Roster strongly suggests Carroll is Notre Dame of the NW...

[wbtfg]

Carroll is certainly in a unique situation in recruiting athletes. There are very few catholic schools in the west that offer a football program. I don't think there are any in Idaho, Washington, Portland, Colorado...etc. (I could certainly be wrong about that).

Also, when you look at some of the top prep high school programs in those states, the catholic schools tend to be near the top.

Additionally, Carroll is a fairly strong (I wouldn't say extremely strong) academic school.

This provides MVD with a huge recruiting advantage.

You are right in saying that CC has its recruiting advantage such as facilities, etc. What you are forgetting is one distinct disadvantage.......the cost of school. The cost of roughly $26,000 per year is a deterrent to many. CC has approximately 25 scholarships to divy up between the entire roster. Starters are not typically getting more than half athletic scholarship, so it pays off for MVD to get good students who qualify for academic help as well. Ten years ago before MVD got there the roster was comprised of 40 kids, who mostly left after the season was over. 9 years later the roster is over 100 kids willing to pay top dollar to play for him. CC is not an option for a kid who can't afford to go there, so they lose some kids. I shudder to think what MVD could do recruiting wise if he could offer every kid decent money. he also has shown a penchant for finding diamonds in the rough with an obvious eye for talent.

The cost is $26k/year, but it is a private school, and pretty much everyone receives aid. I believe Carroll discounts tuition heavily, especially for "high achieving" kids.

After everything is said and done, I would doubt that the average Carroll student pays much more than the average MSU or UM in-state student.

You gotta be f*****g kidding me!! Tell you what, I'll let you pay my student loans off for me, then tell me that an in-state UM student pays as much as I do. I graduated in the top 30 out of 532 students in HS, and I got a scholarship that paid about $5000/year (Bishop's Grant). Had I played a sport and was offered a scholly for it, it would've been around $5000, maybe less depending on the sport. The catch with the Bishop's Grant is that you cannot accept it AND the athletic scholly in the same year. Why? I haven't the foggiest clue, but my lil bro got screwed by that every year. Oh, and the "aid" that you receive is in the form of Stafford Subsidized Loans. All that means is that you don't accrue interest until you're done with school...oh wait, that's also offered to in-state UM/MSU kids. We receive more money in Stafford loans, but it's all figured in percentages. So before you go spouting off about how Carroll is as affordable as UM, do just a little bit of research.

Ok my mistake...I didn't do a shred of research...I'm just going by friends of mine that went to carroll. Many of them, through academic and/or athletic money, ended up paying similar costs as they would at a state school. I thought that Carroll gave out a lot more aid than that...my bad.

Question(s): Were the student loans worth it? If you had to do it all over again, would you go to a public school, or would you go back to Carroll?
How about if you didn't play sports, is the academic quality at Carroll worth the extra $10k/year?

 

[#15 Fan]

You are right in saying that CC has its recruiting advantage such as facilities, etc. What you are forgetting is one distinct disadvantage.......the cost of school. The cost of roughly $26,000 per year is a deterrent to many. CC has approximately 25 scholarships to divy up between the entire roster. Starters are not typically getting more than half athletic scholarship, so it pays off for MVD to get good students who qualify for academic help as well. Ten years ago before MVD got there the roster was comprised of 40 kids, who mostly left after the season was over. 9 years later the roster is over 100 kids willing to pay top dollar to play for him. CC is not an option for a kid who can't afford to go there, so they lose some kids. I shudder to think what MVD could do recruiting wise if he could offer every kid decent money. he also has shown a penchant for finding diamonds in the rough with an obvious eye for talent.

The cost is $26k/year, but it is a private school, and pretty much everyone receives aid. I believe Carroll discounts tuition heavily, especially for "high achieving" kids.

After everything is said and done, I would doubt that the average Carroll student pays much more than the average MSU or UM in-state student.

You gotta be f*****g kidding me!! Tell you what, I'll let you pay my student loans off for me, then tell me that an in-state UM student pays as much as I do. I graduated in the top 30 out of 532 students in HS, and I got a scholarship that paid about $5000/year (Bishop's Grant). Had I played a sport and was offered a scholly for it, it would've been around $5000, maybe less depending on the sport. The catch with the Bishop's Grant is that you cannot accept it AND the athletic scholly in the same year. Why? I haven't the foggiest clue, but my lil bro got screwed by that every year. Oh, and the "aid" that you receive is in the form of Stafford Subsidized Loans. All that means is that you don't accrue interest until you're done with school...oh wait, that's also offered to in-state UM/MSU kids. We receive more money in Stafford loans, but it's all figured in percentages. So before you go spouting off about how Carroll is as affordable as UM, do just a little bit of research.

Ok my mistake...I didn't do a shred of research...I'm just going by friends of mine that went to carroll. Many of them, through academic and/or athletic money, ended up paying similar costs as they would at a state school. I thought that Carroll gave out a lot more aid than that...my bad.

Question(s): Were the student loans worth it? If you had to do it all over again, would you go to a public school, or would you go back to Carroll?
How about if you didn't play sports, is the academic quality at Carroll worth the extra $10k/year?

If your friends got scholarship money and didn't pay much, it was because of athletic/academic schollies PLUS extra schollies from private donors, etc. That was one thing I didn't do, I didn't go after a lot of schollies my jr. and sr. years of high school.
Unless you are a minority, or are getting multiple schollies from different people/organizations (not all just from Carroll), then you're gonna end up paying $15000 or more every year.

I wouldn't trade my 4 years at Carroll for ANYTHING. The academics at Carroll are hands down better than any state school. The classes were rarely over 30 people (excluding your general bio, chem, psych, etc classes). Every professor knew you by name, even if you only took 1 class from them. I really enjoyed the fact that the school was smaller, everyone kind of knew everyone. I was involved in things more than other students, so I'm sure others have a different point of view, but academically it was worth every dollar I'll end up paying back. And, everyone I know always bitches about their loans, whether they pay $100/month or $500/month. Also, I never did play sports at Carroll, not sure why you thought I did.

 

[dirtysaint]

When VD took over the program we did have about 40 guys, but that was during winter ball. VD has incrementally increased the size of the team to now basically include an entire red-shirt class. That's amazing to me because I remember my Froshy year when our QB went down and they had to get Brian Mellen, our senior FS, to play QB, which he hadn't played since high school.

I got out of Carroll owing less money than my sister did graduating from UM. Besides, many of the people I know that went to Carroll with me aren't paying their loans anyway. Mommy and Daddy wrote the check.

 

[loyalgriz]

When VD took over the program we did have about 40 guys, but that was during winter ball. VD has incrementally increased the size of the team to now basically include an entire red-shirt class. That's amazing to me because I remember my Froshy year when our QB went down and they had to get Brian Mellen, our senior FS, to play QB, which he hadn't played since high school.

I got out of Carroll owing less money than my sister did graduating from UM. Besides, many of the people I know that went to Carroll with me aren't paying their loans anyway. Mommy and Daddy wrote the check.

Mellen took more hits than Cheech and Chong.

As for Carroll being stronger academically, I think it depends on what you majored in. Not all aspects are better, although the class size is an advantage.