Too many AD's, HC's and knowledgeable sports media saying it. Even Vandy's own website supports it. It is no "internet myth".
With their Operation Vanderbilt program they instituted, since 2009 they now meet any and all aid, not with loans...but with scholarships and grants that never have to be repaid. They offer this to every student, athlete or not.
Do your research and you will find there is a distinction between most private schools and those with huge endowments that are willing to use it to get what some call, "free players" at Vandy. Vandy is known as the #1 user of this loophole.
Here's a good article by respected sports journalist Dan Collins of the Winston-Salem Journal, where he interviewed the Wake Forest AD about this very subject:
http://www.journalnow.com/college-b...cle_20fdcfe8-db67-5875-80d5-3e5c6013f51f.html
Couple of interesting tidbits:
"If no private schools ever flourished in baseball, the NCAA might feel compelled to take action. But Vanderbilt, TCU, Rice and Stanford have fielded programs that have thrived in recent seasons; in fact, Vanderbilt happens to be the defending national champion. Meanwhile, Georgia Tech, also a private institution, has won two of the past four ACC titles.
The explanation is that all of those schools spend more on academic or need-based scholarships for baseball, at least partly because they can."
""There's a direct correlation to endowment and size of packages, and academic scholarships."
Vanderbilt's endowment of $4 billion is only part of the story. What has helped Tim Corbin coach the Commodores into the elite circle of baseball programs has been how willing the school has been to spend money on academic and need-based scholarships and the programs, frameworks and considerations it has established to do so."
