(03-18-2019 02:39 PM)illiniowl Wrote:  A baseball player (or any player in a sport not required to give full scholarships) whose family makes <$65K will get a complete free ride under the Investment. But that was basically the case before the Investment as well. Rice has been a "meets 100% of family need" school for many years now, and families in that range have expected contributions basically near zero.

Prior to the Investment, there was high tuition and massive grants and scholarships. Years ago the grant/scholarship pool was roughly 50% of the tuition pool (defined as students x nominal tuition). Don't know what it's been recently. Students from low income families got 100%, high income 0%. It gave the administration lots of discretion, which is not necessarily a good thing.

The problem for equivalency sports as I understood it, was need-based money counted against the 11.7. Under the Investment, the tuition benefit to low income families doesn't count against 11.7. A stud pitcher from a family making $50K is a walkon so far as baseball is concerned. Rick Mello told me the change eliminates any disadvantage we had based on tuition.

I would argue that while that at its heart it's an accounting change, it really is transformational for equivalency sports and for the University as a whole. Leebron's alumni letter received today cites a 39% increase in early decision applications and 30% in applications overall. That selectivity in itself is probably worth a couple of places in USNews rankings.

Edit: Another possible effect - I think the numbers used to value athletic scholarships in calculating Rice's subsidy to athletics used the full nominal tuition. If they use actual numbers, the subsidy goes down. Again, an accounting trick, but I'm OK with it.