You might want to explore some lower or mid-major level D1s. This is the route we took with our daughter because money absolutely was an issue. She received some exceptional offers from some wonderful schools but our portion still would have been astronomical and impossible. She is also in an equivalency sport and you run into dealing with schools that don’t have fully funded programs so they don’t have the max amount of scholarships to even offer, let alone divide.
You are to be commended for starting early because it takes time to weed through it all…and lots of research. D17 took her 6 allotted official visits and we made many unofficial visits on our own dollar. She ended up at a school that academically is excellent and with an offer that surpassed anything we could have imagined. Of course, it isn’t a Penn education but that wasn’t in the academic cards for D17 anyway.
I guess what I’m saying is know your budget and work from there. Don’t compromise and research more schools than you can imagine. You will find a good fit both academically and athletically.
It shouldn’t matter if it is an equivalency sport or a headcount sport. The Ivies can give an unlimited amount of need based financial aid to every member of the team if that’s how the numbers work out, and are not limited like other elite D1 schools to 10 scholarships or 15 half scholarships. You can’t argue that Duke was going to give a full basketball scholarship or that Vandy was giving a 1/2 baseball scholarship and that the Ivy needs to match that. I don’t think the coach at an Ivy gets to make any judgment on what the athlete deserves for playing ability or how much the coach really wants player A over player B; if player A is from a wealthy family, there is only so much aid the Ivy school can authorize, and he may very well get more money with a full hockey scholarship at ND. than the Ivy can offer. The FA office is supposed to be making its own decisions based on need, not on what a good pitcher brings to the table.
I never paid for youth or club sports thinking it would get my child a scholarship. In fact, she didn’t decide to play in college until the end of junior year (yes, it was quite a summer of visiting with coaches and trying to get noticed). We were lucky and she has receive in scholarship money what I ever paid for registration fees, camps, travel, equipment, etc. In fact, she’s received much more than I ever paid, so it can work out.
Given it is a head count sport, as mentioned up thread there are very good academic D1 schools that would provide full scholarships: Cal, Stanford, Michigan, Virginia, UNC, Penn State, Notre Dame, UCLA. It will be a matter of matching up her athletic level with those of the school.
@nhparent9, the answer to that question depends on the family’s income. If it is high enough to be full pay at an Ivy, then any athletic support will be superior. But in many cases the need-based aid from an Ivy will outstrip the athletic money from non-Ivies.
But of course those schools have need-based support too, which may be competitive even if it isn’t stackable.
It is a highly unique situation for every recruit based on the sport, the family, and the schools involved.
My S FA pre-read from one of the most generous Ivies was matched by a “lesser” Ivy which didn’t have as big an endowment so YES if a coach really wants a kid they can ask their admissions officer to match a higher FA offer.
Need based aid provided by the school cannot be combined with athletic aid. Merit aid can be if certain requirements met. There might be some issues with turning down athletic aid to get more in need based aid. It cannot be done in m/w basketball or football.
All D1 schools do not fully fund their teams, so there might not be more money at a non-Ivy even in head count sports.
@sm0406 you mentioned 3 more kids in the higher education pipeline. In our case, it actually worked to our benefit having more than one kid in school at the same time. Your family contribution remains the same whether you have 1 or 3 kids in college at the same time. So if you can work out your finances so that your contribution is down to 20K per year, you actually benefit. 20K for one child or 10K per child for 2 kids. One more item to keep in mind, the Ivy is providing all the FinAid in grants, not loans. Child #1 will have some loans to pay off afterwards. With 4 kids headed to college, study that book I mentioned. You still have time to get finances organized in the best way possible.