Remember that UMD fills up most of its class (and presumably popular majors) in EA, so admission likelihood is much lower in RD.
I’m just catching up on this thread (and even learned a couple things) - OP, you’re super well-informed, do you have any questions that have gone unanswered?
Around the school+engineering question: many team rosters do list majors for their upperclassmen, which can answer-without-answering - and even if they don’t (I see Princeton doesn’t), searching “FirstName LastName Princeton Soccer LinkedIn” might give you some answers. And really your son should be able to get answers from some team members as he gets to know them. That’s very common student-to-student conversation, and at highly selective schools that compete for the same talent, the differences may be cultural (“nobody really does it here and they pretend to be ok with it but they’re not”) rather than structural.
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Yes, most of the class and I have heard all of the merit. UMD, and probably other similar schools are why SCEA schools let you apply EA to public schools.
I think my two biggest questions are:
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How does that getting one school to match another school’s offer work, and what schools does it work with?
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Do people have suggestions for D3 schools with engineering that give great aid (with or without matching another school)? He has MIT and JHU on his list.
Pretty much all of them in a certain band. During the recruiting process, if your son is being considered by more than one school with a similar academic profile (Ivies + counterparts would be one category), it’s reasonable to ask for financial pre-reads and, if appropriate, ask A if they can match B (as the Cornell example gives above, which is more specific than I knew). Most schools will do some version of that - noting that the amount of attention that might get depends on the level of interest. That can all happen before your son applies SCEA/ED. It does require some finesse from your son in interpreting their place in the hierarchy and the relationship, but coaches are used to it, and it happens every year.
Note that this also works outside of the recruiting process: if your son goes through regular admissions and gets offers of admission from these schools, they will often consider matching each other. But it doesn’t bridge the process - you can’t expect to compare an SCEA offer from Princeton from an athletic team with an RD offer from Cornell without one. (Well, maybe you can? But I’ve never heard of anyone doing it, I don’t know if Princeton et al. require you to accept the offer and agree to withdraw other applications, I don’t know that it would work, and you would definitely piss someone off, which maybe you don’t care about.)
I think you pretty much have the list here, noting that MIT doesn’t provide merit aid and JHU says they do but my understanding is that it is very (very) minor and in truly exceptional circumstances. Case Western, WPI, Rochester would have been the ones I would have said, probably RIT too. WashU has a small amount of merit as well.
Adding to the above fine post:
Union, Wentworth, Clarkson, Rose-Hulman, RPI, Stevens, Trinity Tx, TCNJ.
You also might look at D2 Colorado School of Mines.
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Hopkins and MIT NPC’s work for us, as do some of the Ivies. It would be great if other schools matched that!
Is JHU in that band?
Thank you!
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I don’t know how that would play out with soccer recruiting. My sense is that it probably won’t be on the same timeframe or have the same pull - but I’m really not sure.
Can’t speak to soccer but in our sport the pull was the same. The barrier there is usually a 1500+ non-negotiable SAT score for support. The timeline seems to be in line with other top D3s.
Just to be clear on my prior comments: I am not suggesting that all schools will match need-based aid, just Ivies for schools within the same conference. It might happen at other schools and in other conferences but I don’t know that for sure.
Has your son asked the coaches about the recruiting process and how FA pre-reads work? I’m not sure what more to say to explain aid matching within the Ivy League. In my experience if coaches know that a recruit is being recruited by other schools in the conference, they will bring it up themselves (well, Princeton won’t because they usually aren’t the ones matching).
Is MIT under consideration? You might check out Harvey Mudd too if the west coast works for you
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Sorry, I was unclear. I didn’t mean pull in terms of recruiting’s impact on admissions; I meant pull in terms of impact on financial aid. I’m not sure that a financial aid offer from e.g. JHU during the athletic process will have the same impact as e.g. Duke - not because of academic quality but because of athletic division. Also I could be wrong.
MIT is under consideration, but it feels like a huge reach. I think Harvey Mudd would be a great fit, but worry about cost, and he doesn’t love the distance.
It is a huge reach.
And recruiting is different there than at other schools, although it’s not clear that recruiting is on the table there, at least so far. Even with full coach support, chances of admission are far from assured (unlike the other schools you mentioned for recruiting). Best case it becomes 50/50 (and many coaches don’t have that level of success.)
I note one of the complexities with all this is that when you are looking at colleges with discretionary merit programs, you often really just don’t know in advance whether the total aid offer you get will be good enough. People will share information about what they got, which is certainly somewhat helpful. But if you follow those discussions for a given college, it tends to become obvious we just don’t always know why A got more than B or vice-versa.
So “chasing merit” sort of ends up looking like chasing highly-selective admissions. You put together a list of colleges which seem like they at least might offer enough merit, and then see what happens.
As people then further explain, kids chasing merit may well have longer application lists than kids who are either comfortably full pay, or kids who will predictably be getting enough need aid. So that’s an extra burden, and it helps explain why more kids don’t chase merit.
But if you are willing to put in the time and energy, it sometimes really pays off.
In this case, he should look at top merit scholarships, like Robertson, Jefferson, Ingram, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Stamps, etc
WashU has quite a few different full ride/full tuition scholarships IIRC