Not sure where to post this so I thought I'd start here.

Been wondering why Stanford kills it in equivalency scholarship sports. They always win the Director's cup and it's because of their equivalency sports. I think I finally figured out why they can do this. Putting it out there to see if someone better informed than me can confirm or dispute my conclusions. Apologize to everyone if this is common knowledge.

Stanford is a highly acclaimed place to get a degree and I think many/most student athletes who play equivalency sports would want to matriculate there if they are good enough to play there. However it's a private school and cost of attendance is high ($64.5k/yr) for everyone. So with a 50% athletic scholarship you will still owe $32k/yr and a 50% athletic scholarship is often high for equivalency sports. Wealthy families can afford this but most athletes and their families don't have the financial means or want to take on that much debt to attend Stanford versus an in state school that offers a 50% scholarship too.

However - Stanford has a very generous financial aid program supported by their endowment. If your family "only" makes $120k/year gross they will provide $52k/yr in scholarship money towards your education. That leaves $12.5k for you to cover and because the endowment scholarship money is offered to everyone you can also add athletic scholarship money to it. So if an athlete can get a 20% athletic scholarship for their sport they are going to Stanford at no cost. That really opens up the athletes that can afford to attend Stanford for an equivalency sport.

Let's assume the above athlete lives in Virginia and is a highly recruited baseball player. UVA and VT offer 50% scholarships and Stanford offers 20%. It will be cheaper for the athlete to go to Stanford than to UVA or VT to play baseball.

Does that sound right? One reason I bring this up is I know Duke is determined to become the "Stanford" of the East. Many of their equivalency sports weren't fully funded but now are. Add in the fact that they just raised $3.85 billion over the past 7 years and have a $6.6B endowment (Stanford's is $22B which allows them to be generous in their scholarships) and Duke might become an eastern power in equivalency sports in the near future.