https://go.umaine.edu/apply/scholarships/flagship-match/
U Maine has a flagship match program
It would not be her peer group, but there are some advantages to being solidly among the best students at a college.
For what she is looking for, she should start with filling out the interest forms for the swimming coaches where she is interested in the college and her times at least match the current roster. Since she is a good student and you qualify for significant need-based aid, assume there will be no extra money for swimming and target colleges that have engineering and meet need. Having a coach on your side is a big boost for admission chances.
Some recommendations, in addition to what has been mentioned (Ivies, ND, Rice):
Duke, Northwestern, Lafayette and Bucknell.
My daughter is a national merit finalist. We live in Arkansas and have no college fund or disposable income, yet solidly middle class and won’t qualify for much need based aid. She applied to Dartmouth, Yale, Mississippi State, and University of Idaho. Net price calculators came out to about 8-10k per year for Dartmouth and Yale, which would be doable, but with some borrowing which I am not very comfortable with. She had an amazing offer from Mississippi State (more than a full ride so money in her pocket and other perks) and the national merit scholarship from University of Idaho. (full ride, but nothing extra). She had decided to attend Mississippi State but we already had a trip planned to Idaho and we decided to check it out and not cancel our trip. Long story short, she LOVED U of I and registered for classes while we were there. It is a campus of about 9000 students, and Moscow is a lovely, cute, safe, college town. The downside is getting there! The closest big airport is in Spokane, WA and she won’t have a car. So getting to and from school will be challenging. By the way, rejected at both Dartmouth and Yale so it was between MS and ID. She is so excited about Idaho and never could get as excited about Mississippi even with all the crazy money they were offering her.
“Her current coach is really pushing for her to go D1. He suggested Purdue and Georgia Tech. These were not the types of schools she was looking at.”
Unless/until the swim coach starts writing college tuition checks, that coach should stop talking and start listening.
What the coach should tell you is that your kid is trending as a swimmer so that she can swim at a certain level. High D1, low D1, high D3, low D3. Any other opinions are really not needed, requested or relevant. Thanks coach – keep it to the swimming. Cheers.
For a kid like yours, there’s likely more money to be found in need-based financial aid at an Ivy or selective D3 school that meets full financial need. Those schools are more likely to resemble a place like Rice (a very small D1 school) than the schools your swim coach is blithering about.
DI womens swim teams get 14 scholarships. Rice may not actual provide 14 scholarships. But if they do, note that Rice has 23 kids on their female swim team. A 2/3rds athletic scholarship to Rice (which is great if you can get one) leaves you having to pay at $20k a year. And under NCAA rules, if you get one penny of athletic scholarship, then you can’t receive one penny of need based aid. You are allowed to combine merit aid with athletics aid, but (because of the NCAA rules) that’s only going to work at a lower tier academic school.
Swimming at D3 and getting aid might end up being cheaper for you than getting an athletic scholarship at D1 Ga Tech. Use swimming to get your kid ADMITTED into a selective full need meeting school that will provide a lot of aid.
Another benefit of going need-aid vs athletic aid. Your kid still gets it even if your kid decides to stop being a swimmer in college.
Not exactly correct. If you get athletic money, any need based aid counts against the team total. If the team is fully funded then, yes, no additional need based aid would be allowed. If the team is not fully funded, the coach might welcome student who can qualify for need based aid. And merit aid, and any outside scholarships, and a rich grandparent. Or if the athlete is better off with need based aid, she could turn down the athletic aid and just take the need based aid.
At this point, the OP is just finding out what is out there. I would listen to all offers, all combos of merit, need, and athletic money.
I don’t think the high school coaches are idiots about which college programs are academic matches for their students either. He suggested a few swim programs where OP’s daughter is a match, but it isn’t like Purdue or Georgia Tech are slacker schools either. If OP has a different type of school (size, location, academic focus, cost) in mind, tell the coach what she’s looking for and maybe he’ll have other suggestions (Fordham, WashU. Virginia). My daughter’s club coach has connected 5 players to my daughter’s team, and is well aware that it is a STEM school so the students need pretty good academics to get in. The club and high school coaches are pretty good at matching the athlete to the school in both athletics and academics.
If the swim coach doesn’t know what the financial parameters are, his advice is not very helpful.
Once you know that the OP is trying to only spend $10k a year, then you know that a swim scholarship alone isn’t going to do it (unless the kid is Missy Franklin). And neither is merit money.
So the focus should be fat need-based aid. Which means using swimming as a way to get into a school but not as a way to pay for a school. In which case Ga Tech and Purdue (while fine schools) are just not good recommendations.
the OP says her daughter is on track for National Merit Finalist. She can go after the handful of full ride opportunities available to NMF and go to school for free. That’s what we did. It’s hard to turn down free college.
I agree with this 100%. This kid has the academic chops for a NESCAC or similar school where swimming could be a help to getting in…and getting the great need-based aid offered to any low income accepted student.
