I’m a parent of a student athlete that is considering UPenn. My athlete has been to UPenn for an unofficial visit before the NCAA rule change for visits. It would be a tremendous academic opportunity but the bottom line is that the amount of aid matters. I feel like I may fall into the threshold that doesn’t provide full aid but that is “on paper”. Real life and the expenses that come with it are different.
My question is…do the athletic departments “make it happen” with packages to cover all of the cost of attending to compete with other schools that give out scholarships? Everywhere I read discusses “needs based” but when you spend the money to get your kid recruited you want to see the “full ride” and a school offering $30k still means I wouldn’t have to come up with $30k and that is way beyond what I could afford. Does anyone have any insight on this.
Penn does not award ANY athletic scholarships or merit aid. They only provide need-based aid based on what their formula indicates you need. Athletes are treated the same way as every other student. If Penn believes you need a full ride, using their financial aid formula, you will get it. But they won’t be able to award money simply based on athletic ability.
Thank you. It does make the decision tough. Truthfully an education from an institution like this is clearly, to me, the best option. However, spending what we have spent over the years in hopes of a scholarship or “full ride” makes it hard to swallow that you could still have a decent sized bill to attend a school and compete, especially when other D1 colleges offer the full ride.
@sm0406, there are plenty of great D1 universities that provide athletic scholarships - Duke, Michigan, Notre Dame, Northwestern, Stanford, Virginia to name a few.
@sm0406 As noted Ivies have a unique D1 agreement: no athletic scholarships.
You can go on Penn’s on-line net price calculator and get a general idea of what your aid would be. It won’t be “official” but will give you a good ballpark idea.
If scholarship money is important, and if your student athlete is in demand,as Chembiodad noted, there are many D1 schools in the range of Penn that do give scholarships.
I just went through this. 2nd child is athlete. 1st child is already at a private U on the west coast. It takes some strategy.
“Paying for College Without Going Broke” was a very helpful book. I spent a few days going through it with a heavy handed highlighter. Also, of the Ivies, Princeton and Harvard have the most generous FA, and if their coaches show interest. UPenn should match their FA algorithm. We’re not getting total coverage from the school, but fees are probably equal to what we were paying yearly for the sport itself.
IMO, it’s a mistake for families to believe that all (any?) the money you put into supporting your child in his/her sport over the years is somehow guaranteed to come back to you in the form of a college scholarship. Unless you have a Lebron James (or even a Lonzo Ball) type kid, participating in a money sport…that just ain’t going to happen. And if you have a kid like that, you’ll know it fairly early on.
Your chances are even worse in equivalency sports, where they might divide full scholarships up among a few athletes.
When it comes to Ivies,the way I look at it is that your kid’s athletic talent is “buying” a path around the EXTREMELY selective admissions process.
Overall, Penn had about a 9% admission rate last year. In the pile of rejected kids were no doubt many perfect SAT scores, 4.0 GPAs, amazing ECs, etc. As a recruited athlete, your kid gets a slot that’s nearly guaranteed (as long as he meets some minimum AI threshold). And that certainty is something many parents would pay for…some probably much more than you’ve invested in your kid’s sport over the years.
Whenever I hear parents talking about their kid doing a sport “for college”…I cringe. If I’m friends with them, I tell them a form of what I’ve written above. Because what happens if, at the end of the process, your kid gets no money (or even no offers)? Will you have considered all that time/money/experience a waste? Will you harbor resentment? I certainly hope not.
Best of luck to you and your son. And Hail Pennsylvania! (College '91)
I assume your S is a junior? As stated elsewhere, do the NPC and ask the coach for a financial preread (probably next summer). With my non athlete S we chased merit aid and he got lots. With athlete D we are unable to chase merit because she is not interested in those schools and we are looking at both academic and athletic fit. My H is sad, very, very sad! Although we are able to be full pay, he (and I ) would prefer to not be. The school she applied ED1 to, does offer merit, but it is not guaranteed. My fingers are crossed she will get some. There are a lot of great D1 schools out there, keep looking.
We never viewed my S’s sport as a way to pay for college; perhaps a way to give him an admissions advantage, but no more than that. He is looking at DIII schools; although he could probably get money at some DI’s academically they wouldn’t be right for him.
Money is important, but it’s not the only thing. If your kid gets hurt and can never play his/her sport again, or if s/he burns out after freshman or sophomore year, will s/he still be happy at that school? If the answer is no, look elsewhere.
