not fully funded

hopefulswimmer · January 17

S is looking at a school that is not fully funded. What does that mean exactly? Does it mean they don't have the full allowance of scholarships? How does it translate to the athlete experience?

Lindagaf · January 17

I’m guessing it means that you might be stuck paying a lot of the annual tuition and fees yourself. IOW, they don’t meet full need, as estimated by the net price calculator. I think that’s called gapping and you will have to come up with the money yourself.

I may be wrong though.

Mwfan1921 · January 17

hopefulswimmer wrote: »

S is looking at a school that is not fully funded. What does that mean exactly? Does it mean they don't have the full allowance of scholarships? How does it translate to the athlete experience?

I assume you are talking about an NCAA DI or DII school? Yes, not fully funded means that the school doesn't provide the maximum NCAA allowed athletic scholarships for a given sport.

For Men's swimming NCAA DI has a max of 9.9 scholarships, DII has 8.1. Men's swimming is an equivalency sport, meaning the total number of scholarships is split among the athletes.

Swim teams can have 25-30 members, so there are few full rides, or even full tuition scholarships in swimming. Most swimmers receive partial tuition scholarships.

Not fully funding scholarships doesn't necessarily mean that other athletic budget areas are underfunded. For example, Title IX reasons could be driving the lower funding of men's swimming scholarships. The school could still have good athletic facilities, etc., but you will need to do your research.

Good luck.

hopefulswimmer · January 17

yes, d1, thank you. I was hoping it applied only to scholarships but also wondering if it extended to suits and travel meets...

Mwfan1921 · January 17

hopefulswimmer wrote: »

yes, d1, thank you. I was hoping it applied only to scholarships but also wondering if it extended to suits and travel meets...

You would have to check on the rest of the team's funding levels, ideally with one of the coaches.

AlwaysMoving · January 17

I talked to a coach at a top 5 swim club about this and he said they believe about 75% of the programs are not fully funded. He said coaches don't like to admit it, but often they get only instate scholarship $, fees or room and board aren't included, or some other way to reduce the total $ pool the coach has to work with. He never mentioned support like suits, nutrition, and travel though.

politeperson · January 17

I’m more familiar with Track and Field but I think there are similarities. In T&F there are quite a few programs that aren’t fully funded, which only means that they don’t fund every scholarship oallowed by NCAA rules.

There isn’t necessarily a correlation between scholarship funding levels and funding for other parts of the program. It’s true that sometimes there is less money for assistant coaches, recruiting, travel, massage therapy, equipment, or S&C staff. But that’s sometimes true even at fully funded programs.

I definitely wouldn’t choose a program based on funding level. But I’d ask all the questions about the athlete experience that you’d ask anyway and dig further if there’s a red flag.

RockySoil · January 20

Most coaches don't like to reveal the funding level for their programs lest it affect recruiting. Here is a link to a story about UVM reducing scholarship funding in swimming and running - you can imagine how much tougher recruiting gets with this kind of publicity:

https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/sports/college/2018/12/25/athletic-scholarships-why-uvm-reducing-number-some-sports/2386076002/

twoinanddone · January 20

I know that my daughter's team wasn't fully funded because the coach told me, but there was still plenty of money to distribute. The COA was about $52k the first year she attended, 9.9 allowed scholarships, so fully funded would have been about $500k. Not even close to that, as I'd guess the coach had about $150k in scholarships (everyone finds out how much the others are getting). No one got more than $20k (so not even half COA and by the later years not even half tuition). However, there were also merit scholarships given by the school, there were state scholarships for instate players (Florida bright futures and others) so it wasn't as if the athletes were paying the rest of the COA out of pocket. Even though a few others had higher athletic scholarships, I think my daughter received more money overall because of merit aid and because she was a Florida resident and got the state benefits (private school so no instate tuition break). It's the bottom line that matters and for her she had pretty much a full ride, but not from the coach.

Our coach had other budget limitations on food for travel, taking vans instead of buses, same uniforms for 4 years (and those things were nasty by the end of the 4th year!), but the players received lots of goodies like cleats, practice outfits, jackets, sticks. The only thing I ever paid for were socks, pre-wrap, and mouth guards.

not fully funded

Replies to: not fully funded

Recent Activity