I’ve heard it more times than I can count. When a high school athlete believes that playing their sport is going to be their best bet at getting a scholarship for college. We all know that athletic scholarships are real, and it does pay for some special athletes to get their college education paid for. But the irony is that less than 1 out of every 10 high school athletes will play sports in college, and of those who do, athletics will more than likely not be paying most of the tuition bill. If you want to play sports in college, and you want to have your college paid for when you do it, you are not alone. But as you look for that elusive scholarship offer, you must know where the money likely is not, and the truth about where the money really is.

The Athletic Scholarship Myth

The myth about athletic scholarships is simple, that more people get them, then what is actually true. Whether or not we believe it to be true, the overwhelming majority of scholarship money goes to three sports in Division 1. FBS Football, Men’s & Women’s Basketball, and Women’s Volleyball lead the charge. But if you are not in one of those sports, or in D1 at all for that matter it is much less likely that athletics will pay for all of your education. Division 2 and NAIA are anchored in a partial scholarship model for all of their athletes, and Division 3 does not offer athletic scholarships at all. So in reality about 2 percent of all the college athletes receive full-ride athletic scholarships. And for the other 98 percent only about 2 out of every 5 of them are receiving even a little bit of athletic scholarship aid.

The problem you will face in getting an athletic scholarship, is that there just isn’t as much money to go around as you may think. But that is alright because there is a solution to the athletic scholarship problem. One that is so powerful, that it can basically guarantee  you will get enough money to make college affordable, if not entirely free altogether. And that is for you to use academics as the key to getting enough money to pay for your college experience.

The Academic Scholarship Reality

Contrary to popular belief there is exponentially more money available for college from academics, than there is for athletics. And college coaches are aware of this. In fact, many of them use to this their advantage in recruiting, by looking for athletes who are some of the top students admitted to the college, to ensure that they will get the maximum amount of academic scholarship dollars. If a coach can only offer you 10 thousand dollars of athletic scholarship, but academics will make the college offer you 35 thousand dollars, that is already a 45 thousand dollar total scholarship amount, which is not too bad if you ask me.

The Full-Ride Formula

The key to getting a full-ride is simple, that the better you do academically, the more money there will be for colleges to pay for you. Scholarships are always an investment, so in order to get it, you have to give the college a reason to believe you will provide a good return on their money. If you max out your academic performance at whatever high school you are attending, you can find colleges that are public or private, willing to pay for most if not all of your education. And if you are an athlete, even if you are not recruited Division 1, there will be coaches who will prioritize you over someone with the same ability as you on the field, but laps behind you in the classroom. In other words, if you are not a great student, you will have fewer options to make college affordable than someone who is. And what you really need to know, is that the more money a college has, and the better their academic standards for admission, typically the more money they are willing to give away to high quality students.

The Ivy League in Division 1 is the strongest example of this, where they do not give any athletic scholarships. Yet they consistently have teams perform in the top 25 for Division 1 in sports like FCS Football, Women’s Basketball, track and field, soccer, lacrosse and more. Because schools like Cornell and Princeton have enough money to afford just about any student they want, if they really want you. They just don’t feel the need to put the title athletic scholarship on whatever money you’re getting.

The Ivy League has proven it doesn’t matter what label gets put on your scholarship money. And they are proof that it shouldn’t really matter that much to you either. The secret to getting a full-ride scholarship is simple. First, achieve your academic potential. Then find the right schools and coaches in any Division who value your athletic ability. And from there, let the politics of how you get your money begin to take care of itself.

KNOW THE GAME. WIN THE GAME.

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