Great point. What a gamble for a kid to participate in a sport just to pay for college. I know there are lots of talented kids floating around, but there are only so many that are going to be good enough to play at a D1 or D2 school and also good enough to get money to do so. The better bet would be to use the money for tutors, or to invest the money so that there is something set aside when it comes time to pay the bills.
I would rather think that the process itself is part of an education that will prepare the kids for leadership and team-based skills. So even though it costs, and college costs, there are benefits to recruiting.
That said, paying tuition stinks, and I do sympathize with the OP.
Just an open shout out, not directed anywhere specifically, but any parent who has an athlete who is interested in playing in college has a responsibility to educate themselves on the NCAA rules, financial and otherwise.
There are many anecdotes on CC and elsewhere about things like “full rides” and Ivy or D3 schools giving athletic aid under the table, which are generally inaccurate or misleading. But they continue to surface and gain currency if you don’t educate yourself as to what is real and what is hype. If your child is in an equivalency sport with a larger roster, such as baseball, your expectations of athletic financial support even from non-Ivy schools should be realistic based on NCAA averages.
@BobcatPhoenix, that a great point as we’ve spoken to many parents who jumped up and down about their child getting an 1/8 athletic scholarship at a lesser school when they may have in fact been able to get a merit scholarship at a better school.
My D is a recruited athlete and will be attending an Ivy next year. We were able to use a financial pre-read from one ivy to match the financial aid at another ivy, which was a nice benefit. However, the aid was all need based. From our experience coaches cannot “make things happen” with financial aid to give desired athletes more money.
The biggest benefit to being recruited at an ivy is obviously the pull with admissions.
Just curious on the matching of need…were these at comparable Ivies. And, not your typical one is better than the other rather the known “fact” that Harvard and Princeton seem to offer the best FA. I’ve run NPC on all of them and it seems pretty true. So…will an Ivy other than H or P match?
I’m not exactly sure if I understand the question, but in general, the answer is yes. If interest is shown from “Ivy#1”, but student prefers to be at Ivy#4 because it’s a better fit for them, then Ivy#4 will use the Ivy#1 algorithm for figuring out the ‘family contribution’. I have no real idea what the difference in their algorithm is, but our pre-read before and pre-read after ‘demonstrated interest’ was definitely different.
I will add that we didn’t go to the other schools specifically to renegotiate FinAid. Child #2 needed to see what was out there. (Jeeeeezusss, there are some beautiful campuses!!! I was so jealous) Turns out he’s afraid of the suburbs and absolutely positively wanted to stay in a large city.
Thank you. My D is in an equivalency sport and has interest in several schools but she is only a high school sophomore. I think of course a Penn Education is about as good as it gets. We didn’t have her get into her sport for scholarship reasons…it just so happened that as she developed she began to get noticed. The problem is when I fill out the online calculator and it says that my portion of the bill is $36000…I know from the start that this is not feasible especially with 3 other kids coming in back of her. It is never all about the money…but when you have interest from a school and your portion of the bill is still that…it becomes about the money.
So, if it is an equivalency sport, does your expectation of a non Ivy athletic scholarship at a different D1 exceed the amount of straight financial aid the online calculator suggests you’ll get?
S is an equivalency sport athlete, in a sport with no professional option. I have always said that if his talent developed and everything fell into place, the best case scenario is him getting a scholarship that would allow me to break even on what I have spent on his sport.
In reality, that’s not the goal. As was alluded to above, the goal is to get into an Ivy or equivalent through the back door. He’s a smart kid, gets good grades and tests relatively well. He’s smart enough to handle Ivy work. However, he has nowhere near perfect scores, and has not yet cured cancer. In reality, his chances of admissions on his own are near zero. But he has several coaches that are very interested in him. I have always considered the scholarship the backup plan. Fortunately for the last couple of years he has been on the same page.
Also, about a year ago a friend with D1 potential had a career ending injury (before any college offers were made). S and I had a pretty reflective conversation about it. He said that if it happened to him that afternoon (we were driving to a competition when we were talking) he would be pretty sad, but overall he felt like he had gotten enough out of his sport that it would still be worth it. He talked about some friendships, learning to work hard for delayed gratification and other things. I thought it was a pretty mature and reflective answer from a 15 year old.