From the Chronicle of Higher Education:
The article is behind a pay wall.
I know of a highly recruited running back out of Texas who graduated from Oklahoma a few years ago with a degree and 5 year full ride football scholarship.
Coming out of HS people said he could start as RB at almost any D1 school and OU he would have to wait a few years.
What they didn’t know was OU was well known for his desire degree and his passion wasn’t football.
After graduating people played the should/could/would of game. He simply said I won! I got my dream degree, didn’t spend a dime, didn’t play in one game nor had any injury, but will have endless opportunity for work as a graduate football player from OU.
Very good read
thanks for posting it for us
Good read, thanks.
My son was told at one Div II that he was more valuable to the team for his academics than his athletic skill and that he would not receive any $$ for athletics, but after a pre-read would certainly qualify for the Presidential merit award. The merit $$ was worth more than the athletic $. The coach also tries to recruit players with good grades test scores because if his teams wins the " Team with best GPA" award in his league the coach is awarded an extra scholarship to hand out. He gets about 11 scholarships per year, and he carries a squad of over 40. Most guys get nothing or very little.
Of all of the kids my son has played lax with thru the years, I’ve only known a couple that have scholarships to a D1 school, and guess what, they’re both miserable and complain it’s like a job now.
Lots of myths that I see. One, just in terms of numbers when you look at all of the kids who play varsity sports in high school and all the kids applying to colleges and the relative small number of kids who get athletic scholarships. Two, often they are not as much as hoped in terms of the numbers of kids who get full rides (or even full tuition) on athletic scholarship. Three, what are odds that your kids athletic skills get them to a school where they want to be academically?
As has been stated by many people, pick the University Campus and the education you want, as if sports is not in the mix.
Why?
- outside of private schools and a few others the scholarship is a year to year. Can be decrease or removed all together and also can be increase the more you impact the team.
- just like any employee the coaches are looking to better their career and may leave for another school. This may happen the summer before your freshman year. The new coach may or may not want you.
- if you don’t like the setting your in, the chances for success and happiness is a long shot.
Conclusion, be true to your self and look at not only short but longterm goals. At some point dreams have to meet up with reality and when they don’t it can cause derailment of the worst kind
I just laugh when a HS parent mentions athletic scholarship. For 99.5% of the kids, the real money is in academics
^^^ ummm…what?
What doesn’t seem to be mentioned is that the student first committed to her in-state school, Virginia Tech, which has an excellent division 1 team. https://swimswam.com/virginia-tech-lands-verbal-commitment-ncaps-allison-goldblatt/ Then she changed her mind. Even if she received a de minimis scholarship at VT (which is unlikely), her cost of attendance would have been $21,000/year. So by choosing to go to UCLA on the 30% scholarship, they are paying $39,000 per year at UCLA rather than $21,000 at VT. They didn’t “save” $80,000 over 4 years, they elected to PAY an extra $72,000.
You can accept both the merit money and the athletic money, so no need to choose. The school may only offer one or the other, but CAN allow both.
I think the article showed the frustration of trying to find the right school and the right athletic situation that is affordable. My daughter’s search was frustrating because she was contacted by schools that were all so different, from the smallest D1 school there is to top academic D3 schools with pretty bad teams. Some of the coaches were tight lipped on the money, others were open about it (that there wasn’t much/any). Some schools she liked were not interested in her (she recruited late, as a senior, so most D1’s were out as they’d filled their teams when the girls were sophomores) others she had no interest in (lots of LACs in Ohio and the midwest). Many of the LACs wanted her because of her playing ability, but tried to get her by offering merit scholarships. If she wanted to stay instate and use her state scholarships, it would have to be a private school as the only public school with lax is UF, and at the time it was ranked 4th in D1 (they no interest in D at all!).
But the system seems to work. My daughter is happy. Her friends are happy with their choices, even the D1 kids who don’t see much playing time. I know lots of D1 lax kids who love playing in college, both men and women. It is a lot of work, but they love it.
It wasn’t behind a paywall when I first read the article. The following article from Forbes which comments on the Chronicle of Highest Education piece is not behind a paywall.