OP, I don’t know if you’re still reading this thread or not, but I wanted to throw out that there ARE full scholarships available for swimming. It shocked the heck out of us, but my swimmer was just offered one–a full athletic scholarship to a school you’ve heard of. I really thought 50% was the best we could hope for, but apparently not. She also has been assured of a full athletic + merit package at another school, and her academic stats are nothing like your daughter’s. Have your daughter keep working on her times and make sure she has a tapered focus SC meet in the spring of her junior year. For comparison purposes, my daughter has 2 junior nat cuts, and she’s just gotten those this spring. She is solid mid-major D1 material, but I have been really surprised at how much interest she has received.
So tell him what you are looking for.
Planit – the OP is trying to find a smaller, high end academic school, with engineering, for her high stat swimmer who is a marginal D1 level swimmer. And only can pay $10k a year. Rice is the dream school fyi.
There’s lots of potential combinations of need/merit/athletic money combinations and possibilities. But relying primarily on fullish ride D1 athletics money doesn’t seem likely to check all the other is going to be a stretch. Plus that school will probably be on the big side and may also not be so high on the academics.
The more straightforward path would be to identify a smaller, selective school with engineering that meets full need. That could be low/small level D1 (how about Bucknell or Lehigh or Lafayette) or a D3 (Hopkins, MIT).
The kid would be a more desire-able swimmer (which gets you admitted as a recruited athlete) and then the need-based aid pays as much/more than the swim scholarship would.
Even more straightforward would be to just apply to Rice as a regular student. If the kid gets in, maybe walk onto the swim team. Or not. Swimming plus engineering is a pretty tough proposition.
@northwesty, I did read the entire thread. I’m not sure why you’re being pissy about the fact that I’ve shared my personal experience, just because it directly contradicts your blanket generalizations, but whatever–carry on. And for the record, the school that has offered the full athletic ride is not, in fact, “on the big side and also not so high on the academics.” And, you know, we also could just leave it to the OP to decide what is helpful input on her thread.
Planit – sure there’s full swim scholarships available in D1. Missy Franklin and Katey Ledecky probably got them. But the NCAA limits D1 female swim scholarships to 14 a year and the average D1 womens swim squad is 28.
Since the OP needs to get the tab down to $10k, that means you are probably going to have to be a well above average swimmer for that particular D1 program for the athletic money alone to work. And the description doesn’t sound like the kid is at that swim level at least for the dream school D1 Rice.
To be helpful to the OP, maybe you could suggest some D1 schools that would be a fit in terms of swim level, size, academics and program of study? All you’ve told us so far is is that “some kids get full ride swim scholarships.”
Look at the Patriot league schools. They are DI-AA, academically strong, many excellent in engineering. Lehigh, Lafayette, Bucknell. Lehigh’s in a small city, close to NYC and Philly AND meets full need. Lafayette is in the small city nextdoor, Bucknell is rural but beautiful and excellent academically. A female engineer form Kansas would offer geographic diversity!!!
In my neck of the woods, I’d have her consider Pitt and University of Delaware. But there are tons of other schools I would look at that may have great merit aid (especially with ACT brought up to 35), engineering, and swimming. GA Tech seems obvious. Emory? BC?
I’ll pile on here and repeat what’s already been said. We had a similar caliber student and swimmer – he got his first junior national (NCSA) cuts as a sophomore and his first USA Swimming junior national cuts as a junior. We focused heavily on top academic DIII schools for a couple of reasons. First, we wanted a top college where the primary focus would be on the academics rather than swimming. That’s hard to find at DI – even with the Ivies. And, second, though he was a top 300 or so swimmer nationally, it’s pretty clear that he’d be a national level swimmer at DIII and only a conference level swimmer at DI. So he’d enjoy more success which, in our thinking, would increase the likelihood that he’s swim all four years (rather than dropping out from exhaustion or from lack of success or balance between academics and swimming). Our DS settled on a top NESCAC and will start this fall. He’s super pleased and so are we.
And, because of the peculiarities of your financial situation, it sounds like you may be eligible for tons of money based on need. And "need’ money is far superior to “athletic” money for the reasons others have stated. I’d encourage you to reach out to the NESCAC swimming coaches – Kuster at Williams, Nichols at Amherst, Rueppel at Middlebury, Burnham at Bowdoin, etc. They’re all terrific coaches, friendly, and approachable. And it’s not too early to begin building relationships.
For D3 swimming programs, also consider Kenyon and Denison in Ohio. Kenyon dominated D3 national championship for years, Denison has picked up two national championships in recent years. Both have gorgeous facilities.
Good thoughts, Midwestmomofboys. We visited Kenyon (DS actually did two swim camps there) and loved it. And the assistant there, Doug Lennox, was among the top two or three recruiters we encountered. DS loved him, and it was really tough to walk away. But Kenyon is both a half-step down academically from the top NESCAC schools (Williams, Amherst, Middlebury, Bowdoin, and Hamilton) and a full step up in terms of the intensity of the swim program. I would think of both Kenyon and Denison as basically DI level swim programs – they’re fantastic, but it’s a higher commitment level than you’ll find in the NESCAC. So it really comes down to fit. Each swimmer has to find the right balance.
But do those LACs listed offer engineering, which OP said is the academic program her daughter wants?
nevermind, confused two threads