Maybe one of their horses won a ribbon in a conformation or breeding class where looks are considered? 
OP, I just want to point out that some of the people posting on this thread and sharing wisdom with you are extremely knowledgeable and experienced people within the h/j industry.
I remember what it feels like to be young and ambitious and eager to spread my wings, so I have a lot of empathy for your situation.
I think what many of us are trying to convey is that riding is, as another poster put it, a “Pay to Play” sport. This is true NOT just for the amateurs, but also for many professionals. Many of the successful professional riders you see out there are bankrolled by behind the scenes wealth (typically family money or a wealthy spouse). Yes, these pros have paying customers, but those customers do not bring in enough income for a trainer to pay for their own horses or their own showing. Being a professional horse trainer often does not even bring in enough money to pay for basics like health insurance or retirement savings.
Any “working student” or “intern” you see out showing and winning is not having their horses and show fees provided by the person they are working for. That’s just not how the world works. Those students and interns are paying their own way with money from somewhere else. If you get one of these internships or student positions, most likely you would still end up paying your own expenses, in some cases paying quite a bit to the person you are “working for” because horses are so expensive and the value of their services is so much more than yours.
I think you there could be good academic reasons to go to a private high school, and in that instance, if your family can afford it, I think it is reasonable. But it would be very naive to rely on a lease fee for your horse to pay that $50,000 per year. Your horse could go lame tomorrow, or the day before the lease started. As others have mentioned, it’s very difficult to lease a show horse out of your back yard, especially a a horse that has only been showing 3x per year. You would need to get the horse moved to a barn and get it in a program, and then cross your fingers that you are able to find a person interested in leasing (there are some timing issues as others have pointed out). There are commissions that will need to be paid, and there is risk that the horse will not stay sound. There’s risk that the person leasing the horse would break the lease and dump the horse back on you and you’d be stuck with vet bills and rehab. It’s unwise to count on income from the sale or lease of a horse.
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I was thinking about this thread last night and it occurred to me that I am not sure why there is such a fixation on “D1” athletic programs. It seems to me that although the upper echelon of college athletics could certainly be a draw for athletes who are gunning for pro teams like MLB,. NFL, NBA, WBNA, etc., I can’t wrap my mind around why someone in a sport like equestrian would be so adamant about attending a D1 school. Do BNTs in the equestrian world really consider a college’s athletic rating when they are looking to hire working students or apprentice trainers?
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That’s where scholarships are offered
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OP said she wanted to got to TAMU and ride on the team, so that’s where the focus went. TAMU and similar D1 schools that recruit and pay out scholarships for equestrian teams.
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Ah, I see. Thanks!
Just out of curiosity - does anyone know offhand how many D1 schools offer Equestrian scholarships? Are there a lot of them? And I assume they are offered primarily for females only to meet Title X mandates - is that correct?
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If anything, it’s the opposite.
Most kids probably need the BNT to get into the D1 school in the first place.
I’ve seen D1 shows the week after the Maclay final where most of the kids on both teams were either ribbon winners or solid contenders at the Maclay.
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This… but for men’s sports, almost all of the scholarship money is in football and basketball. For women’s sports, basketball also involves lots of scholarship money.
For smaller sports like riding, there is minimal scholarship money, or it gets split between multiple team members.
I know with lacrosse (both men’s and women’s), the key thing is that people focus on is how the sport results in an admissions “side door” for some kids. Recruited athletes can have much less competitive academic profiles, and still get in to great schools. This is true for most of the Ivy League, many NESCAC schools, and other very competitive & prestigious schools like UVA and Duke. I have no idea if the whole admissions side door thing applies to any of the major riding teams though… but it definitely does for other sports. And that is why some wealthy parents spend huge amounts of money on their kid’s youth sports pursuits… it does help some of these kids get a leg up in the competitive college admissions arena.