I didn’t read the article as Allison thinking she could/would get a scholarship. Yes, they spent a lot of time and money in high school on her sport, but that seemed to be a family activity. All the siblings swim. The brother didn’t get a scholarships so they knew it was possible that the daughter wouldn’t either. She turned down Virginia Tech because she wanted something bigger. Her parents were willing to pay full COA at the better swimming programs, but she wanted a scholarship too.
I did think it was strange that she had an ‘agent’ but didn’t consult with him very often on the negotiations or how to approach the coaches for money.
Right you are. Athletics are rewarding and meaningful. Sports teaches a commitment to lifetime fitness, leadership, team and countless intangibles. However, some parents dump a boatload of money into club and tournament teams – not to mention private training sessions and travel – all for that elusive scholarship in the sky that mostly isn’t there.
A far surer thing would be to take the money invested in athletics and use it for tutors. Academic scholarships far and away outnumber athletic scholarships. It’s something no one takes the time to think about when their kid is being recruited.
The NY Times did a series in March 2008 that talked about the expectations that some parents and kids have regarding athletic scholarships. A little dated, but I do not think things have changed that much.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/sports/10scholarships.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/sports/10scholarships.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/sports/10scholarships.html
I wish the young woman well, and I hope she is following the example of an athlete using their prowess to their advantage (see comment #2 from nitro11).
What exactly are you basing that on? According to the statistics 0.3 not 3.0 percent of students at 4 year colleges enrolled full time receive academic while 0.7 percent of same 4 year students receive athletic scholarships.In fact, according to the NCAA, 150,000 division 1 and 2 student athletes receive over 2.7 billion in scholarships…not including 180,000 division 3 student athletes that receive some form of academic grant or need-based scholarship.
Also important to understand that there are far fewer student athletes than high school students overall.
Countless sources. NPR interview with John U Bacon 11/16/16:
“Now, let’s start with some cold facts. Nationally, less than 2 percent of high school athletes will get college scholarships. That’s true at my alma mater, the University of Michigan, where only 2 percent of students receive athletic scholarships, but a whopping 70 percent receive academic scholarships. That adds up to $23 million for sports, compared to $915 million for academics - 40 times more. You don’t have to be an AP Calculus whiz to figure out where to spend your time. You want a scholarship? Forget the fields. Hit the books. It’s fool’s gold, people. But they keep selling it, and we keep buying it.”
WSJ column by Sue Shellenberger 8/18/10:
“Research by Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org, shows colleges and universities hand out more than nine times more money in academic merit scholarships than in athletic scholarship—$9.5 billion, compared with $1 billion for athletic scholarships, based on 2007-2008 data, the latest available. Some 16.9% of undergraduate students in bachelor’s degree programs received academic merit scholarships and grants, compared with only 1.4% who received athletic scholarships, he says. These numbers don’t include private-sector scholarships from sources other than colleges and universities.”
Please understand, I am a supporter of athletic recruiting. I just don’t think we should be circulating Kool-Aid. Do it because it is a passion, not to get money. If you get some money, great, just don’t do it for the money.
Totally agree with the sentiment of “do it because it’s a passion” and not because you think it’s the ticket to a free ride. When my daughter was 8 or 9, her club coach told all the parents that if we were paying club fees as an investment for an athletic scholarship pay-off, put the money in a savings account instead. Throughout our own recruiting process, the dollars we were offered as part of a merit package were much higher than any athletic money we were offered. Could that have been different if she was at the very top of the elite athlete food chain? Likely, but we’ll never know. All I know is that it was pretty consistent across the different divisions, where they told us we can offer you $xx for athletic money, and based on your grades and test scores, your merit will be $xx. Across the board, the merit was significantly higher.
When I was in college, sports illustrated published an article written by a football player at Oklahoma who was an econ major or the like. This guy did a study where he tracked the hours he spent on football related activities during one year. He then took the yearly monetary value of his scholarship (which would have been a full ride) and divided that by the number of hours. If memory serves, he was “paid” something less than minimum wage for the hours devoted to his sport. While the numbers may be slightly different now because of the ever increasing cost of college, an athletic scholarship, at least in sports which are extremely time intensive, is in no way shape or form a great economic deal.