Institutional Aid?

Marklaker,

Getting merit or institutional aid at a Patriot school is tough sledding in my experience.  We went so far as to get a Financial Aid review with a Patriot school after a coach had offered.  We got more institutional aid from both Cornell and Harvard.  My son was probably in the 25-50% range on academic stats at both Ivys but in a significantly higher academic range at the Patriot.  It didn't matter.  The Patriot school couldn't match the Ivy institutional aid or the 50% athletic scholarship offer at a private D1 that he had been offered.  Possibly your son has other "hooks" that the school covets, but our Patriot League FA experience was disappointing.  

Don't forget these schools have little supply and alot of demand so sometimes they can do what they want when they want to do it.   Everybody's situation is different, so I would allow them the opportunity to work with you on a FA package if it comes to that.  It is good to be looking at these things for planning purposes, but give it chance to work.

Good luck.

Mark,

The good news is that you're doing well financially.  Maybe too well.  During my 2015's application process I've looked at the financial aid picture at 3 Patriot league schools.  All 3 claim to meet 100% of demonstrated need, give some sort of aid to 50% or more of their students, and have average packages of of $30K+, with very little of that being in the form of loans.  So yes, they are well endowed and use their money to make themselves more affordable than they seem. All have some sort of merit aid, but it's limited compared to need-based aid.  Our kid's percentiles sound similar to yours and we're not expecting to see any merit based aid.

My kid (not a player BTW but may try to walk on for track) did end up applying to 2 of these schools. It should be interesting to see what they offer financially if he's admitted.  We are in CA, and we have some anecdotal evidence to suggest that for people in our general financial bracket, similar schools will try to bring their total cost of attendance down to roughly what we would be paying for a UC, where we'll be unlikely to get much if any aid.

Fenway/JCG,

Many, many thanks for your feedback!  I'd like to pursue additional discussion, but I need to collect my thoughts so I don't come across scattershot, while also considering how to proceed without divulging too much personal information so I can keep this conversation public to aid others who may find themselves in similar circumstances.

Happy to help, though I've pretty much exhausted my knowledge at this point.  But if you check back with me around April 1st, I may know a lot more. Though I'm guessing that's too late! 

Would it be fair to assume the roster of Patriot League schools (excluding the two service academies) is composed almost exclusively of players from either “financially secure” families willing to pay near full price, or “less financially secure” families receiving substantial need based aid?  In other words, very few, if any from “financially secure” families who’re receiving significant institutional aid.  Not taking into consideration the outliers with killer standardized scores who warrant substantial merit aid.

I’m using “financially secure” as a somewhat loose term, and hoping to avoid philosophical discussion on whether it’s the responsibility of the “financially secure” to pay full price to sustain the model.

I would think that's a fair assumption but have no data to back that up.  Except for this -- some of these schools are quite small and field a large number of D1 teams.  I did a back-of-the napkin calculation at one point for Bucknell, I think, and decided that 25-30% of the students are athletes.  With that many athletes on campus it seems fair to assume that they would be treated like anybody else in terms of aid.