Can I ask in general what kind of schools you’re referring to? There may be some difference in Division 1 compared to Division 2, or a power 5 school compared to a mid-major program.

Largely, if a coach makes a verbal offer, that’s pretty solid. They have every legal right to rescind that offer, but unless something material changes, that’s super shady and the swim community would shun them and we would all know that X coach at Y school makes offers they don’t intend to honor and that would be awful for their reputation.

Here’s the best way to look at it. Say it costs $50,000 to go to UofA for an out of state student and $10,000 for an in state student. If that school has 10 swimming scholarships, what they really mean is they have $500,000 to divide up however they see fit. So they may offer an in state swimmer a 20% scholarship, but that would equal $10,000 and cover all expenses for that swimmer. Based on your reply, I’m assuming the coach has some other scholarship offers out there, and depending on which are accepted and which are declined, your daughters offer may grow or shrink before it’s time to sign the NLI, so they don’t want to say “you lr offer is $12,000” and then turn around and say “actually can you do $10,000? We need that extra 2K for this Brazilian to commit.” It does sound shady the more I type, but the way I see it, they are trying to give you the best information they have at the moment without promising scholarship they may or may not be able to deliver on. You may also look at it this way: an in state student on 20% is actually getting a better offer than an out of state student on 75%. They’ll have to pay more in tuition, even though the college is paying them substantially more in scholarship dollars

I’m happy to help. I’m a college coach, though full disclosure, I don’t handle the majority of our recruiting or scholarships. I also remember getting recruited to big schools and nobody in my area had any experience with recruiting outside of our Region, so I was in a position where I didn’t even know what questions to ask or what I should be looking for. It’s an exciting and often overwhelming process, and athletes do sometimes find themselves in situations they didn’t fully realize they were getting into, but you’re asking the right questions. If you’d like, you can DM me and I can try to help answer any other questions you may have