Hey, so thanks for the tip – our own experience was D3 Men’s Soccer, not basketball, with a focus on Midwest and east coast LACs. We realized early on we were not eligible for financial aid but could not swing full pay ourselves, so were looking primarily at schools which might offer 1/2 tuition merit. There are good midwest LACs which will give 1/2 tuition merit awards for strong academics and a coherent picture of what a student will contribute to campus. Many of them are also test optional and still give the merit aid. However, the full tuition awards were few and far between. Many midwest LACs have lower tuition and room and board than schools on the coasts, so if the total cost were say, $45k tuition, and $10k room and board, a 1/2 tuition merit award would bring tuition down to about $23k plus $10k – so about $33-35k, but definitely not approaching full tuition or even full ride kind of awards.
Merit awards are essentially reductions in the cost of attendance on account of some desirable attributes of the student – typically, they need to be in the top 25% academically of the admitted student pool and have some thing they bring to campus – music, arts, leadership, athletics etc. There is no secret money for sports, as if a school treated its athletes differently than other students, that would jeopardize D3 eligibility etc. We heard about a school which was sanctioned by the NCAA when a new assistant coach mentioned to a prospect that there might be special funds available to an athlete – that was strictly forbidden to say, let alone do. So stories about D athletes getting “athletic” scholarships are usually explained by the fact that it is need-based aid, not merit aid.
We looked at for merit, and were very impressed by (in no particular order) – Earlham, Knox, Kalamazoo, Lawrence, Wooster (not test optional) and St Lawrence (test scores required for merit). Dickinson is another favorite, though its highest merit award was in the low $20k range, and it required test scores for that amount of merit. We also did a lot of online research and had preliminary conversations with Beloit and Centre, and were impressed. Grinnell does offer some very substantial merit awards, and its basketball team plays a rather unusual style, and there may be some more room in recruiting for Men’s Basketball at Grinnell than in other sports. I’ve also heard about big merit at Kenyon and Oberlin, but those are uncommon.
The challenge is, many of these same schools do NOT meet full need, so if a family is eligible for financial aid, the combination of merit and financial aid package may still require more than the family is in a position to bear.