I think we are learning why it is not so surprising! For various reasons, athletes who were potentially recruitable in their sport don’t do it at the varsity level in college, but instead do club. Sometimes they are not recruited anywhere they would want to go. Sometimes they just don’t want to make the time commitment. So club ends up being the sweet spot for them.
ETA: By the way, this is a specific sort of story, but my S24 does club Ultimate, which is the highest level in Ultimate, and quite a few former soccer HS stars end up on Ultimate teams. A lot of the physical and mental traits translate pretty well, and Ultimate isn’t always available or at least not common depending on the HS and region. So for the right kids, it is kind of a cool way to stay a top level competitor in a sport at their college, but without quite the same commitment level.
When my son was accepted by Brown and we were talking to the financial aid officer to see if they might be able to offer more aid, they specifically asked if he had any offers from peer schools (the other Ivies, Stanford, MIT) . The unstated policy is that they will try to match these offers. They frame it as “let us review your documents again to see what they saw that maybe we missed.” This was just for a regular, RD admit — no ED, no sports.
And agree with others that Princeton is the most generous, so applying to Princeton and getting an offer from them can be very helpful, even if the student prefers a different peer school. I have no experience at all how this intersects with recruiting and coach support , though.
I expect it is realistic to combine engineering and soccer at almost any college, but there is a good variation from student to student. For example, I was on the rowing team at Stanford. At the time the team had the maximum allowed NCAA practice hours (20 per year, if I recall correctly) in addition to travel time including a bus ride to/from the boat house 5 days a week. Nevertheless, ~half of team members were engineers, as discussed in news story at Engineering a rowing team | Stanford University School of Engineering . There was enough extra time in typical engineering major’s schedule to support an extra 20 hours per week of practice + travel time. However, the sport was the students’ primary EC. There was limited time for ECs/activities outside of classes + sport. This could be a problem for certain individual students that want to pursue additional time consuming ECs/activities beyond this and/or spend more time on academics than typical for their major.
I’m pretty sure every Ivy school will match need-based aid from any other Ivy League school. Cornell will also match Stanford, Duke, MIT.
For athletes, this happens during the pre-read process if there was recruiting interest from the other school(s). (For regular students, after admission).
The threshold for “recruiting interest” varies by school, as does the process for matching. IIRC there are a few schools where a couple emails are sufficient, and the recruiting coach might ask for those to send to the FA office. Cornell has a simple form that the recruit fills out attesting to contact. Other schools might want to see the FA estimate produced during the pre-read.
Apologies, it has been a few years since I was involved with any recruits going through that part of the process, and my memory is a bit fuzzy. Hopefully others with recent experience will chime in. But the coaches know the process and in my experience if FA is on the table they’ll ask which other schools are being considered and proceed in the way that gets the recruit the best FA.
A lot of ‘interest’….he’d have to be accepted at Princeton because that’s the only way he would get a financial aid offer AND at a peer school…so another Ivy, or S, or M.
No school is going to match another school’s NPC results…students have to be accepted at all schools where they want to play that game.
I will also tag @politeperson but I believe they were implying if Princeton does a financial aid pre-read for a recruit, your S would present the pre-read to other peer schools where he is being recruited (if there are any) and said school(s) would match the Princeton financial aid pre-read results. (thereby adopting Princeton’s FA formula)
My point still stands that your S would need to be in the mix at Princeton far enough to get a financial aid pre-read….the NPC results won’t be enough. I’m not sure if Princeton does financial aid pre-reads for all who pass the academic pre-read, or only those who get a verbal offer of full coach support/a slot.
Just throwing in that in addition to kids abandoning engineering because they find a different passion, kids leave their sport when they find a different EC which is equally absorbing/all consuming. Theater (both performing and technical theater/support), voter registration/political involvement, community organizing, etc. I know “former athletes” who have run for public office- while still in college- in towns where the minimum age to hold office is 18 and where the student discovers an issue they care deeply about.
My college roommate left her crew team at the end of junior year because she was exhausted from “Crew, Pre-med, sleep– pick two”. She immediately got involved in a bunch of campus and community stuff, but the pressure for “one more workout” or the alarm going off at 5 am was just too much.
One needs to get admitted to Princeton and peer school(s) and receive an FA offer from one of those peers before you can even start a conversation about matching
This isn’t an option for athletes, who typically are required to apply ED. I think @politeperson is talking about a financial pre-read for an athlete situation.
Princeton is REA, not RD. And yes, one can get an FA preread, but the results are not firm. However, my answer was targeting the question asked by the OP
They’re talking about athletic interest. And a recruit at say Brown, could not apply REA at Princeton and also apply ED to Brown as required for athletic support.
This is incorrect in the athletic recruiting context.
An athlete being recruited by both Princeton and Cornell, for example, simply needs to sign a Cornell form indicating that they’ve had recruiting contact from Princeton (I can’t remember the exact threshold but it’s something like 2 calls or emails). Cornell will then produce a FA estimate during the pre-read based on the Princeton formula/methodology. That will apply for all four years.
The procedure is different at other schools.
You might prefer not to call this “matching” but at Cornell it is literally called something like the aid matching initiative and most coaches will use that phrase.
Recruited athletes at Ivies typically go through a pre-read process that includes an admissions pre-read and can include a financial aid pre-read. So, before applying ED/EA they should have assurance that with coach support the probability of admission is very high (95+%). They should also have a FA estimate, and that is usually very reliable.
However, I’d discuss these details and timeline with the coach as typically the formal pre-reads take place in July prior to senior year. In your son’s case the coach would probably be confident that the pre-read is just a formality. I’m not sure how the different programs handle the FA pre read and matching if asking for a commitment prior to then, but I’m sure the coaches know.
It is an estimate at that point, but only because in some cases the budgeting and algorithms for the following year haven’t yet been finalized and because, of course, there can be no formal offer if you haven’t yet been admitted.
But yes, you can count on it being either exact or very close. The only situations I’m aware of where it changed is when FA became more generous.
IME, they are accurate for probably 95% of recruits. For the other 5%, there are often valid reasons why they’re not, but since they may or may not apply to OP, so I’d rather not get in the weeds by going through the permutations
5% are inaccurate in meaningful ways? That would be 10-12 recruits per year at each school. I’m very skeptical that would be the case.
These pre-reads are conducted by FA staff with full FA app and tax returns. The only way I could see them being meaningfully off is if information was withheld.
He would be happy to play club, however if he did so, it would probably choose to do it at UMD.
I think in his mind, athletic recruiting might be a way to increase his chances at a top school that meets need without loans. When we run NPC’s those are the schools that beat UMD’s price tag.