My D is in Junior year and is hoping to play a varsity sport in high academic D3 T30 schools. We started our recruiting process and got some good feedback from college coaches and will start the PreRead process soon. Since D3 has no athletic scholarship and we are NOT qualified for the need based FA, we can only expect merit scholarships. My humble question is, can PreRead also give you some hint of chances or guarantee of merit scholarships? Thank you!
From our observation (of family friends whoâve gone through the process with D3) - their recruited athlete was told they would be eligible for the same merit scholarships of any other applicant to the school with the same academic and/or leadership qualifications.
During the pre-read process, the amount of potential merit scholarship was discussed in greater detail.
A good thing to figure out is which of the schools your daughter is looking at have merit scholarships at all. Not exactly sure how you are defining Top 30, but some of those will probably be âmeets need onlyâ schools, meaning they offer no merit money at all.
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I thought some schools offer a financial aid preread, as well as an academic one. A poster (@twoinanddone maybe?) has said they were also able to know their merit award at that time too, allowing the family to fully compare offers.
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Thank you, yes we did some homework and targeted schools like U.Chicago, WUSTL, NYU, Emory, JHU that offers merit scholarships. My understanding is, if we pass the PreRead and are lucky enough to get coach support, we will need to ED the school, is that correct? But I also heard ED will hurt your chance to get any merit scholarship since schools tend to keep the fund to the RD round for those âundecidedâ applicants, is that true?
Honestly, merit scholarships at top D3s are few and extremely competitive. Passing a pre-read is definitely not an indicator since the athletic pre-read bar is more in line with the bare minimum needed to succeed.
If merit money is an important part of the equation for you, you should really cast a wider net and look at schools where your son is on the very top of the published stats range. You might want to expand into lower other conferences as well (lower D1, D2, NAIA)
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Merit is extremely competitive at these schools. I expect many recruits donât make the cutâŠthese schools often use merit as a carrot to get top students that would be Ivy competitive.
It is true that many schools wonât give much merit in ED. All you can do is ask for a pre-read, thay may or may not do that. Generally recruits have to apply ED in exchange for full coach support.
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My D21 was a recruited athlete and her pre-reads were given in writing including her âexpectedâ merit scholarships which in every case matched the amount actually offered. We did not allow her ED anywhere for that very reason: we needed to be able to compare merit offers.
One word of caution: the schools you listed actually offer very little merit aid, and when they do, it is generally to FGLIs or other underrepresented groups. The one exception is Emory, I believe.
UChicago in particular is super misleading about it: they promise lots of merit aid to increase their $ of apps and thus lower their yield. Search threads from recent years and youâll learn a ton.
Also look at the Common Data Set stats, but know that there has been a huge shift from merit-based to need-based aid among the âtopâ schools in the last few years, so anything more than a few years old is really out of date. There was even a big difference in the two years between my D21 and S23âs search, and if anything Iâd imagine it has continued to shift. (OTOH, The lower-ranked LACs still offer a ton of merit, esp those not filling due the âdemographic cliffâ and other factors.)
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Really, no.
Some schools have almost guaranteed merit, but most of those arenât in the T30 group you are talking about and being an athlete will not make any difference - they treat all applicants the same. A coach can make sure you get everything you deserve (like apply by this date, make sure you apply to the History Dept scholarship or kids from Delaware might get X scholarship) but merit is hard to guarantee since it is another committee awarding merit.
The schools that have a lot of merit are a little easier for the coach to guess about. My daughter applied to a D2 school with a lot of merit so we knew from the chart âaboutâ what she would get, but she also got a few state scholarships and grants (that were easy to figure out), and we knew her athletic scholarship. Moving pieces, but sort of predictable.
But it wasnât a T30 school.
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We have paid 2 school visits (to 1 of above schools) already, practiced in camps, met coaches, lunched with team and toured campus. Coaches also watched us in Youth National games before, and indicated we are their top recruit. We have some confidence on the PreRead. She is straight Aâs in a top high school, SAT 1580, PSAT 1520/228 (which is not only a top 1% NMF but actually a very rare full score), more than 10 APs and all AP tests are max 5, several club founder/president, many volunteer hours, etc.
So my concern is actually ED vs Merit. She may make those schools in RD even without sports and may have better chance for Merit Scholarship. We have known 2 kids that got into that school in RD with full merit tuition waiver because they also have offers from Brown and Dartmouth, and those 2 kids are about the same or lower than my D in academic and they donât play sports at all.
My D loves the coaches, loves team and the school. But the ED binding without knowing the chance of getting Merit scholarship really concerns me. It is like we pay our own pocket all $350K cost to play sports for the school, OR we may have a better chance for a full ride and we just donât play sports anymore. This is a tough choice and kind of unfair in our situation!