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For D1 schools, there are very strict rules on how scholarship money is distributed between men’s and women’s sports. Another thing to consider… the major scholarship money tends to go to the sports that actually generate revenue for the schools in terms of ticket sales and merchandise. For men’s sports, that definitely means college football and basketball. For women’s sports, basketball can be a big deal as well. And… I know for a fact there is more scholarship $$$$ available for Div 1 women’s lacrosse than Div 1 men’s lacrosse. But… there are very very few full athletic scholarships awarded for that sport… period. It’s mostly partial awards.
Again… it’s just a guess… but I would assume that there are not many full scholarships offered for athletes on Div 1 riding teams. In general, these programs help Div 1 schools with pretty specific men’s sports programs balance out their total athletic programs so that they satisfy Title IX requirements.
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I know of at least one person who got a full scholarship. But she won an equitation final first.
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Interesting. Well, good for her 
Here is a link to an Associated Press report on the whole admission’s side door issue, from back in 2019 when the Varsity Blues Scandal was in the news. I thought I would share it to the thread for people who don’t have college bound kids and aren’t necessarily on top of all this stuff and the implications.
Private and public schools with even the most rigorous academic entry standards allow leeway for student-athletes to keep their teams competitive. Coaches provide school admissions officers, often through the athletic compliance department, with lists of “designated recruits,” even in cases where they might only receive a partial scholarship or limited financial aid. In most of the sports involved in this case, few athletes receive full scholarships.
It’s those “designated recruit” lists that opened a pathway into school for students who would never compete.”
…
The Ivy League does not give athletic scholarships, but student-athletes are given preferential treatment when it comes to admission and financial aid, said Ed Boland, a former assistant director of admissions at Yale and expert on college access.
There are what we called ‘hooked’ students and ‘unhooked’ students,” he said. “Hooked students have some kind of advantage, either from an underrepresented geographic area, a recruited athlete, son or daughter of an alumus or alumna or an underrepresented ethnic group. Athletes certainly enjoy preferential treatment in the admissions process.”
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Equitation scholarships might work for those at the top of the junior game, but in order to be at the top the family needs to be so rich that they could already afford college. There might indeed be a back door entry for these very wealthy girls.
I think that for various middle class dreamers, who aren’t in the pipeline to be top juniors through skill, talent, location, or cash, the equestrian scholarship fantasy is based on a misconception.
Everyone knows about the power of athletic scholarships in the big men’s sports. A football or basketball scholarship gets you a full ride, extra help, and a back door. It also puts you in the running to earn a spot on a pro team, be one of the best in the world, and retire rich. It is the pipeline to being a pro athlete.
Teen girls sometimes seem to extrapolate that it must work that way in horses too. I will go to university, study equestrian management, ride on the college team, and then hopefully get recruited onto a “pro team”. Or situation. And then I will be wealthy and able to do what I want.
But it doesn’t work that way for horses. College teams and equestrian management programs are a detour away from being a pro. Indeed I’ve read many threads here on COTH saying such programs don’t turn out skilled employees and the jobs they qualify for are entry level grooms who could get the job with no education. And the IHA doesn’t ladder into USEF in a meaningful way.
I think it’s wonderful there is any equestrian stuff on campus, there was nothing around me when I was an undergrad. I do think that both boarding school and college equestrian programs in the US tend towards being a very nice perk for wealthy girls who will be adult amateur riders, which is wonderful. But it is not a pipeline to being a pro.
The horse business is structured around self employment and small business. There are no teams, except temporarily for specific competitions. There is virtually no audience and no ticket sales. There is also no credentialing, you make your way based on the skills you can demonstrate. It runs very much on levels of formal and informal apprenticeship and paying your own way. It’s also a segment of the agriculture industry and shares many of the low wage and harsh working conditions of agriculture, as well as many of the skills. A barn manager is ahead of the game if they can use a tractor, repair fences, fix drainage, and maybe even grow their own hay.
