Last year, the Division III Financial Aid Committee reviewed financial aid reports from 60 schools — including 48 institutions that were required to submit justification why aid to student-athletes exceeded aid awarded to the general student body who demonstrated similar financial need by more than 4 percent.

While reviewing those justifications, committee members were struck by a realization that admissions offices are more integrally involved in granting aid — particularly merit awards — than anticipated.

In some cases, schools using a scoring system for admission also used those ratings, which often count athletics participation among other extracurricular activities, in deciding how much aid to provide to a student. In fact, there were situations where an admissions officer offered the aid instead of a financial aid administrator, and used criteria that clearly included such factors as participation in athletics or service as a team captain in determining the amount.

That realization is prompting the committee to pay more attention this year to admissions officers’ involvement in granting aid.

"I think some who are using athletics in making admissions decisions — which is certainly acceptable — are not distinguishing between that admissions decision and how they award merit aid," said Ellen Shilkret, associate director of financial aid at Vassar College and a financial aid committee member.

"Here’s the most frequent situation: Point systems are built for the admissions process, and some sort of admission matrix is used to determine admission to the school," said Dan Preston, dean of enrollment management at Linfield College and committee chair. "Team captain, athletic ability, special interest by a coach — all of those things can go into the admission matrix. If that matrix point system is used for anything other than admission — if it’s used for the determination of awarding money — somebody has to take out all of those athletics points before anybody makes an award, whether it’s a scholarship committee, admissions office or financial aid office.

"The bylaw is pretty clear," he added. "There is no restriction on using athletics ability or participation as a criterion for determining whether a student should be admitted, but that evaluation must not be used in the awarding of financial aid."

The biggest surprise for the committee was that institutions readily revealed in justifications submitted to the committee that they included athletics among other criteria in determining merit awards — indicating they simply were unaware of NCAA prohibitions against doing so.

"We saw schools who actually had it in their written (rating) policies — they had a check list," Shilkret said."

That discovery prompted the committee to include admissions officers in ongoing efforts to educate institutional personnel — also including financial aid directors and athletics administrators — about Division III financial aid legislation.

"We’re going to step up efforts to communicate with admissions offices, and make sure that whoever does the awarding at an institution knows that athletics considerations have to be removed," Preston said.

Committee representatives will offer an educational presentation at the National Association of Collegiate Admissions Counselors conference in October — much like they already have offered for such organizations as the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators and National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics.

Those sessions will suggest several areas for institutional personnel to review in ensuring that athletics criteria play no role in granting aid. One such area is a school’s reporting mechanisms.

"It’s very possible that a school’s software system has built-in admissions ranking components — which might include athletics —and queries that are run in the financial aid office to determine financial aid for admitted students or for packaging of awards may inadvertently include some of that information," Shilkret suggested. She recalled that several schools encountered that problem during pilot testing of the Division III financial aid reporting process two years ago.

Institutional personnel also should review everything from policies governing awarding of aid to publications listing criteria for awards, checking for any indication that athletics is factored into aid decisions.