it. He should keep it.</p>
<p>Lerkin, those who get merit aid are most often those who don’t qualify for financial aid. No surprise there. These are the kids who have had more advantages and should have the type of profiles colleges want. Plus some schools will give a bit of “sugar” to get some of these kids by discounting a bit and getting $55 out of the full $60k cost met. I know several boys from last year that were not scholarship material in academics, activities or need, but they were full pay boys and schools wanted them. Yes, they got several small scholarships that made for some nice bragging rights and allowed the parents and the kids to consider it money that the kid was paying towards his schooling. Yes, in some cases, it tipped the balance of the decisions, even though need by any financial aid calculators would show no need. $5K is still a nice hunk of for many families with high EFCs.</p>
<p>Plus, I wonder if millionare frugalness figures into it. Many people who have a lot of money, do because they are driving 20 year old cars, bought 1 house and stayed in it and paid it off, don’t have any debt…etc. They are frugal with their money and look at college the same way. They don’t want to pay more than they have to. Merit is needed to attract these kind of people.</p>
<p>Isn’t it pretty clear that merit aid is a recruiting tool, as are athletic scholarships? Clearley, the UCLA football program perceives a net gain if this kid enrolls. Part of that gain
Is presumably his football skill. Part of it might well be his daddy’s potential as a donor.</p>
<p>In many cases, merit awards aree used to attract higher stats kids than the school usually can. In others, as stated above, giving two reasonably qualified full pay kids a little sugar works out better for the college than taking one kid with better stats but huge need. The entire process of enrollment management has been well publicized. It is no surprise, surely.</p>
<p>To answer the original question-no. If his son deserves it, then great for him. </p>
<p>It would be fantastic if P. Diddy would donate money to the school, however that is solely their private decision.</p>
<p>
I guess a lot of us are glad you aren’t making the rules ;)…</p>
<p>There are a lot of people and a number of schools that feel the same way you do. But there are some kids out there that are so highly prized by schools that those schools are willing to pay for them to come. That’s why there are merit and athletic scholarships. It also allows those kids, whose parents whose financial dictate they should pay for college but who won’t or can’t due to some reason, an opportunity to go to some schools by virtue of their own excellence. It’s really not fair that a kid is considered dependent to his parents at age 18 fo rcollege aid when for nearly every other purpose he is an adult. Such a kid is then handicapped in terms of going to college if he has parents who just won’t pay whereas if he were in a family where that same parent couldn’t pay, he is eligible for all kinds of financial aid. So that concession to excellence does help out those who are in that family situation.</p>
<p>I look at it this way: If a school gives 1/2 tuition merit scholarships to, say, the top 10% of its freshmen, the school could perhaps instead reduce everyone’s tuition by 5%. But a reduction of 5% on a tuition of $30K is only $1500. For at least some of those 10%, they would have to choose the public school alternative, so the school doesn’t get as many students. By making their school competitive with the public alternatives, schools can increase their enrollment as well as their stats. The school wins and the student wins because he has more choices.</p>
<p>I wonder if P.Diddy will have to fill out a FAFSA…</p>