Most horse pros spend much less of their barn time riding their own horses than the average ammie. If you are a coach, trainer or barn manager, most of your time is spent facilitating the success of your clients. You will take your kiddie students to cross poles on Saturday,.not your own jumper to a 3 foot 3 course an hour in the other direction. You will pack in fee paying lessons and have no time to school that jumper anyhow. You will ride client’s cranky horses and sort them out without making them too reactive rather than your own lovely young jumper. You will lose your own riding time to any number of barn emergencies, vet calls, hay deliveries, farrier visits or maintenance jobs. You will fill in feeding or cleaning if your low wage employees flake out of can’t get to work because of snow or hurricane. Etc
The exception is the pros who have the family cash, the connections, and the sponsorships to ride at the top levels and just do clinics and coaching with their names. But even there we dint know how they spend their days.
Teens seem to imagine that being a pro rider is just like being a junior but with more horses and getting paid for it. That’s not how it works.
Also, anyone with a strong work ethic can get the skills to become a pro at some level (groom, colt starter, lesson barn manager, instructor of beginners etc). But unless you are already super well funded and in the big leagues as a junior you are very unlikely to emerge at 25 as “the youngest rider on the Pan Am team” or whatever form the fantasy of being pro takes.
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Some of the biggies are: SMU, Auburn, TCU, Texas A&M, Oklahoma State, Georgia, South Carolina, and Baylor. Go to most of the tippy top juniors’ public instagram accounts and you’ll see one of these universities or too often (I’d argue) an ivy league school, depending on which route the’ve CHOSEN. Either route is about opportunities!
This is a great point. When you add up the costs incurred to get the experience to be a contender for an NCAA riding scholarship in the equitation, it is likely higher than the cost of college tuition itself.
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Realistically, scholarships are probably the most helpful to the people who are the offspring of trainers. Those kids might ride a million different horses and develop that skill set, especially for getting on strange horses and making it work, which is extremely useful for the college show format.
Depending on who their parents are, it might make a big difference on whether they can afford a college education.
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You did a really good job of articulating in your post what I was trying to say.
Div 1 football scholarships and the path to the NFL and a pro career is a very different thing than the Div 1 equestrian programs, and the path people typically take to be a well qualified equestrian professional.
And that’s ok. It doesn’t mean one or the other is better … it’s just really different.
I definitely think many people and parents get very confused about Div 1 sports, and the availability of significant scholarship money. From everything I have been told by a family member who was a Div 1 athlete, is a high s hook coach, and has friends who are Div 1 college coaches… when it comes down to it, there really are only a few sports where there is significant scholarship money available to students.
However, college athletics do indeed frequently translate to admissions advantages, financial aid advantages, and can be a source of significant pride for the athletes and their families, and result in lifelong friendships and memories.
The main thing I object to is how hard I see some parents pushing kids from ages 8-15 in hopes of some sort of college athletic dream. There are a lot of distorted perceptions about how likely this is. And many kids get pushed way too far, and really discouraged. And that’s unfortunate. Sports should be healthy and a source of self esteem for kids.
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That’s an interesting angle and a different take on it, it definitely makes a lot of sense too.
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But it costs soooo much money to get into a D1 program with travel teams etc. who cares if you get a scholarship? And as said below equestrians aren’t getting full rides on a D1 team.
ETA: I see this was mentioned above, but it’s often about getting into a school you might not have with academics on their own.
I was shocked when I did purchasing for a Div 1 hockey program that the vast majority of students paid for their own equipment, except goalies who at least one had to be outfitted in the sponsors equipment. Sticks were available but the 1k skates etc. were only for your starting forwards basically. everyone else footed their own bill.
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our oldest son was offered a full ride to Oklahoma State, they combined an academic and equestrian scholarship that would have been a fully funded scholarship
He did not accept as he took a position in the IT department of Southland Corporation as he had gotten advanced Microsoft certifications even while in high school
honestly I’m shocked that a male was given that. Since as mentioned above it’s usually women only to help with title IX.
And ok, one equestrian has gotten a partial ride with the rest being academic. I certainly do not think it is happening en mass for anything but the money making sports.
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