I was given an offer for a seemingly good amount of money to play college basketball at the division 3 level. Don’t know if the offer was actually good or not.
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D3 schools can’t give athletic scholarships. But, athletes can receive relatively the same financial aid/discount level that the rest of the students at that school receive. Look in Section H of the school’s common data set to see how much aid students receive, on average.
Did you ask for a financial aid pre-read? Who (coach, admissions?) offered you money?
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I would start with your budget and your pre determined affordability.
Today, schools are buyers - meaning the applicant has the upper hand at many. Schools need revenue, need butts in seats.
Other schools only give need aid - so if you aren’t able to afford, they may assist. But offer no merit.
So you got need aid or merit aid.
The question becomes - is there a target price you are seeking? And has said school met that target price?
Good is relative.
Some schools provide over half in merit.
Others a small amount.
Others none.
Same with need aid.
We don’t know your specific situation.
The only important financial consideration is if the college will be comfortably affordable for your family.
After affordability consider academic, social, and team fit.
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I have no idea for basketball
For merit, the more generous a school.is with offers of admission, the more generous they are with merit.
My rule of thumb is the “Rule of 90.”
Class rank + rejection rate + merit = 90
Let’s say you are a top 10% basketball or academic student (who knows??) and Anderson rejects 50% of its applicants.
10 + 50 + merit = 90
Merit = $30,000
I think if they give you more then thats pretty good and if it’s less they may think they don’t have to compete as hard for you.
Does that resonate at all or is that not applicable for what you are seeing out there?
I think many schools have tight bands of merit so the average won’t get much less than the stud.
But those schools are having to buy !!
Please explain this. D3 schools don’t give athletic scholarships.
The biggest question is…is the school affordable with the aid you received.
As @Mwfan1921 said, a D3 school can give the same aid to an athlete as they do to other students, either merit or need based, but the athlete has to have the same numbers for merit or financial need that a non-athlete would have received, and there isn’t really a lot of give to those numbers. If all students with a 3.8/1400 get $xxx, the NCAA is okay with the athlete receiving that too. Same with financial need.
I think one place the athletic coach can help is making sure the athlete gets every last dollar he’s eligible for - a grant for early application, an art department scholarship, a scholarship from a local boy scout troop to an Eagle scout, etc. The coach may even suggest a major if he knows there are special scholarships for that major.
OP, I think all you can do is use the offer to determine if the school is affordable for you. School A may give you $30k and School B only $25k, but school B might still be cheaper if the COA is lower to begin with.
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Just to push on this, I’m not entirely sure this is true. This is a datapoint of one, but at least one friend has a son who was recruited at a D3 school. He received substantial merit aid that his grades alone wouldn’t necessarily have indicated as deserving of substantial merit. It’s my understanding that colleges can determine what they deem as worthy of merit aid and that doesn’t necessarily have to align with a GPA/SAT score. So a strong athlete at a D3 school could receive substantial merit aid and this would not be seen as an athletic scholarship. This has a big benefit to the student of also allowing them to leave the team without losing said scholarship.
Yes, when there’s no published merit table, then one has no idea how merit is determined.
All D3 schools have to annually report (to the NCAA) the financial aid packages for all freshman and transfer athletes, as compared to the FA packages of the entire student body. So, athletes can receive merit aid (or need based aid), it just can’t be more than what the typical student receives for merit (or need aid based on income).
Here’s an excerpt of bylaw 15, which governs financial aid given to D3 athletes. The entire painful details are at the link below.
I don’t know where the NCAA is on penalties for infractions of bylaw 15, but do know that the schools take the bylaws and annual reporting quite seriously.
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Makes sense, and I’d assume that the merit aid is not out of line with the top academic students as a whole. But just noting that the merit aid itself doesn’t seem to need to be directly correlated to academic prowess.
Agreed. Many/probably most D3 schools are liberally discounting COA, doesn’t matter what they call it…merit or need based, it’s all just discounting and trying to get fannies in seats.
It’s interesting that the only guardrails that are in place for financial aid are for the athletes. So, schools can give much larger awards to certain groups/types of students they are trying to attract: musicians, theater majors, humanities majors, etc etc. Everyone but the athletes can get a higher than average FA package.
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But aren’t they looking at averages? I see it as being “holistic” and using ECs beyond athletics, or major, or special interest, or talent to determine merit in non-athletes allows them a larger pool of merit to award to athletes as the averages will be more inline.
Most of these schools give a merit range for each GPA range. If athletes are getting the top range, they also need to reward special talent/ exceptional ECs for non-athletes to get similar packages.
I’m not sure this is the case? IME, it’s more a calculation of what they need to offer X student to get them to yield. I expect GPA is a variable in most predictive models, but that’s just one of many variables. I once saw a predictive analytic model with 24 variables, calculated at the student level at a D3 school
Regardless, athlete aid packages can’t show a pattern of being greater than the average of the entire rest of the student body.
ETA with athletes comprising 20%-40% of enrollment at these schools, it wouldn’t be possible to give them all the highest discount level.
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The stories of D3 schools violating the policy are older and things may have gotten better or worse or just not be enforced anymore, but here are two:
- A school was cited for giving better work study jobs to athletes where they made more money for doing less work. This was deemed money for athletics, which was a violation.
- Several schools were accused of giving money to Canadian hockey players (bigger financial aid packages than most students were getting). This was somewhat fixed by using the exchange rate to show that the family incomes were less in Canadian dollars than US dollars, but it shows how closely the NCAA was looking at financial aid awards to athletes.
Do D3 schools give preferences to athletes? Of course they do, in admissions, in better housing and facilities, in lots of ways. But the NCAA still wants the athletes to not have scholarships and polices it. In the last 5 years the NCAA has had a lot on their plate with NIL, big alum pacs giving out millions, transfers for money, etc. I think they probably have to rely on the schools to police themselves or their conferences to rat out schools that aren’t following the rules.
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At some point, in some NCAA report, they stated the majority of infractions in any division are indeed self-reported by the school.
I think I like what you are saying, but do not get it 100%. Say it again.
Coach just offered me money to play for the school. It is close to what I would have gotten either way. I was told I would get on the team as long as I got accepted into the school.
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What you just wrote does not make sense.
- There are no athletic scholarships in d3
- What is “either way”?
- Athletic recruiting = coach offers support with admissions such that it is almost (almost!) guaranteed that you will be admitted to the school.
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