Information about athletic scholarships
About this video
Many families hope an athletic scholarship will pay for college, but recruitment is a long process that often starts in ninth or tenth grade. Only NCAA Division I and II schools give athletic scholarships, about 7.7 million athletes compete for only 138,000 of them, and outside men's football and basketball the average award is only about $8,700 a year, far below the cost of college.
You'll be able to
- explain which NCAA divisions can give athletic scholarships.
- use the numbers in the video to explain how rare athletic scholarships are.
- explain why an athletic scholarship usually won't cover the full cost of college.
Key words
- athletic scholarship
- Money a college gives a student to play a sport for the school.
- NCAA Division I and II
- The elite levels of college sports, the only ones allowed to give athletic scholarships.
- Division III
- A level of college sports whose schools are prohibited from giving athletic scholarships.
- recruitment
- The process of being sought out to play for a college team, often starting in ninth or tenth grade.
Transcript
- So I see a whole lot of families who are hoping to pay for college with an athletic scholarship. Being recruited to play college athletics is actually a whole process that often starts as early as the ninth or 10th grade, and requires many steps and a lot of research.
And one thing to know that I think a lot of families miss is that only NCAA Division I and II schools give any athletic scholarships at all. Division III schools are actually prohibited from giving out any athletic scholarships. So it really depends on whether your student, you as a student or your parents, feel that you are able to play at the very highest elite levels of college sports that are represented by Division I and Division II schools.
The other thing to know is that every year there are about 7.7 million athletes across the country who are competing for only 138,000 athletic scholarships. So very, very few students actually ever receive an athletic scholarship at all, regardless of how good an athlete they are in their sport.
The other thing to know is that if you exclude men's football and men's basketball, the average athletic scholarship is only about $8700 a year, which is far, far below the average cost of attendance at pretty much any four year college or university.
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