^^^ While that is true you have to keep in mind that almost all athletes aren’t looking at it as a job or work…they love what they are doing. Heck essentially most division 3 kids are paying to play their sport.
Partially true…the true path is to be high academically while playing high level sports. Also remember there are very few HS athletes who are in consideration for athletic scholarships out of the 7.5 million participating. Coaching HS football I can tell you there are no delusional ideas of these kids getting full ride athletic scholarships. Typically 1 on a roster of 70 if your lucky. Basically you have many many high academic kids at each school competing for academic scholarships…very few full ride if any but the pool is much larger(our school is 600).
For some kids who are better athletes than students, athletic money might be one of the only ways that they can afford college so investments get made despite the long odds of getting the scholarship. Also, if your kid is excelling in a sport at a young age then investing into his or her performance seems very understandable and it is not always done with the longer-term goal of a scholarship. It is fun to watch your kid win!
The economic value of a full scholarship is pretty tremendous, in my opinion. A full ride to a private university can easily run $60K per year. Even if we assume the athlete has to spend 8 hours a day on his sport, for all 365 days in a year, we are talking 2,920 hours. Using the $60K full ride example, the scholarship would equate to more than $20 per hour and that is not taking into account taxes and the 365 “working days” assumption is far too rich.
As far as his statement that 70% receiving academic scholarships is ludicrous. As you said it doesn’t take an AP Calculus student to figure that is wrong. The NCAA itself states 0.03 percent is the actual number.
I actually heard an interview with an NCAA official stating that there are way more academic scholarships available than athletic scholarships. With statistics, however, you need to drill down, and here is my take.
I am not sure where you got your percentages, and I cannot seem to replicate them, but the NCAA in July of 2016 put out the following recruiting facts. There are only 294,000 athletes competing in Divisions 1 and 2. Division 3 does not allow athletic scholarships. Take note that only 56% of D1 athletes receive athletic scholarships while 61% of D2 receive athletic scholarships. How can that possibly exceed the number or total dollars available for academic scholarships available to all students attending all colleges and universities in the U.S. You are only talking about 170,540 students on athletic scholarships. In the fall of 2016, it was estimated that 20.5 million students would attend college in the U.S.
It is always risky to compare raw percentages without comparing the source from which the percentage is to be derived. In this case the pool of students that could receive an athletic scholarship is significantly smaller than the pool of all students attending colleges and universities in the U.S.
@moscott ‘As far as his statement that 70% receiving academic scholarships is ludicrous.’
According to US National Center for Education Statistics, part of the US Department of Education, 82.9% of full-time, first-time degree/certificate-seeking undergraduate students enrolled in degree-granting post secondary institutions received financial aid.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_331.20.asp
Don’t forget though that student loans are considered financial aid and included in these figures. Also, note the practice of tuition discounting at most private non-profits where more than 80% receive some sort of institutional grant. I won’t even go there with the for-profit institutions as they are just plain evil.
Sooo many variables not being taken into account including NAIA which includes another 300 schools and 60,000 student athletes where over 90% of member colleges offer athletic scholarships. Also not included would be the 8 Ivy leagues schools which would count as FA even though a great many were accepted based on athletics(AI band). The actual number(per NCAA,org) is 2.7 Billion not 1 billion and 480,000 student athletes. Regardless let’s use the numbers you stated. 9.5 billion divided by 20.5 million vs 2.7 billion divided by 170,000! Who’s getting much ,ore in return? On average football programs can or will have about 100 roster full ride athletes on the team(about 25 per year). Do you think there is anywhere near that for kids on full ride academic scholarships? That doesn’t even count other sports who are less but still not added to the total. IF I hit the lottery mark me down for the 3-4 winning millions vs thousands getting $5. A 5 star football player(with even decent grades) has his pick of any college in the nation. A top academic student with 4.0 34 ACT etc…has a 5% chance of getting into their dream school for their effort because they are many like them(plus outside USA applicants to compete).
The statistics also don’t take into account that many high school athletes don’t go to college or don’t want to play in college. My daughter had 11 seniors on her team, and only 2 of them accepted scholarships to play in college (both to D2 schools). I think 5 or so didn’t go to college at all. If any of them had wanted to play in college and get a scholarship, the coach would have helped them and they could have received a small scholarship at a lower ranked (both academically and athletically) school. It may not have been enough money to attend college and it wasn’t going to be to any school they wanted, but they could have received something, somewhere. One of the best players and best scholars didn’t want to play in college so made her college choice (which I think she’d made before Kindergarten) without sports as a factor. She’s still counted in the statistics of high school athletes who don’t receive college scholarships, even though she didn’t want one. My niece could have played D1, but she didn’t want to. None of the Ivies or service academies or D3 athletes are counted in the scholarship statistics.
