For parents that have been through the recruitment process or anyone that has recruitment experience: Where would we be able to research scholarship averages by school? Or does anyone have any non-official information? Like, how do athletes know if they are getting as much athletic financial support as they can get? Are there schools that are known to be more generous that others? How do they determine who gets what? Would love to get an idea… Thanks so much, this is such a great thread!
Hopefully, I can enlighten you. For fencing scholarships, there are 5 full scholarships allow for the Men’s Fencing Team and 5 full scholarships allowed for the Women’s fencing team for NCAA DIVISION 1 and 2. Ivy League schools and Division 3 schools do not offer any athletic scholarships. The schools that do offer scholarships for fencing can split scholarships (and almost always do). Depending on the opinion of the coach an athlete can be offered any percent of a scholarship (0 to 100%). This percentage is determined by the coach and staff (primarily the coach). Almost all athletes who are offer scholarships are done so through the Early Decision process meaning the athlete will need to apply to one and one one school for Early decision and be accepted in the winter (usually in December). The school can provide a pre-read in the spring or sooner to let the athlete know their chances of academic acceptance. However, the coach is the primarily decision maker. All schools that offer scholarships are equal in the sense they have 5 full scholarships to work with for each gender. The athlete and coach should have mutual interests for best success of getting the most favorable athletic scholarship. I have an athlete currently in college on a significant scholarship who was highly recruited. However, it still was a maze to go through.
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Oh! OK, this makes so much sense now. Thank you so much!
When looking into the colleges with Ciub Fencing teams there is certainly a range from small student run groups that might compete in local tournaments to well run long established clubs that compete in leagues against D1-3 programs. Some of these top tier clubs even have coaches.
What do you think makes a good club team?
- Competes in annual club championship
- Competes in intercollegiate league
- Attends dual meets
What are the differences between a top club team and a D3 program?
- Chance to compete in NCAA championships vs club championships
- Admissions support from coach?
- School supplied fencing gear?
Anything else?
@FatherofBA Actually D1 Men’s fencing, and D2 fencing only have 4.5 scholarships. D1 women have 5. And not all D1 and D2 teams are fully funded — the NCAA numbers are the maximum schools can offer, but not all D1 teams offer that many. “Big box” schools like PSU, OSU, and ND are definitely fully funded, but unless things have changed recently, I believe Stanford is not. And there are a lot of small D1 fencing programs that I highly doubt fund the maximum 9.5 scholarships.
@Ufffff re: “how do athletes know if they are getting as much athletic financial support as they can get” — that depends entirely on how much the coach wants you, how much he wants other athletes that year (and how quickly they commit), and how many scholarships he has available at the time. For example, if a coach has a full-ride athlete graduating that year, then he has 1 full scholarship he can use to either offer another full ride to a top athlete, or he can divide that up and offer half-rides to two athletes, quarter-rides to four, etc. If the only graduates that year are two guys with 25% scholarships, then that’s all that’s available, and if the coach’s #1 choice that year gets offered a half-ride, there isn’t anything left for anyone else. Obviously you can negotiate, but “the most you can get” is basically whatever the coach is willing to offer.
ETA: Also keep in mind that you can combine academic and athletic scholarships up to a full ride, so be sure to take potential academic scholarships into account when calculating the total package.
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Updates to stencils roll call:
- Still on campus. Almost all the fencers are also on campus.
- Yes, they are practicing in person and in weapon pods. So men’s and women’s epee are practicing together, but separated from foil and saber. Considering how many inter-weapon roommates there are, this is not isolating fencers as much as the school thinks.
- I think so/hope so. They now have meets scheduled, the first one is set for 2/14. Keeping our fingers crossed that there won’t be any cancellations.
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Hi fencing parents (and students!).
My daughter has committed to a Div 3 school this week. We do not qualify for financial aid based on our income. What are our options for getting some sort of a discount (if any exist)? Can the coach help negotiate it? Given that this was a binding early decision, I want to make sure that we are not missing anything in terms of getting some sort of help. Thanks.
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@tigermaman congrats on your daughters commitment that is so exciting!!! I’m curious to see what you find out.
One thing that might be helpful is to look at the common data set for the school and see if they even offer any non-need based merit aid. For example Stevens lists 82% students receive non need based Merit aid. JHU a total of 5 student (0.5%) received non-need based merit aid.
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Thank you! Just checked it their common data set, and it’s not looking good for us :(. They barely award any non-need aid :(.
The Ivy League announced yesterday that they would allow senior students to compete next year as graduate students. What do you think the impact will be on recruiting? I assume they could also be eligible as a graduate transfer to another school? I would think that a number of the seniors already have plans for graduate school that is different from their undergrad.
There are currently 14 Senior Men and 20 Senior Women on Ivy Squads.
Current Seniors
Brown WE, WS (2)
Columbia MF MS(2) WE (2) WS
Cornell WE, WF (3) WS (1)
Harvard MS, MF, ME, WE
Princeton ME, MF(2), MS, WE, WF
Penn ME, MF, MS, WE(2), WF, WS
Yale MF, WE, WF, WS
My understanding is that they’ll only be eligible as grad students if they remain at schools where they were undergrads. I expect the number will be fairly small but it’s definitely an interesting development.
While that’s the rule for the Ivys. According to the NCAA rules if the student graduated and has a year of eligibility remaining they can immediately participate the following year as a graduate student at another University. So if I was a graduating this year from Princeton, and decided I wanted to go to Law School at Notre Dame. I could fence for them next season. This happens in basketball all the time.
Yes, agree. I should have clarified that this is for Ivy eligibility, not NCAA. (I was responding to the comment about the change in Ivy rules).
I think that this may prompt some people to enter grad programs who may not have thought about it before… I don’t know if there would be any preference in admissions as grad programs are obviously very different from undergrad. But I think that will decrease the number of spots available for the next class.
@tigermaman doubtful would be my initial thinking. Perhaps there could be other forms of academic scholarships? For athletics if there is no scholarship available for the sport then it is unlikely that they will provide any form of discounted tuition.
New regional and national event update has been posted
Any further news on this? It would seem that with the April NAC being less than sixty days away that a decision needs to be made soon.
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Also, has anyone heard any news about schools cutting back on slots for recruits? There is another general set of posts on this topic (Covid impact on recruiting pushed down to 21's, 22's, 23's? - #2 by coffeeat3), and it sounds pretty dire. Nothing about fencing, however. Anyone heard about impact of lost slots on recruiting for future years?
Grouphousing just cancelled my hotel reservation for April NAC, so I am assuming that it is a no go.
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Absolute Fencing posted on Facebook that the Cadet and Junior World Championships in Cairo are confirmed April 3-11.
The organizer’s website is live. Junior & Cadet World Fencing Championships
FE has posted the invitation. Junior & Cadet World Fencing Championships Invitation