Athletic scholarships in Canada

Hi Leah,

There are 2 components to your question: student athletes in general and squash players specifically. I had a longer response written about student athletes in general until I realized that unfortunately, the news isn’t great for squash players.

I did some looking around, and as recently as fall 2009 there is only one university (George Washington University) offering a squash scholarship, and it’s a modest one at that. (Here’s an excellent article from Sept. 2009 re: international squash applicants to US colleges: http://smithcollegesquash.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/smith-college-welcomes-international-squash-student-athletes/) Smith College (who wrote that article) seems like they have a strong focus on squash (albeit no scholarship), so it might be worth contacting them anyway if your son is a top player. Sometimes schools can guide you towards unconventional sources of funding if they want to recruit you.

Links of interest regarding the state of affairs in Canada:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletic_scholarship#Canada states that CIS members don’t actually provide *entrance* scholarships to athletes – money comes in the second year. (Which actually works out fine for your academic, if not financial, situation because your unschooling won’t matter because your son would already be enrolled in a university by the time you’re eligible for assistance.) But it does raise a good point: not every scholarship is an *entrance* scholarship; often there is money to be found, but it might come at various points of the university education.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Interuniversity_Sport#Athletic_funding states:

“The CIS member institutions do not offer athletic scholarships; although, universities do provide partial athletic awards, as well as academic scholarships and needs-based grants for athletes who have to forgo part-time employment to participate. In a CIS study for the 2002-2003 academic year, across all sports, the average award per student athlete was $522.00 for men and $311.00 for women. The highest average was for male ice hockey players, getting $1,108.00 annually,

Increasingly, CIS schools are offering booster-support programs, where alumni, parents and/or corporations can donate money to a targeted fund especially designed to off-set a student-athlete’s tuition and living costs.”

One squash specific resource is here (scroll down a little bit) http://www.squashontario.com/just_juniors/index.asp – you may already be familiar with the Quest For Gold program.

So, in a nutshell, squash is not a sport you’re likely to get funding for the way things stand right now. But, if you can find schools who are serious about squash, then maybe they will help you navigate the financial waters and let you know if there are any non-athletic scholarships they can offer you, and what you would need to do to satisfy those criteria.

Sorry it’s not better news, but I hope that gives you some answers.

So I guess my research stopped short at that specific attendance requirement! Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari managed to pull it off for a few years though . . .

“If I understand correctly . . . We would be best to check out the entrance requirements first and foremost.”

This was the original response I had regarding student athletes in general. In a nutshell, athletic-based scholarships tend to be awarded based on athletic criteria and contain a clause requiring a certain level of academic proficiency. Generally speaking, the academic component wouldn’t be over and above whatever is required for admission; the potential problem is that the academic component of the scholarship is defined more traditionally than the academic component of the admissions policy.

In Canada, though, the lack of an entrance scholarship would mean that the academic component would be based on university performance, not high school performance. Unschooling throughout high school shouldn’t matter.

In the US, this academic component of an entrance scholarship is often defined by an SAT/ACT score. These are tests that are easily accessible to Canadian student athletes, and require preparation for the tests themselves, but do not require enrollment in a high school.

US schools are also different in that they actively recruit student athletes (so they are used to guiding students through the academic hoops) and in that they are much more used to homeschooled applicants (so admission policies tend to be more flexible).