I have a question which I hope one of our Ivy-knowledgable folks can help with. It has always been my impression that, although the Ivies don't give "athletic" scholarships, that doesn't mean that a first-rate hockey player (or computer scientist or violinist) is treated the same as an "average" student when financial aid is doled out. At least I know that at St. Lawrence in the days of no "grants-in-aids" we still determined a level of financial need for each student (by some mysterious but well established formula), but then had some flexibility in how that need was met. So that a student with a great slap shot (or 1600 SAT's) might have more of their need met with scholarship dollars, while a more "average" student may be funded through loans or work study. Is that the way the Ivies work their financial aid? In which case we shouldn't assume that every member of an Ivy hockey team is paying full tuition (or getting no benefit from their hockey talents). I know that even as SLU has moved to grants-in-aid, the understanding was that the total dollars spent in financial aid for hockey players would not increase - just that we could consider fully funding a recuit who might not have a great deal of need. On the question of student athletes and academics, I see a strong distinction between hockey and the other "major" sports (b-ball & football). The major junior leagues offer a well-established alternative for getting to the NHL. While we might argue about whether the Juniors or College route is better hockey preparation, we shouldn't see players going to college solely as the pathway to the pros (as is often the case in other sports). Thus it would seem that we could often expect more serious academic aspirations among our college hockey players. I have found this to be particularly true with students coming to US schools from Canada. If you're a Canadian high school student and your priorities are clearly hockey first and academics a very distant second (or third, or ...), why would you ever consider coming to a US college to play hockey when you've got Major Juniors? As a bonus, many of the Canadian students come with an extra (grade 13) year of high school which sometimes yields a bit more maturity when they encounter college level courses. Robin Lock St. Lawrence University [log in to unmask] HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.