It depends how you look at it. For example, there are far more women’s rowers in college than there are women’s rowers in high school. This makes it relatively easy for a rower with HS experience to earn a partial scholarship. In contrast, there are about 12x more HS football players than college players. There may be a lot more football scholarships to go around, but there are also a lot more HS athletes, making it difficult to get a scholarship unless you are exceptionally talented.
Soccer—each NCAA Division 1 mens college soccer team is only allowed to award a maximum of 9.9 scholarships total. And yes, to be awarded a full D1 Football scholarship is actually very competitive.
bluewaters2015, there are actually 4 women’s sports that, at D1, are Headcount sports, meaning that scholarships cannot be shared by two students: basketball, volleyball, gymnastics and tennis. For example, NCAA allows 12 gymnastics scholarships per team. The school can offer 10 and have 14 girls on the team, but 4 of those get nothing. The 10 can also be partial scholarships, but again, cannot be split. There are rules about where the non-scholarship athletes can accept money from too, as the school can’t get around the rules by just letting that 13th gymnast take a need based scholarship or a booster paid scholarship. Walk-ons are regulated too.
Those thousands of other D1, all D2 and NAIA scholarships can be shared among any number of student athletes. Some sports have a minimum amount that must be given before the coach can offer a NLI/grant-in-aid (in my daughter’s case the minimum is book money, or about $750, which wouldn’t cover her books!).
Also, don’t think being a scholarship athlete is a walk in the park. My daughter has about 1/4 of her COA paid with an athletic scholarship, but that means she cannot work during school time (no time). She also cannot take any additional need based aid from the school, but can take federal loans, Pell grant, any state offered need based aid, and any merit based aid (unless it is awarded because of her sport). For this scholarship, she must attend 10 hours of study tables a week, 20 hours of practice, sessions with the trainers to get taped and patched and sit in ice baths, 5+ hours a week in lifting and conditioning, more time traveling, watching film, ‘team bonding.’ It is a big time commitment. Much of this takes place at 6 am, so she must go to bed early. She doesn’t have free time. She loves it all so for her it is a great deal. If she didn’t like it, it would be a miserable way to pay for college.
Another point…what may start out as “fun” can quickly turn to drudgery when the athlete sees all the things they miss out on. Internships, spring break, study abroad…the list goes on. Seriously, it’s a job.
^^And my daughter really treats it as her job. No spring break for her, no study abroad (may be possible in the fall, but really, not going to be convenient), no living in the sorority house (which we take as a plus, but some might not like it), no taking a semester off. All the scholarships and aid are a house of cards and if one card is removed, the whole thing tumbles.
But as I said, she loves it. It’s the job she wants to have at school, much better than working at the cafeteria or as an RA. The structure of being an athlete has been great for her. Because her grades were so good first semester she no longer has required study tables in the library every night, but she still goes because it worked for her. She takes over a table, spreads her books, computers, pencils out, she uses the white boards to put up her formulas, she barks at anyone who talks to her. If she were in her dorm room, she’d be constantly interrupted so this works. She gets out of a lot of stuff at her sorority because she has practice or games, and because she has a scholarship that takes precedence.
Athletics is not for everyone, but it is working for her.
@twoinanddone Thanks for the correction re gymnastics and tennis also being head count sports for women in D1, as well as volleyball and basketball.
As far as I can see the distinction between head count and equivalency sports isn’t quite as hard and fast as it seems . . . in volleyball anyway, schools will tell some players they have a full ride for them for 2 or 3 years rather than 4, which effectively is a 50% or 75% scholarship over 4 years.
Another dimension to think about is how much global competition there is for spots on college teams. Football is one end of the spectrum where a very high percentage of players are from the US, with some from Canada and very few from other countries. The other end of the spectrum is probably tennis with over 30% of the spots taken by athletes from outside the US.
Plus rowing if you’re tall. There are more college rowers than there are high school rowers. Curiously, women’s crew is an NCAA sport while men’s is not. It’s one way the NCAA makes up for all those football slots on the men’s side.
Lacrosse recruitment (both boys and girls) are on the rise as programs become more common. They often give scholarships, although rarely full, as you must be the best of the best for that. As a lacrosse player, though, I can vouch that depending on where you live, recruitment is easier/harder, especially being dependent on your high school. It may seem crazy, but Southern kids have an advantage, of sorts, when compared to someone from the Mid-Atlantic region because the Mid-Atlantic is a lacrosse powerhouse in which you have to be the best of the best to play in tournaments and to succeed, while the South has a smaller pool of players, therefore the players there are competing against (not to degrade them) lesser competition. So while a top high school in the South may win state championship after state championship and have a virtually unstoppable player, when they are forced to play against competition in a more serious area (Mid-Atlantic), their skills are not as comparable. There are, of course, exceptions, in which players from a geographic region in which lacrosse is not popular are often great, and the same for the Mid-Atlantic, where they aren’t all fantastic. Swimming also offers many scholarships because they have to field a large team and need at least 4 people who can swim (and specialize) in each event, as well as swimming being a sport at about 900 schools across North America, compared to numbers such as field hockey, which is only at about 400 schools. The more schools, there are, the larger number of people who will in turn be recruited. I hope this helps.
