I think some of this is semantics, and some of this is simply people talking past each other who will never be convinced of how the system works. My simple thought on this has always been that if the Ivys wanted to offer athletic scholarships they could, easily. They choose, rather publicly, not to. The idea that these schools would make that choice and then more or less openly cheat and offer a squash player or middle distance runner athletic aid is ridiculous to me. I am still waiting for someone to articulate a rationale supporting such a system.
For those who are looking for insight and whatever help you can find to help your kid through this, I can only say that the need based aid offered by most of the Ivys and HYP in particular is light years away from the need based aid offered by most other schools. Don’t shut that door until you look closely at what the FA office says. We almost cut off the Ivys from my son’s list early on, assuming that we would get no or little FA. Thankfully, a parent of a former teammate clued me in on the scale of FA being awarded now.
There were many schools that recruited my son where he wouldn’t have received any need based aid at all. He went to Princeton and the aid was so generous that I paid less for his college education than his high school education. Call it what you want, athlete or NARP, the Ivys in general and HYP in particular are often the cheapest option available to a kid. It is easy to see how some people won’t accept this could be true, and that something shady must be going on when a kid who would likely be full pay at State U gets 20k+ in financial aid from Harvard.