The NCAA sets a limit on the numbers of scholarships for each sport. However, some schools offer a smaller number, or no scholarships at all. Is there a way, short of calling every college coach, of finding out how many scholarships are awarded? I know that the scholarships are split on most sports, but I want to know if there is a way to see if a coach is slicing up 3 scholarships or 10.
This is a really good question. As you can probably tell, that information is not public, and you would have to ask each coach specifically. I wanted to know that also when we were in recruiting mode! What sport(s) are you looking at? If you provide a list of schools and the sport, you may get a pretty good hit rate here on College Confidential.
Some conferences have rules on minimum funding levels, you might be able to find some information that way. In addition, there are third party sites (scholarshipstats.com is one) that purport to break down funding by school, but I don’t know how accurate it is.
I’ve looked and can’t find it unless the sport is fully funded. U of Texas website says that all NCAA sports they sponsor are fully funded for scholarships. A few sports (baseball) have minimums for scholarship athletes, so if you get a scholarship, it is at least the required minimum. As long as they are meeting Title IX rules, I think it is allowed to fully fund golf and only partially fund tennis, or give every sport the same number of scholarships (as long as the NCAA allows that number) no matter how many players are on the team. Our AD is the rowing coach - do we think rowing is fully funded? Yes, we do!
I know our coach says she is not fully funded, but never told us how much she has to divide. I also believe her amount is a set dollar figure and not exactly aligned with the COA, so doesn’t go up every year like tuition, room, board, and books do. (They get $XX, not 25% of a full scholarship.) You’d have to do some math if you asked and a coach said he has $500k to give out - how many on team, how much is tuition/r&b, do some get a lot more than others?Our men’s team. Our men’s team may have the same number of scholarships (or amount) but they have twice as many players so each player gets a lot less (my daughter’s boyfriend gets about 1/3 what she gets as a scholarship).
I think if you ask when on recruiting trips the coaches will not tell you unless they are fully funded (“we have 10 scholarships to award”). They will want to focus on what they can award you, a dollar amount or a % of billed costs. I did have one coach tell us that she doesn’t give scholarships to freshmen. I’m not sure I believed her, but she recruits a good number of players every year to a school with a so-so reputation in a run down tiny town, so she must know what she’s doing. Much of the sales pitch relies on big merit awards from the school and getting money in later years. I couldn’t figure out how we would pay for the first year so it didn’t work for us.
I was hoping it was somewhere out there, but it sounds like that’s tough information to get. Other than the obvious things like Alabama football is fully funded.
I’m looking at wrestling, and it’s very preliminary (sophomore) so i don’t have a great list put together. Anyone know about wrestling at the following schools:
Northwestern (assuming fully funded since Big 10 but not sure)
Virginia
North Carolina
Duke
Lehigh
Davidson
Colorado School of Mines
Most of the others on his list I assume are fully funded (most of Big 10) or are not funded at all (Ivy, DIII). These are ones I don’t know about. Thanks for any help anyone has.
I have no knowledge or wrestling specifically but would suggest that just because a school is a Power 5 conference member does not necessarily mean all sports are fully funded. Your assumption on Northwestern could well be correct, but I wouldn’t automatically make assumptions. I do agree very much with the premise that the lack of readily available information on scholarship availability per sport can be very frustrating. I guess ultimately it doesn’t matter how much they have for the program, the question is how much do they have for you.
I agree that just because a school is in the B1G doesn’t mean it is fully funded. I think the only rule is that any scholarship be offered for 4 years, and that the rules about getting to finish if you complete at least 2 years of the commitment (conference rules).
I bet your wrestling community knows more about the college situation than any of us. They can tell by where the kids are going, who has been recruiting, etc. I know two kids from a pretty good high school went to Duke two years ago, so I’d guess Duke is pretty strong (and funded). Or you could send an email to the B1G office and casually ask “Hey, I have a sophomore and we’re starting to look at programs. How many scholarships are available in the B1G?”
Agree with @twoinanddone about checking within the local wrestling community if you have several guys going on to college. As you know, wrestlers are a pretty tight bunch, and hopefully you can find some insight from local parents who have been down the same path. Personally, I know a fair few kids who went on to wrestle at Northwestern, and I would assume they are fully funded or close to it. I would think Virginia and Lehigh are also funding wrestling at a good rate, just based on the programs and the kids I know who were recruited there. Not sure about Duke or NC or Colorado School of Mines for that matter. I would be surprised if Davidson funds wrestling much if at all, but do not know.
http://www.scholarshipstats.com/wrestling.html
Here is a chart. It doesn’t show how many wrestling scholarships each school awards but it does show the number of wrestlers on the squad and even assuming the team is fully funded, those 9.9 (or 9 for D2) scholarships might be sliced pretty thin.
It does give the average scholarship awarded to athletes at the school, but that is to all athletes. If there are football and basketball teams, the athlete sharing a scholarship with 6 teammates isn’t going to come close to ‘average.’
I agree it is sport by sport. Duke’s women’s swimming program became fully funded just 2 years ago - and has since brought on a lot of great recruits. The men’s team though, as I understand it, is not funded at all (and not too much merit $$ is available).