It’s true–it is a very regimented 4-5 years. When people find out I went to school on a full athletic scholarship, it is usually meet with fawning and ohhhs. The truth is, while I loved sports, I would probably try another path if given a second choice. Most people only see the highlights, they don’t see morning workouts at 5:30am, several operations before age 21, and lost opportunities as listed above. Make no mistake about it, at a high caliber D1program, it’s more business than student-life.
Thanks for the feedback! Interesting point about less popular sports and the hook. Hadn’t thought of that. So hook sports would be fencing, squash, water polo, possibly rowing (?), women’s golf. How about equestrian for a boy - seems like it’s a female heavy sport? Curious.
Just a random question. What’s the point of recruitment? Why do colleges recruit?
Is it for popularity down the road when the athletes appear on television or is there something else?
Not sure what you are asking–but recruitment, and I’m assuming you mean athletic recruitment, is so that they can obtain the best athletes. Now, that has a different connotation for different schools–at UCLA, it would mean probably someone who is a nationally recognized athlete. At Yale, it would mean a very solid athlete, but also one who could get admitted and also enjoy the academic rigors.
The point is $$. Big alumni dollars for schools with teams that go to bowl games. Big sponsorship contracts with Nike, Addidas, etc. A school with great athletic teams raises the school’s profile and guarantees a steady stream of top caliber recruits.
^^Many schools, including the Ivy league, believe that physical activity and competitive sports add to the college experience so, just like recruiting the best cello player or the winner of the science fair. One requirement to be a Rhodes Scholar is participation in a sport.
Of course, there is also some big money in some sports so the schools are interested in having the best team. Title IX gets involved, and then if a school has a big football team, it needs to offer a certain number of women’s teams. Good teams attract other students, alum dollars, tv revenue.
Until this year (2015-2106) NCAA athletic scholarships were only for 1 year, and renewable at the coach’s discretion. Now the power conferences can award 4 year scholarships, and in fact I read that the PAC 12 would require all schools and all sports to have the 4 year contracts. In a Headcount Sport, that will mean a volleyball player will have a fully paid education without fear of losing it. The power conferences are all D-1, so there are still a million variations at the smaller D1 schools and of course all the D2 schools.
My understanding of men’s rowing is that it is not an NCAA sport by choice. The sport and competitions have been going on for so long and run by private clubs that the schools do not want to go under the NCAA jurisdiction. They’d probably have to give up their old rivalries and compete within their conferences. Hockey is similar, but because many D3 schools use their one ‘play up’ chit to play D1 hockey (each school can play one men’s team and one woman’s team at the D1 level while the remaining teams continue to play at D3), the conferences are all mixed up anyway.
This is all great information. Forget about recruiting or scholarship $$. I get now what level of athleticism that requires.
What sport colleges ‘care about’ without outright recruiting for. For example, karate or yoga - it seems like these are not things that will tick any boxes for admissions – whereas it sounds like being solid squash player would.
SO.
Apart from water polo, squash, fencing, golf (girls)… are there any other sports that ‘tic a box’?
Curious.
If it is an unusual sport, not many schools will have teams so you’d need to focus on what schools support a curling team or women’s hockey or fencing and whether that will get you into the school or scholarship money or both. Just playing the sport won’t get you very far, you need to be good.
^Good point on the numbers - there’s a big difference in the numbers across sports. E.g. women’s volleyball is played at over 1,000 NCAA colleges plus more in NAIA and junior colleges - pretty much every college in America that has varsity sports - while women’s water polo is played at about 60 and fencing and squash at fewer than 50.
There are also big differences by gender due to Title IX and just popularity of different sports, e.g. men’s volleyball is played at far fewer schools than women’s, roughly 100 in the NCAA.
There is definitely a large disparity with volleyball. There are only 23 D1 Men’s team and 334 D1 Women’s teams. Many men’s club volleyball teams are quite competitive though , as many of them have men on them who would be D1 players if there were more opportunities for men at the varsity level.
Never underestimate a college’s need for track and field athletes. Pole-vaulters; shot put, discus, and javelin throwers; sprinters, hurdlers and distance runners—all are needed, and a variety of body-types fill those positions. Natural talent can emerge in high school and does not require years of early childhood training.