The process is simple. Everyone who is admitted either meets or does not meet financial need. Those who don’t meet the financial need criteria may get an athletic scholarship based on how many are available and how much the coach pushes for it. All they are doing is accommodating some athletes and not every athlete will get one just because they don’t meet the financial need criteria.
Edit: Stanford has 300 TOTAL athletic scholarships.
Athletes at Stanford are treated, for the most part, like other students. You’ll live in a dorm with non-athletes, be in classes with non-athletes, and generally have the same expectations as non-athletes. If you have a game or other athletic commitment you’ll of course be excused from conflicting classes and able to make up the work. My athlete friends speak positively of this integration and how it allows them to have the typical college experience. The idea that at some schools athletes are completely separate is something that doesn’t really appeal to them.
However, there is some extra help available for athletes who want it. Tutoring and counseling specific for athletes are what first comes to mind although I’m sure an athlete could better speak to the resources. There are general Stanford resources available to all students in these categories too, but athlete-specific resources as well. Athletes also have access to special athlete-only gyms. As far as time available outside of your sport, Stanford’s policy is a maximum of 20 hours per week for games/practices (this might be a Pac 12 policy). Many athletes are able to pursue a variety of majors and some even double major with honors.
Lastly, our waterpolo team is fantastic. Four previous/current Stanford students were on the men’s team this year and four on the women’s. I’ve taken classes with several of these athletes and only heard positive things about their experiences. People at Stanford don’t generally look down on athletes because athletes are treated mostly like other students.
However, the athletic scholarships can not be limited to football alone. I assume there is some sort of fair distribution dictated by Title IX for all sports.
Title IX requires that amount of athletic scholarship dollars be proportional between men and women. Football, I have heard, takes up quite a big chunk of the men’s budget which led to men’s lacrosse becoming a club sport at Stanford. How the scholarships themselves are broken up by sport is up to the school.
As far as participation based on gender, I have heard that people on the track/field teams participating in multiple events can be double-counted as a participant which helps balance the large number of football players.
Stanford for academics, instruction, alumni network in all but a few limited cases, athletics and location. Harvard has a slightly higher Name ID in certain circles, but to me, the negatives cannot outweigh that one potential positive. Stanford is simply superior in my opinion.
D1 schools can roster 110 for football (except the Ivy which can roster 120), only 85 of whom can be “counters” (defined as a rostered athlete being provided athletic aid) for scholarship purposes. In D1 FBS, football is a head count sport, meaning there are 85 full scholarships. All FBS schools (excepting the academies) must fully fund their footbal team. In D1 FCS, the limit is 63 full scholarships split among no more than 85 counters. There is no requirement that FCS schools fully fund, although most conferences have funding thresholds. And yes, each football scholarship basically requires a Title IX offset female scholarship. So when you add the 13 men’s basketball scholarships to the 85 football scholarships (and the women’s offsets) you can account for 196 of the 300 scholarships Stanford apparently awards (which seems really low, by the way). Since that remaining 104 need to be offset as well, there is only a total of 52 men’s scholarships available for the remaining sports, or about 13 a year, which isn’t a whole lot.
The issue @twoinandone raises is an important one, and that is that broadly speaking all aid given to a rostered athlete at the D1 & 2 level is presumptively athletic aid unless specific criteria are met. These criteria are GPA/test score/rank thresholds (which shouldn’t be a significant hurdle for someone who can get into Stanford) o the one hand and that the aid seeking to be excluded was 1)available to all students and 2)that athletic participation was not a factor in the decision to award the aid. My understanding, at least at the D1 level, is that the presumption that all aid is athletic aid, particularly for kids awarded some component of athletic aid, is difficult to overcome.
And to the topic of the thread, OP, you need to realize that regardless of NCAA practice limits (which are the same 20 hours a week across Div 1), you are very likely to spend significantly more time in and around your sport at Stanford than at Harvard. Captain’s practices, mandatory meetings, travel and tournaments, conditioning and lifting, all these things are going to require more time in the PAC 12 than in the Ivy. Simply put, there is a cost to competing at a higher level.
While he was qualified academically he received a football scholarship from Stanford.
College career[edit]
Sherman received an athletic scholarship to attend Stanford University, where he played for the Stanford Cardinal football team from 2006 to 2010. He began his career at Stanford as a wide receiver and led the Cardinal in receiving as a freshman in 2006 while being named a Freshman All-American. He caught 47 passes over the next two years before suffering a season-ending knee injury after playing in the first four games in 2008. He switched to cornerback after his injury due to team need and made 112 tackles over his final two years, with 6 interceptions. He was part of the 2010 Stanford Cardinal team that finished 12-1, a school record.[2]
Sherman is a member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity[10][11] and graduated from Stanford University in 2010 with an undergraduate degree in communications.[12]
He returned for his final year of eligibility in order to begin a master’s degree.
@moscott Richard Sherman’s mother specifically said and pointed out that Sherman was on an academic scholarship at Stanford (not an athletic one). No source is given in the wikipedia source… and I’m sure everyone from here to Sunday assumes he was on an athletic scholarship when the truth is he wasn’t. which was the point made in Ohiodad’s post.
I thought Stanford didn’t have academic scholarships? Unless he brought it with him from an outside source (Gates, Coke, etc), I think his mother might be mistaken. Plus, even if he did have an academic scholarship, he would be a ‘counter’ for the football team and the team may not have been able to issue the football scholarship to another player. The team may have saved the money, but it didn’t get them an extra player. And why would the team need to save money on him? Why piece together other financial aid as she implied in the clip, when he could have had a football scholarship? (at the time, the scholarship would have covered room and board, tuition, books, and if he was eligible for a Pell grant, he would have received that; now he’d also get a stipend of ~$5000/yr)
It’s complicated math. I don’t think what she was saying even made sense. “He was ‘the first’ football player and lived with the basketball team”? I think she meant the first to move into a dorm that summer.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Believe it not, mothers have been known to be wrong. Regardless, discussion of whether a particular student-athlete attended on an athletic or academic scholarship is not the point of this thread. Please move on.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
My earlier statement “Please move on” should not be construed as optional. Richard Sherman and his scholarship status has nothing to do with the topic on hand, so any future posts will be deleted.