@tseliot, what’s your evidence for this?
Not hearsay, personal experience.
Go on, @tseliot . Please give your claim some credibility.
So IOW, nothing to back up the statement. Which brings us full circle to my first post: 
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/22333835#Comment_22333835
Is there anyone on the planet that wants to brag that they are so poor that their kid qualified for tons of need based aid? No. But everyone loves to brag about Johnny’s pitching arm or Suzie’s prowess on the soccer field, or Larry’s hockey awards.
^ I know a lot of other parents of elite HS athletes. Frankly, none of them like to talk about scholarships and the like, except with those other parents who understand the process.
D was playing one of her last high school games and a father from the other team was standing near me bragging that his daughter was getting a ‘full ride.’ Everyone was oohing and aahing. She was heading to the same school my daughter was and she didn’t have anything close to a full ride. He wanted to think she did and how did it matter to me?
Reminds me of the time that I heard from someone I knew thru youth sports that My D/S got a full scholarship/ride to HYP. They had heard it from others, which made me chuckle a bit as it sums up typical youth sports parent athlete scholarship talk.
No-one ever heard that from us as it was not true. I would state the school was generous when compared to other schools with the financial aid/financial scholarship. I would also tell others that what you “hear” from parents was not in line from what we heard during recruitment directly from the coaches at Ivy’s and other Top D1 programs where my D/S was a top recruit.
Since then I have heard multiple people talk about so and so getting a full ride to x Ivy or y D3 NESCAC type school, or a lower end academic/sports D2 giving a full “athletic” ride or schools “finding” scholarships as they really wanted this kid or their kid…In most cases it is pretty much all talk, IMO.
It is difficult to find the Ivy actual rule book. However, the Ivy website posts this sysnopsis. This is not far from the anecdote provided by @tseliottt, but it is fully in harmony with the NCAA rules that permit it.
“Ivy League schools provide financial aid to students, including athletes, only on the basis of financial need as determined by each institution’s Financial Aid Office. There are no academic or athletic scholarships in the Ivy League. A coach may assist a prospective student-athlete to obtain an estimated financial aid award, however only the Financial Aid Office has the authority to determine financial aid awards and to notify students officially of their actual or estimated awards.”
“Remember: A prospective student-athlete who receives an estimated need-based financial aid award is welcome to share it with other Ivy League schools. In some cases Ivy League financial aid offices may reevaluate and adjust an estimated financial aid award based on a written need-based award or estimate from another school. Ivy League coaches may not discourage a prospect from sharing an award, or from obtaining an estimated award from another Ivy institution.”
As an aside, this also appears on the Ivy website:
"Prospective and enrolled student-athletes may not be given extra benefits.
NCAA Rule: What is an Extra Benefit?
An extra benefit includes the provision of any transportation, meals, housing, clothes, service, entertainment, or other benefit not available to all students who are not athletes."
“Interpretation: This means that under no circumstances may you provide an individual prospect or enrolled student-athlete with any of these benefits. You may never take an individual or small group of athletes or prospects to a restaurant for a meal. However, teams which are visiting your area for competition may be provided with meals while on a team trip.”
I’m the OP. Here is a reminder of the question at hand:
“Are there ever any occasions when the Ivy League will provide some form of financial incentive if they really want an athlete, regardless of financial need?”
@gointhruaphase , tseliot didn’t provide an anecdote. He/she merely made a claim based on “personal experience” with no evidence to support the claim.
Regardless, the info from the Ivy League website says “in some cases, they MAY adjust…” So maybe they do, and maybe they don’t, but that’s a different question from what I asked in my original post. As of yet, no one here seems to have any iron-clad proof that provides an answer in the affirmative to my question.
the Ivy agreement and the league web site describe limits on what member schools can do. They do not describe the actual practices and policies of those schools. As far as I know, there’s no publicly available handbook produced by the schools or the league for that. Instead, athletes must rely on advice from those who have gone through the process as well as communications from coaches.
Actually, it’s totally opposite from the story spun by @tseliot wrote unless, like many people, s/he used the incorrect terminology when stating “athletic scholarship offers” . An Ivy League school may adjust need-based aid based upon a competing need-based offer/estimate/call-it-what-you-will from a non-Ivy peer school. How each of the 8 defines “non-Ivy peer school” may vary. So one may consider Duke, and another may not. The one thing that all 8 have in common, per Ivy League rules,is that they will not match/adjust/call-it-what-you-will based upon a non-need-based-scholarship to Duke/Stanford/etc.
Any student can submit a competing offer and hope for some match. It’s an accommodation, when the college feels like it, for various reasons. A reconsideration of the financial facts presented and run through their formulas. Follows policy. Not some throwing money at Billy or Susie to get them on the team.
It may function, on some basic level, as incentive (“OK, Yale is my first choice and they matched (or came closer to) H’s aid. Now I’ll go to Yale.”
But it’s not a bribe. Not something underhanded.
@skieurope what rule prevents adjustment to a financial aid estimate following communication of an athletic scholarship offer from another institution?
I’d love to hear more details from tseliot on specifics. Maybe we all could learn something that would be helpful for future recruits. The claim was not that an athletic scholarship was given, just that the FA estimate changed in light of an athletic scholarship offer. There could be a variety of reasons for this, but we won’t learn what they are if everyone who has a personal experience that contradicts CC CW gets shouted down.
At post #109, several posters have provided experience to the negative, that is whatever adjustment they got/didn’t get was based purely on financial need and potential recalculation based on how another school calculated financial need as per post 108. Tseliot specifically referred to considering athletic scholarships which is not allowed. I seriously question the credibility of that statement.
CC is full of folks taking an anecdote or two as gospel, some universal truth. No one, including the family it happened to, knows the full process and discussions.
I wish I felt more comfortable talking to my neighbor who’s son has “offers” from 3 of these schools: HYPD. And also kid has some full-ride offers from some lower D1 schools. question: kid is bi-racial; so does that mean URM? and does that affect or matter to recruiting at HYP schools? (can I ask that here?) Kid is smart and athletically talented for sure.
yeah, I think I’m gonna take that statement with a very large grain of salt.
I can’t imagine being biracial matters for recruiting *. The A #1 thing that matters for recruiting is athletic talent. Above pretty much all else. Next would be whether the athlete can be admitted. Would being an URM help with the admissions decision/preread? Probably (is my educated guess).
- the only exception to "talent rules all* might be if a kids with an extraordinarily high AI is recruited partially for that AI.
https://ivyleague.com/sports/2017/7/28/information-psa-index.aspx
An Ivy League USP is that the 8 do not provide athletic (or merit) scholarships. They are not going to play the semantics game of not giving athletic scholarships but will wink-wink match/evaluate/recalculate/negotiate/pick a verb based on another college’s non-need-based aid. Anyone can feel free to believe whatever conspiracy theory they want, but believing does not make it true.