<p>What does a "full ride" mean? How do i negotiate the contract?</p>
<p>First, one should determine if indeed there are “full rides” also known as “full scholarships” available in a particular sport at a particular college. D3 schools do not offer athletic scholarships. D1 schools may or may not, depending on sport. Villanova, for example, is a D1 school with athletic scholarships for basketball, but not for lacrosse. </p>
<p>Even a D1 school with a fully funded lacrosse program can only offer 12.6 full scholarship equivalents. Since they carry 40+ guys on the team, the dollars are quite spread around.</p>
<p>A full ride (available in some sports at DI and DII schools) is tuition, room and board and books. Assuming that there is no problem with admissions, the coach decides on scholarship offers, distributing the money based on how much he wants you and how much scholarship money he has available for the team as a whole. Negotiations would start only after he has made it clear that he wants you.</p>
<p>You need to get a good picture of the opportunities in your sport at the colleges and where you fit. There are specific websites that address this. You need to talk to your coach if you are interested in this. There are often camps and events where recruits have the best chances of being noticed. It really differs from sport to sport.
The most desired athletes generally are known to many of the college coaches and they are already getting letters and inquiries on an informal basis. Though there are NCAA rules , which you should know thoroughly, about early contact, it seems to me that there is much going around those rules from the lists of verbal committments I am seeing in many sports as early as sophomore, junior year. </p>
<p>For D3 athletes (these schools do not give money, but can give extra consideration for admisisions), you may need to contact the coach. There are on line forms for college sports sites where you can let the coaches at a given college know you are interested in their program. You should look at rosters at colleges that interest you to see where you could fit. </p>
<p>There are those athletes who are actively recruited and those who need to ask to be recruited. Far more are in the latter category, and many are not going to get money. You need to learn the rules and the field well, if you are in the second category, because it is doubtful anyone is going to sit down and explain them to you. You gotta go out and get your opportunities. Look at your library or bookstores or your highschool GC’s book collection for books on athletic scholarships and recruiting.</p>
<p>It depends on both the sport and the NCAA rules. Look up NCAA.org and find your sport and the schools that sponsor that sport. Gender is also an issue. for guys, the revenue sports (Basketball, football) at Division I schools are nearly always a free ride (tuition, books, room & board). If you are talented enough to be getting one of these, you probably know it by the way recruiting is going by the end of your sophomore year in high school. That means if a team gets 13 scholarships, those 13 scholarships go to 13 athletes. For non-revenue sports (water polo, volleyball), there are a usually a limited number of scholarships (say 12, for this example) spread around a larger number of athletes (say 24). So, instead of 12 guys getting a full ride, 24 (or 36 or 48) team members split up the equivalent of those 12 scholarships. So, either 24 get a half scholarship each or some variation thereof. Due to the large number of male revenue sports (about 75 to 100 full rides to males in football and BB each year) and Title Nine (which requires institutions receiving federal money to equalize their spending between men and women), women in non-revenue sports are more likely to get a full scholarship than males. One thing I know, either a coach wants you or he doesn’t, so if you are the kind of recruit who is elite, then you will know it and the offers will be forthcoming. If you are a lesser recruit, you have no negotiating power at all so the point is moot. Parents do not usually negotiate the amount of grant in aid that athletes receive. Coaches offer, keeping ncaa regulations in mind, and recruits accept or decline said offers. I agree with the cptofthehouse that some recruits need to ask to be recruited. it never hurts to ask!</p>