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As an NMSF and likely NMF she will qualify for a full ride at some schools including Alabama, Tulsa and several others. I donât think your D will get anything close to that at the schools you listed in the OP as an athletic recruit.
I would encourage you to leave this decision to your D. If the financials end up being the primary factor, I would encourage the parents to communicate that sooner rather than later. The recruiting process is long, difficult and emotional. If the parents donât want their D to commit ED as a recruit, why go thru that process?
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Depending on her sport, her academic interests, etc., it might be worth looking at UT Dallas. They have a very generous National Merit package and a great Honors college with very smart and academically-serious students, but theyâve also been DIII up 'til this year, and are just now transitioning to DII (and primarily because theyâve been somewhat of an outlier as a larger school in the DIII conference - it doesnât sound like theyâre gunning for a D1-type athletic culture). Itâs the only one of the big-NMF-merit schools I can think of that isnât D1 (although I could be forgetting something).
DIII-wise, I think the decision tree youâre facing will depend in part on the nature of her sport. Is it the kind of sport where she could jump in later as a walk-on, or the kind of sport where specific positions are filled earlier in the process?
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Yes, thatâs correct. Coach support is essentially a two-way agreement: athlete agrees to apply ED (and thus the coach can depend on that spot being filled by that athlete), coach supports athlete through the process (and thus the athlete can essentially depend on an acceptance to a school theyâre excited about).
I would call this speculation by parents and other, perhaps better-informed, individuals. 
Most schools will say they are treated the same, itâs hard for us to know otherwise.
Your student sounds great, and they may well receive merit aid, but as others have noted, itâs quite rare at this list of schools, except in situations where the student meets an institutional priority, which you canât influence or predict.
You can decide itâs unfair, of course, but Iâd suggest a different framing - first, of course the athlete hook provides substantial value that even the best academic students donât have otherwise, and second, all ED applicants to these schools have to make the same choice - apply without knowing about merit aid, just whatever the net price calculator tells them. (As @UpNorth2019 noted, sometimes this might be included in a pre-read, which of course non-athletes donât receive.)
I would encourage perhaps a bit of skepticism on this - that any school on your list would have provided full merit-based aid solely based on competition with another school, even Brown or Dartmouth. Need-based aid might reconsider based on a better financial offer from another institution, but merit would probably strike other informed people as a highly unusual result.
Good luck! If there was a way to add the Athletic Recruits tag, this might get a bit more involvement from those who hang out there (some of us did find it though).
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This is a good point. I have met many people who advertise the âscholarshipâ their child got at an ivy, âthey gave him a full rideâ, when itâs simply need based-aid.
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Currently looking at some of these schools for D24, but she is not doing athletics, but D23 did eventually commit at D3 school. Many of her friends got significant scholarships at D1s. But she wanted SLAC. Some of the schools such as Amherst actually said âonly need based. no merit scholarships are given because every admitted student would deserve itâ
That being said, your student can apply to other scholarships, sounds like a competitive candidate, lots of money out there.
I think it is fair D1s give money, because generally the commitment is much higher in terms of time and expected results.
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Iâm not sure I agree with this reasoning but thatâs another discussion.
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If you really want merit money and to play, then your daughter should focus on schools where she doesnât need coach support to be admitted, and where coaches want her on the team. She would apply RD.
Schools like Connecticut College, Union, Denison, Rhodes. Maybe Skidmore, Kenyon, Oberlin?
Only you can decide how important merit money is. If itâs a dealbreaker, change your focus and drop down a level or two in terms of selectivity. If itâs not a dealbreaker then never mind,
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Generally speaking, if you are eligible for merit at a D3 school, then you would get in without coach support. So⊠apply RD, get merit scholarship and you can walk on for athletics. You also get more time and get to compare other merit packages.
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At some schools, nearly everyone gets a discount/âmeritâ award.
Prospective athletes must speak with coaches about any potential walk-on opportunity, regardless the school. Plenty of sports/teams, even at less selective schools, donât take any walk-ons.
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I think what @crabbydaddy was saying is that if the OPâs child was a candidate for merit at the schools listed by the OP in post 4, which all give merit but very rarely
that (1) the student would get in without coach support and (2) could then walk on. I donât know if either of those statements are true!
I think posters have been speaking generally about recruiting/merit but I thought the OP was looking for info specifically about these schools.
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Could be, but those schools are reaches for all (with single digit RD acceptance rates), even high stats students, so no assurance of acceptance in RD, and the student still needs to talk to the coach ahead of time about any walk-on opportunity.
Bigger picture, D3 schools canât give more merit on average to athletes than non-athletes, and have to file detailed reports each year to the NCAA proving this. Meaning, a school that gives little merit in total canât give that merit disproportionately to athletes. At some of those schools so few students receive merit that if an athlete were given a sizable award, e.g., full tuition, that could impact the overall proportions.
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