So very much to agree with there!willowglen wrote: ↑Mon Apr 25, 2022 6:40 pmMy circumstance was in 1980. But having sent kids to Princeton and Duke, they expect kids with parents with upper middle class incomes to pay, even if a parent is bad news. One never knows, but a place like JHU may today be more flexible - I was a 4:05 miler in high school with a 1500 SAT - I never thought I was all that great but I could see a great Division 3 school like JHU being more flexible than the Ivies. My mother was dick, poor and homeless for a while. I liked Baltimore. When I was 14 the most well known sports doctor in the nation, Dr Gabe Mirkin, sponsored a national age group meet (paid for my expenses) which I won at Towson’s then mediocre track. I am from the Midwest, and found JHU much like Chicago’s best asset - the University of Chicago. Dr Mirkin made sure to mention JHU.MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 24, 2022 9:05 pmhmmm, that would be a pretty darn rare circumstance, but thanks for explaining it...would that have been recent? I suspect that (if a kid was mature enough to actually make the pitch), these days the Ivies (or Hopkins) would have understood the situation and made the financial, need based aid work. Not necessary for an athletic schollie...but of course, extremely few full rides go out anyway through the athletic route...much more likely to get substantial aid through need based. Bloomberg's dough has made Hopkins competitive in this way with the Ivies.willowglen wrote: ↑Sun Apr 24, 2022 7:23 pm There are circumstances where athletic scholarships help over the Ivies. . My father was well off and there was no way I was qualified for aid at Princeton, my first choice. He was an incredibly abusive guy so I was not particularly bothered by his complete abandonment of the family. My mother was in ill health and hospitaized. I was a good student and ranked in the top 5 in the nation, so yes an athletic scholarship at Duke was very welcome. I wanted to look seriously at D 3 and Hopkins and Williams were serious options. With high poverty and stress I believed I could win NCAA at D3 without the full time job of being a professional athlete. Again, no way to get aid unless I lived on my own for several years. Not something I had the maturity to do.
Hopkins is just as good if not more attractive academically than half of the Ivy League. And there is no difference between Duke and JHU - all comes down to fit. I was a poor abused geek,, so Duke had its challenges socially but I could not be choosy. Look at sport like women 's XC, where Hopkins has 7 recent titles. Those women are choosing Hopkins over Williams, Amherst and Bowdoin. And they make this choice even though JHU like most city schools is not an ideal running environment. It makes sense to me, though. I am not sure I understand the attraction of Maryland though. For a good student athlete, JHU makes so much more sense.
I don’t like the prejudice against athletes at select schools. I felt it at Duke, and I believed I could hold my own academically with anyone. My brother, an All American at UNC and Phi Beta Kappa in math, felt the same way. I went on to one of the best law schools in the nation and finished at the absolute top of the class. There again was some bias against me by my fellow wonky law reviewers but they had little concept of the notion that no matter our test scores that dedicated athletes were very very good at time management- a skill that can take you far. Plus, especially in a sport like lacrosse- a sense of keen urgency obtains. I would put a positive gloss on any dedicated JHU lacrosse athlete.
I laugh at the girls in sweat pants snarky comments about the JHU women. Us dorky track athletes back in the day would have been in heaven to have women like this as friends, and would have felt privileged around them, sweat pants or not.
Lacrosse requires toughness and a proper sense of physical dominance, This is not incompatible with being a great student, and for me I hope JHU can rise sgdin.
I think you'd find the financial aid folks today much more tuned into the kind of serious issue you describe. You're definitely correct that those who are well off are gonna have to pay, but what you seemed to describe was an abusive situation in which dad was absent and unwilling...and mom sick and unable... That said, very hard for a kid to navigate such on their own. Need a really 'with it' guidance counselor or adult friend with some connections. But the financial aid departments would very likely be open to that application. They have the dough and don't want any kid that has been admitted to not be able to attend because of cost differential...zero to do with whether an athlete, though, simply admitted. The athlete part helps in admission of course.
Hopkins is very close to Ivy level financial aid now, similarly tough admission #'s to the bottom half of Ivies, and similarly supportive if an athlete...the D1 part is even more so, both with admissions and direct athletic aid of course.
On the prejudice part, I had a couple of jerk profs at Dartmouth, but most weren't at all, indeed some were big fans, and I'm sure you can find such at many colleges, my son certainly felt a separation between athletes and non-athletes at Harvard, though with such a large athlete contingent at both our Ivies, it really made no difference given the size of friend base...and lots of non-athletes were nevertheless social and very interesting in their own rights. There's a bit of an assumption that maybe an athlete isn't as smart (similar to assumptions about legacies, certain minorities, etc) but once you're actually engaged on a topic, that goes away on the merits usually...totally agree on time management...
