Re: BU Recruiting Update, Part 4
Dan must be like mookie and consider families in the 200k-250k range 'middle class'
What will it cost?
Attending Harvard will only cost what your family can afford. We make sure of that.
If your family income is less than $65,000, your parents pay nothing.
For families earning between $65,000 and $150,000, the expected contribution is between zero and 10 percent of your annual income.
Families earning more than $150,000 may still qualify for financial aid.
For more than 90 percent of American and international families, Harvard costs the same or less than the U.S. public universities.
International students receive the same generous financial aid.
Dan does not have a dog in this fight. Dan was just reporting the
facts of Ivy League financial aid as expressed to him by his contemporaries (and their colleagues) who coach in the Ivy League. Dan trusts those sources over fans of rival programs. The
facts are that Ivy Leagues cannot award athletic aid - doing so would be cheating. Ivy League schools also do not award academic aid (more on this later). If people want to play the semantics game (or maybe they are being facetious) and point out that these athletes are not often paying full-boat to attend their Ivy institutions (as need-based aid is available to all Ivy students) they would be correct to do so - but they often do it in a very disingenuous manner in order to reinforce their own preconceived notions about their schools recruiting processes relative to the processes of Ivy League competitors...
Dan also does not understand Mookie's giggle about a middle class of 200-250K when none of Mookie's numbers support his joke? Dan wants to take a closer look at Mookie's numbers...
a) Two parents making less than 35K each certainly falls into the high-need category Dan referenced in his last post.
b) Families earning between 65-150K having to pay 10% of their income is likely a big deal to most after taxes, a home, a couple of cars, expenses and perhaps multiple children. Dan also thinks its a very wide range. Dan also believes this only applies to tuition. Dan also believes the opportunity to play less than 10% of their income would be VERY attractive to many of these families if they could get more aid at other strong academic institutions. Dan thinks this because he knows from experience that the first three factors in recruiting for most families are: 1) Money. 2) Money and 3) Money.
c) If one parent makes 75K and another makes 76K is that rich? Not for a big baller like Mookie certainly, but suddenly this family only 'MAY' receive financial aid. Dan believes (and has been told) that 'may' probably means not a 'significant' amount.
Dan is also confused by Mookie's last point that for 90% of families at Harvard the school will only cost around what a US public school would cost. Dan must be a poor because he thinks that sounds expensive. He went to Miami University (a public ivy!) which now costs almost 50K to attend from out of state. He's from New Hampshire where UNH is now well over 40K. Dan feels that the ability to package need-based, academic and athletic scholarships at many of these schools would make them much cheaper than what the average student pays.
Most importantly, Dan thinks this is the biggest piece of the puzzle that people miss when they want to play semantics and argue that Ivy student-athletes don't get zero assistance. Lets look closer using BC/BU as an example in relation to Harvard...
Dan googled BC cost of attendance and found that in 2016-17 BC cost over $68,000 to attend (sticker price). He's going to assume that BU is the same and assume/pretend Harvard is too. He's also going to round his numbers to make this easier and say that BC, BU and Harvard all cost $70,000. He also noticed that the average annual cost of ACTUAL ATTENDANCE in his google search for BC was around 35K. Dan was very surprised to find that students at BC and BU also qualified for need-based assistance. It made him feel as if the arguments about Harvard athletes receiving assistance was incomplete or even disingenuous.
The reality is that student-athlete A would likely receive similar need-based aid at all of these institutions - based on his family income. So lets assume that the price for BU and BC is now 50K and Harvard with their deep pockets now only costs 40K (around the same as - even less than! - the state schools listed above). I bet the family of A is now very excited, what a great chunk of money saved! They are even more excited to learn that BU and BC can knock another 15K off of the price because A is a very good student! Unfortunately, Harvard cannot do the same for A and his family. That means that all of the schools are now offering A similar deals - but BU and BC are actually 5K cheaper already, and have one more trick up their sleeve. They can offer athletic scholarships! For a 50% ride, student-athlete A can now attend either of those schools for close to no cost at all! Meanwhile, Harvard is a great school, but they are still stuck at the 40K price-tag. I have read many braggadocios posts on this board that BU and BC are great schools too, so it will be a tough decision...
Here are the choices:
Elite academic university for 40K
Great academic university for 0K
Great academic university for 0K
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In all seriousness, recruiting for non-head count sports is all about packaging ALL FORMS of aid to give a student-athlete an entire picture of the aid available to him or her at any particular school. Losing the biggest opportunity to award aid (athletic scholarships) is a HUGE factor for schools that cannot award them. To argue otherwise is either completely disingenuous or proves that one has no idea how the process works. Ivy's also lose out in their lack of ability to offer academic aid (which other schools CAN offer).
I have not seen anyone argue that Harvard and other Ivy's cannot offer aid - they can, but they can only offer need based aid (and SO CAN all other schools). Its not about Harvard not being able to offer aid, its about how much less aid they are able to offer to most of their prospective student-athletes as a result of their inability to package all forms of aid and their being forced to solely rely on one form. Additionally, since BU/BC only had to offer A a 50% ride because of the other forms of aid he received, they still have a 50% athletic aid offer to present to the next kid as part of his package. Ivy League schools are at a major disadvantage past the fact that they have strict admissions standards. Its simply the truth and its undeniable. That is why they often target kids who, as one coach put it to me, "are very rich or very poor"...
This sentiment was expressed to me when I was working at a university with an elite academic reputation and deep need-based aid pockets. We also had our full compliment of athletic scholarships and generous academic awards. We lapped Ivy League schools in recruiting all day, every day and punched up at the P5 consistently. Why? Because we had loads of money to give away in all three forms of aid, while the Ivy's only had one.
Semantics will never dismiss that advantage. The financial aid Mookie outlined above is perhaps a great equalizer for a NARP deciding between, Harvard and BC/BU/Notre Dame (or using the state school example - a place like UW or UVA). Add in the potential for 10K, 20K, 50K in athletic scholarships and the equality of the offers dissipates pretty quickly. Nothing facetious about that. Its just a financial reality...
. (Think marginal rates)
<a href="https://t.co/IX3U4YNcS2">https://t.co/IX3U4YNcS2</a> <a href="https://t.co/21WHT8vcpz">https://t.co/21WHT8vcpz</a></p>— Neutral Zone (@_Neutral_Zone) <a href="https://twitter.com/_Neutral_Zone/status/1134819896968306688?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 1, 2019</a></blockquote>
️prospect Artem Shlaine commits to BU. Highly skilled with the puck, sees the whole sheet, swift hands and playmaking ability. Earned A- at USA Nationals in April playing for Shattuck Prep. <br><br>