@moscott, if you coach high school football, then you should know that the D1 FBS scholarship limits are 85, not 100. D1 FCS is 63. Less than 200 colleges compete at the D1 level. I think D2 is about 170 schools and a cap of 30 schollys. You should also know that there are approximately 50 five stars a year. That is a whole different level that a 34/4.0 kid. I would bet if you could determine who the 50 best pure academic kids nationally were in any given graduating class those kids would have their pick of schools as well.
And I get the point that college atheletes, particularly at the D1 level, love their sport. You have to or you would never get there in the first place. my point is that in no way shape or form is a scholarship a “free” ride. Those kids work their butts off.
Same goes for the 4 star and most 3 stars as well. There is no way to determine the top 50 and even kids that get perfect 36 4.0 get rejected for their dream schools.
While there are a few full ride academic scholarships available there are far more being offered to athletes for sure. Remember the title of the thread…far from the truth.
This is a very interesting thread, and what it in particular it says about those interested in college athletes. It starts with an article identifying the “myths” about college scholarships. This is not the only such article. There are many, probably because, despite being identified as “myths,” the collective “we” still want to believe in them. The “myths” include the small number of available athletic scholarships, the extremely small number of full scholarships, that when scholarships awarded, they often come no where near the investment of time and money in developing athletic skills.
Even once identified and substantiated by statistics, we still want to perpetuate the myths of the athletic scholarship.
There is no doubt that athletic scholarships do exist. I am happy that they do, because the kids that earn them really deserve them. They are something special and they worked hard to get there. But, let us not delude ourselves by anecdotes. They are a rare instance. I go back to the starting point. Do athletics for a reason other than getting an athletic scholarship – and there are many – because the odds are very clearly do NOT lean in favor of any athletic scholarship let alone a full ride. If you are looking for ONLY a return on a financial investment (and I do not know why you would be), take that $5-10,000 a year and invest in tutors.
All because you didn’t get into your dream school doesn’t mean there aren’t full rides or full tuition scholarship opportunities for someone with a 36. You may have to consider a lower tier school but if someone with those stats wanted a full ride its out there for them to get.
^^^Well of course but they have the same problems as the athletes. 39,000 applicants to Harvard to admit about 1,300. Same goes for the athlete…plenty of scholarships available at “lesser” schools for non 3,4 and 5 stars.
If she was a better swimmer she would have got more money. Period. She got her market worth. But they are apparently a family that loves swimming which is the case of most D1 athletes, they are passionate. Most athletes pre-pay for college with years of training, coaching and travel expenses. They know it. They do it cause they love it. It is their thing. The people that play a sport purely for a scholarship are frequently the ones that are not very good athletes to begin with and end up limited in some way. The time there is a problem is when a parent won’t open their eyes that little Jimmy or Suzy just isn’t as good as other kids. I see that a lot.
Every sport gives you a different perspective. Baseball and gymnastics are where I draw my observations. In both of those sports … a few less private lessons - swapped for some SAT tutoring yields a far better bang for your buck.
Aren’t the vast majority of NCAA swimming scholarships divided among team members? Football scholarships can’t be divided, but swimming ones can and often are because depth of the team is vitally important in swimming.
The real benefit of sports scholarships is guaranteed university admission to schools whose selectivity places them is well beyond the normal range of the athlete. That and a tuition reduction. The superstar players in revenue generating sports at D1 schools get usually full rides, but not as much in non-revenue sports or at D2/D3 schools. For many families it means their kids can attend highly ranked private schools at about the same price as their state flagship, and continue in the sport that they love, and pay for their enormous food requirements that would bankrupt the average student.
I agree it can be foolish to spend thousands on your kid each year in the hopes they will get a full ride athletic scholarship. And I do see some parents spending thousands on pay-to-play schemes, and traveling all over, in a sort of whirlwind of delusion that their kid will get a full ride. But I’m not sure how common that is. I see many other parents who support their kid because it’s their passion.
I myself didn’t spend anything on my S other than the occasional $150 rec fee. He is now an athletic recruit.
I agree with @TooOld4School. While it’s true that only top elite athletes get into D1 schools with full ride scholarships and schools that are academic matches, it is also true that many athletes will get admitted to Ivies and D3 schools they would otherwise not get admitted into, and then qualify for either a generous need based grant/scholarship (many Ivies and private LACs have large endowments and are generous with need based grants, to the point that it is cheaper to go there than in-staste U.), and perhaps also qualify for other in-house scholarships. You do have to be a top student to get admitted, more like a scholar/athlete. So academics remain important.
I think it all depends on your attitude in the years you are supporting your child’s interest in the sport(s). My S did it for the love of the sports. It is impossible to tell anyway, for all but a select few, how competitive you are, until you are in high school anyway. So you may as well do it because you love it. However, if it does prove you are competitive, then the sport can definitely give you a leg-up in admissions besides teaching you all sorts of positive lifelong values.